Kunduz

Kunduz is a German base in far northern Afghanistan, close to Tajikistan. The vast majority of the people there are Germans, but there are also French, Armenians, Romanians, Belgians, Croatian, Mongolians and a few others. The food is typical for German camps, very healthy choices, and some sort of pork with some sort of gravy available with every meal. The PX sold beer and chocolate, the chocolate being a lot more expensive. It was rainy and snowy most of the time we were there, and the hectic schedule finally caught up with me and I got a cold. I spent about three straight days in my bunk with my laptop, only going out to eat.

Below is the first thing you see when you land at Kunduz airfield. Glad I wasn't on that flight.
Front entrance to the USACE offices. Those wire mesh containers filled with rock are used everywhere in Afghanistan for blast protection, seems like an effective and inexpensive way to do it.

USACE, American and German flags, flying at the back of the USACE compound.

This was my room, the bunkhouse, that I spent a week in. I had it all to myself for all of it but the first day.

These are the only vehicles I have seen in Afghanistan that resembled tanks. The guns weren't very big, but cool regardless.

Pretty cool flattened out German MRAP.

German blackhawks at the helipad, very close by to our offices. Taking off and landing all day.

Flags of the nations in attendance at Kunduz.

This little chapel was built by the first contingent of Armenian soldiers to be stationed here.

This is the German DFAC, home of the infinite ways to serve a pork chop. This is definitely the nicest DFAC I have seen in Afghanistan, even if the food was a little suspect.

And last, but not least, this was on the shelf at an engineer's desk at the Kunduz office where I was installing some software. I think it speaks for itself.

A combination of slightly bad weather and extremely inept movement planning kept us in Kunduz for an extra three days, which wasn't that bad of a thing since I was getting over my cold towards the end. After several abortive attempts to get on planes at the airfield, we finally got on the same Global fixed wing flight we have taken several times before. We almost didn't make it on that either, the guy wasn't going to let us on the plane because we weren't manifested properly, even though they had plenty of empty seats. After making a phone call he did us a big "favor" and let us go, through Feyzabad and back to Qalaa house.