During the almost six years I spent at EUCOM HQ in Stuttgart I was assigned to the Protocol Office. Officially, I was the "Protocol Driver". The motor pool had a VIP section of about 8 sedans designated for use of the 13 or so general officer and civilian equivalents at Patch Barracks as well as the twenty some full colonels. One sedan was dedicated to the Protocol Office and was primarily for use of any visitors to the command of four-star rank (or equivalent civilian rank) or higher; that was my sedan. My major duties included a lot of clerical stuff which earned me a secondary MOS in administration. I was also involved in security for visitors. Despite my official title, my real job was to do whatever the Chief of Protocol, or his boss, the Chief of Staff, or his boss, the Deputy Commander-in-Chief European Command, required of me. I spent a lot of time on things that had nothing to do with driving VIPs around. But that was what kept things interesting.
One of the benefits the Four-star level folks enjoy is that they can bring their wives on official travel. During the time that the four-star husband (or on rare occasisons, the wife) is busy with meetings and briefings and stuff like that, the sponsoring agency would be responsible to provide activities for the spouse. These activities included shopping or sight-seeing or visiting community activities or interface with the local national government agencies. But mostly it was sight-seeing, shopping, and a visit to some really great restaurants for lunch. These activities for the spouses were referred to as the "ladies' schedules"...and that was one of my main responsibilities. The sponsoring agency usually provided a lady to escort the VIP wife and I was the driver/translator/guide for the ladies' schedules. Yep! Uncle paid me to take women sight-seeing, shopping, and to lunch at great restaurants. In the five plus years I spent at that job, I went to a lot of really cool places and saw a lot of really cool things and met some pretty cool ladies and ate one heck of a lot of really cool German food.
Told you all that so I could tell you this: One of my very favorite places to go sight-seeing in Germany is to an open-air museum in the village of Gutach in a deep valley in the heart of the Black Forest. The museum consists of a dozen or so Black Forest farm houses, mills, barns, and other buildings, each from a different era in Black Forest history, each transplanted from its original location to Gutach to form a village-like grouping of houses. Each house is a small museum in itself, with displays about timberwork, carpentry, millwork, farming, mining and all aspects of life in medieval times. When you park your car and walk towards the museum, there are the normal vendors on both sides of the path, souvenirs, bier, wursts, bier, trinkets, bier, and bier. You have to cross the railroad tracks to get to the displays and when you do, it is like leaving the modern world behind, no more vendors or bier, just a stroll through history that is amazing and beautiful. The displays describe the earliest times in the Black Forest's history, when the trees were so close together a man had difficulty walking between them. Old maps are labeled "impassable" in these areas dating from 1300AD or earlier. Sounds nuts until you look up the surrounding hills at the forest so dense you can't discern the trunks. All the cooking utensils, the cleverness of olden times, the artwork, the craftsmanship, the uniforms that peasants were required to wear (it IS Germany, after all!), all on display and not replicas, the real McCoy, the real stuff. I have been there a dozen or more times, both as a guide for some big shot's wife or with my family, and never got bored or disinterested. There was always something I missed in previous trips or just enjoyed the fun of seeing it again. It is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I have ever been, and I've been a few places.
