VILSECK, Germany — There is a bar here called “Cheers,” and there are Halloween parties, decorated houses and trick-or-treating in October and turkeys at Thanksgiving. The mayor’s childhood memories include Hershey’s bars, jars of peanut butter and Wrigley’s gum. For seven decades, the rituals and rhythms of American life have interwoven with the local traditions of Vilseck, a small Bavarian town near the Czech border that is home to the Rose Barracks U.S. military base. Here, the German-American Volksfest is the biggest fair of the year, and the longstanding ties between Germany and the United States are defined not as “the trans-Atlantic relationship,” but as simply, “friendship.”Mayor Hans-Martin Schertl said, “When I have a problem, I just pick up the phone and call the commander,” Col. Joseph Ewers, who leads the U.S. Army Second Cavalry Regiment and oversees the several thousand U.S. service members stationed at Rose Barracks with their families. “I wish the leaders in Berlin and Washington had ties as good as ours, it makes it easier to solve problems.”

Source: New York Times December 31, 2020 16:07 UTC