Sorry for the delay, but here's the Ibiza experience I promised you yesterday:
--------------------------------------------
Back in 1988 I was in the army and stationed in West Germany. One of the guys in our platoon married a local woman who was a travel agent. My roommate (Dan) and I asked her to book us a trip to Ibiza for a week that…
Sorry for the delay, but here's the Ibiza experience I promised you yesterday:
--------------------------------------------
Back in 1988 I was in the army and stationed in West Germany. One of the guys in our platoon married a local woman who was a travel agent. My roommate (Dan) and I asked her to book us a trip to Ibiza for a week that summer. We took leave, hit the Frankfurt am Main airport and flew off to Ibiza for a week in the Spanish sun.
And here’s what a week in Ibiza is like:
(Trigger warning: This is from the POV of dumb, twenty-something-year old me)
Deplane and get to your hotel.
Check in and change into your beach clothes because the sun is out, there’s not a cloud in the sky and the Mediterranean is a blue you didn’t even know existed.
Get to the beach. Put on your sunglasses and lay on your stomach because did you know clothing is optional on Ibizan beaches? That’s where I discovered that watching women get nekkid is kind of hotter than seeing the nekkid women.
Around 3pm the “beach stores” open up (i.e. people pour onto the beach trying to sell you stuff) and you can purchase yourself anything from Goocci bags to Rolliks watches and Roy-Ban sunglasses . . . real cheap.
Between 5pm and 6pm you gather your things and put yourself together and head back to the hotel. On the way back you get some fried chicken from a little shop and eat it on the way to your room.
Take a shower and wash off the powder soft sand and the SPF 120 sunscreen.
Now it’s time for a nap. Sleep til about 10pm. Get up and get dressed for going out. Maybe sporting your new watch and bag.
It’s ll:00pm-11:30pm and time to start making your way down to the clubs. If you show up before midnight you’re like the party guest that shows up 2 hours before the party is scheduled to start. You don’t want to be that guy.
Stop at a smallish bar, my preference was a local Irish pub that had a sister pub in Boston (Purple Shamrock), for a couple of shots and some Guiness.
Dan and I were E-4s and decided girls have no idea what a Specialist E-4 is, but they do know what a lieutenant is, so we decided that for that week we were going to be First Lieutenants on leave for the week.
One of the nights at the pub we were sitting with a guy we had met just shooting the shit. He was asking us what we did and we kept it general and told him we were scouts. Which is true. The official name of our job was Cavalry Scout. We got to wear the crossed sabers on our lapels instead of generic, old rifles. The sabers were way cooler. Our job colors were red and white for blood and guts. Anyway, I’m getting carried away.
I guess because we had a combat job he started asking us our views on “the Troubles”. I have Irish heritage and am quite proud of it, so I had no problem letting him know I couldn’t wait for Ireland to be free from England again. He gave us his name and number and asked us to call him up when we got out because he and his people in Ireland could use guys like us. :O
After the pub you walk to the clubs along beachside sidewalks and piers looking at the moon reflecting off the glassy waters of the Mediterranean.
Once you hit the clubs there’s music, booze and dancing people everywhere. We met girls (and guys) from every continent of the world. A great melting pot of dancing flesh that didn’t care a bit about the Cold War, NATO, Warsaw Pact, or potentially dying in a nuclear holocaust. There was only the driving beats of 80’s dance music (because it was actually in the 80s), mixed drinks, laughter and dancing. We danced so hard that by the end of the night we’d realized we never had to go the bathroom because we had sweat it out before the fluid had a chance to reach our bladder.
Around 6am the clubs would start emptying out so we’d walk back to our hotel grabbing some hangover pizza for the walk home. Then it was to bed for a few hours. Wake up around noon and do it all again. For a week.
When we got back to our barracks in West Germany we were so effing sick (felt like the flu!). I remember getting back on a Friday night and getting woken up at like 6 the next morning by another guy in our platoon banging in yelling that they were going to a Monsters of Rock concert in Schweinfurt and they had a couple of empty seats in the car if I wanted go. Of course, I ended up going and got to see Van Halen and about 20 other bands with Iron Maiden headlining. But that’s a whole nuther story.
Sorry for the delay, but here's the Ibiza experience I promised you yesterday:
--------------------------------------------
Back in 1988 I was in the army and stationed in West Germany. One of the guys in our platoon married a local woman who was a travel agent. My roommate (Dan) and I asked her to book us a trip to Ibiza for a week that summer. We took leave, hit the Frankfurt am Main airport and flew off to Ibiza for a week in the Spanish sun.
And here’s what a week in Ibiza is like:
(Trigger warning: This is from the POV of dumb, twenty-something-year old me)
Deplane and get to your hotel.
Check in and change into your beach clothes because the sun is out, there’s not a cloud in the sky and the Mediterranean is a blue you didn’t even know existed.
Get to the beach. Put on your sunglasses and lay on your stomach because did you know clothing is optional on Ibizan beaches? That’s where I discovered that watching women get nekkid is kind of hotter than seeing the nekkid women.
Around 3pm the “beach stores” open up (i.e. people pour onto the beach trying to sell you stuff) and you can purchase yourself anything from Goocci bags to Rolliks watches and Roy-Ban sunglasses . . . real cheap.
Between 5pm and 6pm you gather your things and put yourself together and head back to the hotel. On the way back you get some fried chicken from a little shop and eat it on the way to your room.
Take a shower and wash off the powder soft sand and the SPF 120 sunscreen.
Now it’s time for a nap. Sleep til about 10pm. Get up and get dressed for going out. Maybe sporting your new watch and bag.
It’s ll:00pm-11:30pm and time to start making your way down to the clubs. If you show up before midnight you’re like the party guest that shows up 2 hours before the party is scheduled to start. You don’t want to be that guy.
Stop at a smallish bar, my preference was a local Irish pub that had a sister pub in Boston (Purple Shamrock), for a couple of shots and some Guiness.
Dan and I were E-4s and decided girls have no idea what a Specialist E-4 is, but they do know what a lieutenant is, so we decided that for that week we were going to be First Lieutenants on leave for the week.
One of the nights at the pub we were sitting with a guy we had met just shooting the shit. He was asking us what we did and we kept it general and told him we were scouts. Which is true. The official name of our job was Cavalry Scout. We got to wear the crossed sabers on our lapels instead of generic, old rifles. The sabers were way cooler. Our job colors were red and white for blood and guts. Anyway, I’m getting carried away.
I guess because we had a combat job he started asking us our views on “the Troubles”. I have Irish heritage and am quite proud of it, so I had no problem letting him know I couldn’t wait for Ireland to be free from England again. He gave us his name and number and asked us to call him up when we got out because he and his people in Ireland could use guys like us. :O
After the pub you walk to the clubs along beachside sidewalks and piers looking at the moon reflecting off the glassy waters of the Mediterranean.
Once you hit the clubs there’s music, booze and dancing people everywhere. We met girls (and guys) from every continent of the world. A great melting pot of dancing flesh that didn’t care a bit about the Cold War, NATO, Warsaw Pact, or potentially dying in a nuclear holocaust. There was only the driving beats of 80’s dance music (because it was actually in the 80s), mixed drinks, laughter and dancing. We danced so hard that by the end of the night we’d realized we never had to go the bathroom because we had sweat it out before the fluid had a chance to reach our bladder.
Around 6am the clubs would start emptying out so we’d walk back to our hotel grabbing some hangover pizza for the walk home. Then it was to bed for a few hours. Wake up around noon and do it all again. For a week.
When we got back to our barracks in West Germany we were so effing sick (felt like the flu!). I remember getting back on a Friday night and getting woken up at like 6 the next morning by another guy in our platoon banging in yelling that they were going to a Monsters of Rock concert in Schweinfurt and they had a couple of empty seats in the car if I wanted go. Of course, I ended up going and got to see Van Halen and about 20 other bands with Iron Maiden headlining. But that’s a whole nuther story.
Bless you.