I am in the AF and have a chance to be stationed at Spangdalham or Ramstein. We are currently living in the US, but lived in the UK for the past 3 years and loved it. I was interested to determine which base people prefer being stationed at. Do you know which one is closest to quant villages, airports. Which would be the best experience for us, we are anxious to travel and explore Germany and the rest of Europe. Thank you for your input!

We are retired army and were stationed at Landstuhl near Ramstein for a couple years. The area is fairly rural with a wealth of small villages. But, for that reason it is not close to airports. You are about 2 hours by train from the Landstuhl Bahnhof (Train Station) to FRA Frankfurt Airport. For Train scheduling see:

http://bahn.hafas.de/bin/query.exe/en

The train system in Germany is excellent and you can go most places in the country quite conveniently.

If you have your own car, it will open up more rural places for travel, but it is not necessary to see most of Germany.

We loved our time Landstuhl and would recommend it to anyone.

Regards, Gary

Spangdalham (not sure about the spelling), is closer to Belgium, Luxemburg, and Holland and more remote than Ramstein. You will find a larger U.S. population/military installations around Ramstein. I guess it depends upon your priorities. Some families like to be around U.S. concentrated areas, and some don't. I would prefer Spangdalham.

If you'd like the perspective of someone who grew up there 30+ years ago - we were stationed in Ramstein for 3 years when I was in Jr. High. (OK, it's been awhile!) I loved it. We lived in a little village called Weilerbach and we traveled often, exploring France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Brussels, Luxumbourg... It was near Bavaria and we went there often.

My 8th grade field trip was 5 days in Paris.

We lived near Ramstein/Landstuhl until three years ago and are now up at Wiesbaden (my husband's now DA civilian). My girlfriend was at Spang until a year ago and is now at Ramstein. She liked Spang, but finds that the Ramstein area is much more central for getting around, has better facilities on and off base, and the area is expanding rather than drawing down like so many of the American military areas in Germany.

It takes her one hour to drive to FRA (she lives on the east side of Kaiserslautern). It's faster than it used to be since they opened the autobahn connection from Mainz through to the A6 just east of Kaiserslautern. It also takes her about 75 minutes to get to Hahn Airport where we often catch Ryanair flights. So far we've been to Rome, Dublin and London in the last year using Ryanair.

If you want to stay fairly "local", ie Belgium, Netherlands, etc. you will be a bit closer in Spangdahlem, but only by about an hour over Ramstein. When we were down there we would often hop on the A6 and head west into France or Luxembourg for Sunday shopping. The two biggest problems that she found living at Spangdahlem were that the facilities were limited and that it took so long to get to FRA. Because of the autobahn configuration, there's no straight line from one to the other. It's either way up or way down and around. If you want to explore Germany, rather than just going west, then Ramstein is more central.

Having now spent almost five of the last seven years living here I've come to the conclusion that it's not that hard to integrate into the German culture and get away from the American side of things if you want to. The village we lived in near Landstuhl was 20 minutes to Ramstein, but there were only a few American families there and we took full advantage of the village activities. Still, it was very nice to have the base nearby for times we wanted peanut butter, Texas toast and Pillsubry cake mixes. Also, one consideration is that you'll have easier access to comprehensive medical care at Ramstein.

Gee, can you tell my vote would be for Ramstein? Where we are now is a fairly large American community, but we bought a house in a village eighteen minutes from base and we are the only Americans for several villages around (that we and our German friends know of). If we need something specific from an American store (i.e. Husky size kids jeans) we sometimes have to travel down to Ramstein where they stock those items. We are finding that more and more stores in the States won't ship to APO's and sometimes it's just easier to go to K-Town to get that 110-220v DVD player than to order it from the States or go to our small Power Zone here. It's times like those that as much as I like living the German way of life, I also like to be close to convenient facilities.

Good luck with your decision. If I can answer any of your questions, just let me know.

Thank you all for the input. It was very helpful. I am excited about getting back to europe. I just returned to the states after a 3 year tour at Lakenheath, in England. It was great. Sardog: Id like to talk to you about what villages you recommend that we live in if we are able to get to ramstein. A medium size village with much character, shopping, and a weekly market would be nice. With in 30 min to base would also be excellent. We bought a house in England and would like to do it in germany, if it is not too dificult with the language barrier and all. I hope we can continue our talks. We really enjoy your responces and recommendations.

I'm glad I was able to help! You can contact me at [email protected] if you like. We bought our house about six months ago, so I tell you of our experience with that too.