I was recently added to a Facebook group for my husband’s first duty station in Schweinfurt, Germany. While the post has been closed, the group is mostly about our memories of our time there. My husband arrived there in late 2005 and me, and my son joined him in March of 2006. We lived there until May of 2008 when we moved to our second duty station in Germany, Grafenwoehr. We were there until we moved back to the states in 2010.
Spending four years in Germany was quite the experience. Sometimes I loved being there; sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I couldn’t quite believe we were living in Germany. Having a baby, raising toddlers, and having a deployed husband can make for a different kind of experience than we might otherwise have had.
As I think back to those years, I realize there are quite a few things about being stationed in Germany that will stick with you forever. That those of us that had the experience have a bond, one that can connect us over the years.
Here are 22 signs that you have been stationed in Germany during your spouse’s military career:
1. You can still recite AFN commercials, even years later. I mean, you did see the same ones over and over, how could they not stick in your head?
2. No matter how bad on post housing is now, you can handle it; you survived stairwell housing, you can survive anything.
3. You miss your beer truck. Enough said.
4. You are still finding Euro coins, in every corner of your house.
5. You have at least one child who was born there if not two or three.
6. “Ausfahrt” still makes you giggle.
7. The German section at your local Commissary simply doesn’t measure up.
8. You can talk about that one time when you flew nine hours on a flight with a one-year-old on your lap, trying to save $700 on their ticket. Not worth it.
9. You get excited when ordering a soda and it arrives with ice in it.
10. German music still makes you smile.
11. Whenever you meet another spouse and hear they were stationed in Germany, you have to talk about your shared experiences.
12. You miss the community feel that you can only find overseas.
13. You get annoyed that you have to pay for a care package. You miss when they were free. APO to APO shipping was the best.
14. It takes you two years until you stop asking every store and restaurant if they take a card. Of course, they do silly.
15. You keep wondering why your waitress wants to rush you out of the restaurant, in Germany, they let you chill for as long as you wanted.
16. You still get super excited that you can go to Target anytime you want.
17. You cry when you break a dish because you know you can’t go back to the little German shop you bought it from and buy another one.
18. Your children have been to 10 countries already, and they are only six year’s old.
19. You swore you would never go to Taco Bell or Burger King again, but that only lasted three months.
20. The idea of being 9 hours behind your deployed spouse is crazy; you are used to just a couple hours difference.
21. You feel guilty throwing away anything that isn’t food scraps and wonder why your American city doesn’t recycle at all.
22. You have fond memories of your time there, the people you met, and the adventures you have. And you hope every military spouse gets the chance to experience something just like that during their time as a military family.
When Being Stationed Overseas is Hard
Rebecca Alwine has been a military spouse for over 8 years, traveling the world and learning about herself. She’s discovered she enjoys running, loves lifting weights, is a voracious reader, and actually enjoys most of the menial tasks of motherhood. She is an avid volunteer, most recently as President of the Fort Huachuca Community Spouses’ Club and has worked as a career counselor for transitioning service members. She has a Masters in Emergency Management from American Military University and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from the University of Mary Washington. Her writing has been published both in AUSA’s ARMY Magazine, Military Spouse Magazine, on 
