Life on the Vine

Allow me to take you back to last Saturday.  On the 13th I went on another USO tour, my third one.  This one was a "Third Reich Tour of Dachau & Munich."  Tom has been in DC the last three weeks and has one more week to go so a co-worker came along on the tour, using Tom's seat. The day started at 5:30 a.m. as we boarded the bus for a 2+ hours-long bus ride.  We got caught in a couple traffic jams - 'staus' as they are called here - so it took a little longer to get up to our first stop - Dachau Concentration Camp. Dachau was the Nazi's first concentration camp and served as a model for all the others.   The people who ran the entire concentration-camp system during WWII were trained here.  If I recall correctly it opened within 4 months of Hitler being elected to power.  Originally it imprisoned dissidents and political prisoners, and was a torturous labor camp.  It was for men only. Dachau is the only camp that operated all 12 years of the Third Re

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted so I wanted to get a message up so everyone knows I'm still around and doing okay.  Work has been very hectic the last few weeks.  I am definitely gainfully employed.  This week our Strategy, Plans and Programs Directorate hosted its annual Senegal Theater Security Cooperation Conference.  Six senior defense officials from Senegal's military traveled up to Stuttgart for a week-long conference.  The week was capped off with the visit of Lt. Gen. Abdoulaye Fall, chief of defense for the Senegalese Armed Forces.  He is the first African chief of defense to visit the U.S. Africa Command headquarters - a pretty big deal for the command.  You can see photos and story on the command's website . There's also some videos on our YouTube page and photos on our Flickr site.  The command's other social network sites are Facebook , Twitter , and the WordPress blog.  Those are a great way to keep up with what the command is d