Isn't this the car that kept attracting random, kamikaze pianos whenever it was on Top Gear?
Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
Yes
And Nancy who is understandably fed up with one of her daughters doesn't want to hear the opinions of the other at the moment. Gretchen hasn't exactly been a delight either.
Well, from what I remember (because with a story as long as this, you sometimes get memory confused
) it’s not like Nancy’s always been a great mother…It is more about “Schultz DNA” as well absentee parenting by Tilo.Well, from what I remember (because with a story as long as this, you sometimes get memory confused
Just as Tilo grew out of his immaturity with the Marine Infantry, Bas once he found a purpose with his life with athletics and then with his marriage to Henriette and becoming a father to Alice settled down real nicely.
Anna needs to find her own purpose in life, and maybe a stint in the KLM will help her find a focus for her.
Does Kiki need some helpers out in some of the more remote areas that she is at or her organization is? I would imagine she would want all the help she could get from one of the outstanding families in Germany to do things like empty bed pans, clean emergency rooms, wash dishes and such, help take out the trash, might be a way to provide some perspective to a young sheltered woman.
Do you know who we haven’t heard from for a while?
JuanIbberra, the second grandson of Kat’s old teammate Martzel Ibarra and the largest landowner in the region.
Juan has the added benefit of being friends with Prince Nikolaus of Breslau, whose family also owns a large amount of land in the region.
Just think of a Mischner-Richthofen-Schultz-Ibarra Alliance in that area, with an additional Hohenzollern assist.
JuanIbberra, the second grandson of Kat’s old teammate Martzel Ibarra and the largest landowner in the region.
Juan has the added benefit of being friends with Prince Nikolaus of Breslau, whose family also owns a large amount of land in the region.
Just think of a Mischner-Richthofen-Schultz-Ibarra Alliance in that area, with an additional Hohenzollern assist.
I mean, Gretchen can also be quite the pill. She's the one who demanded to go to the Waldstatten to get away from Anna without actually telling anyone the reason for it.
Add on the fact that sometimes you want to tell a student 'yes, I agree with your statement about their intelligence and general demeanour, but I'm trying to deal with them without colour commentary right now. So sit down and shut it for a moment please.'
Throw her into the cadets.
Women can serve now (even if we don't see many outside our main POVs) and a stint as line infantry might be good for her. Especially as she's got the Shultz gene.
Prison or the Heer.
Only now she can join the Kaiserliche Marine since Tilo has made it acceptable as another dumping ground for the Shultz bloodline.
Honestly I think that Anna needs counseling rather than being packed off to the military. Especially since, well, the military’s for defending the country, not fixing parenting mistakes.
True, but also success rates are...variable. For everyone who the military 'makes a man/woman' out of, there's someone else who all it does is give them spectacular new ways to f*** up. An older gent I know was in the Royal Navy when Britain still had National Service - he was career himself - and he said that while most of the NS lads were eager to learn and got some benefit from it, more than a few were very vocal about not wanting to be there, did the bare minimum they could get away with and generally made things a royal pain for everyone else until their time was up. Especially one guy who did everything he could to get cashiered so he didn't have to serve. It didn't work - the moment he got cashiered from the Navy a couple of MPs scooped him up to make him serve out his term in the Army - but I don't think he got any benefit from the enterprise, and clearly neither did HM Forces.
The military's the same as anything else: what you get out of it is dependent on what you put in, and there's also people who're just temperamentally unsuited.
Oh, Lehrer's Law:
Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Part 155, Chapter 2831
Chapter Two Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-One
5th July 1980
Berlin
For Inga to have one of the teenagers that she worked with being her niece was not a surprise. Most of her nieces and nephews had gone through similar things and some of them had even spent time with Inga, it was what she did.
The other students in the Youth Center had gone home for the day, leaving Inga with her niece who she had taken for the weekend as a favor to Tilo and Nancy. Cleaning up was going to take awhile so Inga was happy to have the help even if Anna wanted to do nothing but pout. All the students who had been referred to Inga were considered at risk and/or troubled, so Anna didn’t stand out in the least. The others had simply recognized that she was going through some things and left her alone. Inga had heard all about Anna’s behavior over the last few years, playing the Queen Bee and the bullying. The trouble was that her peers had outgrown that sort of behavior and had fallen away from her clique. Anna, who had already been lonely and insecure throughout adolescence had found herself living in fear of being surrounded by those who would have loved nothing better than to expose her deepest secrets out of revenge. Anna had reacted by doing what any member of their family would have done by going on the offensive. It had not gone well, only succeeding in making things worse.
Anna had managed to get a passing score when she had sat her Abitur. This was after having to convince her school that she would get that passing score because they had felt that her failure would make the school look bad. Inga understood that was part of the curse of having high profile parents. At the moment, Nancy and Anna had hardly been able to spend more than a few minutes around each other without it turning into a fight. Inga had offered to let her niece stay with her for a few days until tempers cooled. Besides, if Anna was going to be living in Berlin in a few months it would probably be a good idea for her to get to know the city.
“You are starting university this autumn” Inga said, “It’s an opportunity to start anew, I think it will be good for you.”
Anna didn’t respond, she just continued stacking chairs. Nancy had told Inga all about what had happened at Wahlstatt, how Anna had pulled the fire alarm in a fit of jealousy and like always, it amazed her just how her sister-in-law could reach the right conclusions while approaching the matter from the entirely wrong angle. Nancy thought that it was because the boys at the Wahlstatt Institute had lavished attention on Mathilda Auer instead of her. She had told Inga that she didn’t understand the animosity that her daughter felt towards Mathilda, who had come from a difficult situation and had accomplished so much at Tzschocha. Nancy felt that the two girls should have been friends as opposed to bitter rivals and didn’t understand. That was hardly a surprise considering.
“We cannot control these things” Inga said once she was certain that no one could overhear, “Your crush unknowingly rejected you, so is this how you are planning on spending the summer?”
Anna just stared at her, having gone from sulking to livid in a heartbeat. She still didn’t say anything though.
“When you told me what your little secret was back when you were thirteen, I kept my end of the bargain and didn’t tell anyone” Inga said, “Do you remember what I asked in return?”
“I hate you” Anna snapped before stomping off. A few minutes later she came back with a broom and was began attacking the floor with it. As strange as it might have sounded, that was actually progress.
Kashmir, North-West India
The region had been a battlefield in the recently concluded civil war that had wracked India for much of the last three decades. It had been a bitter conflict that had been fought along not just political lines, but sectarian as well. Malcolm had once heard a line about the Thirty-Years War in a television show; that it was hard to find a negotiated peace when both sides were convinced that God was on their side. Of course, the next line was about how convincing them of that was a delightful bit of the Devil’s handiwork. That perfectly described the situation that the expedition had found in Kashmir when they had arrived in India with the heavy presence of the Indian Army after the losing side of the recent conflict had turned to banditry. The representative of Indian Government had warned them that it was suspected that the other side was gearing up for another round, but currently lacked the resources. That had been a delightful thing to hear, shades of the Greco-Turkish mess with aspects of the Chinese conflict thrown in. Perhaps it was understandable that the Indian Government had responded to the presence of the expedition by burying them in red tape and insisting that a large contingent of the Indian Army escort them to the base camp. All of the expedition’s gear had needed to be accounted for and God help them if it fell into the wrong hands.
Despite all of that, the expedition had managed to leave Lahore by train with only manageable delays. What Malcolm had not mentioned to anyone was that he had hidden in the bottom of his pack the high-resolution maps of K2 and the surrounding region. The Indian Government would be extremely upset if they knew those existed. That was a small thing though as the expedition was going to have to figure out how to get tons of equipment and supplies from the railhead to the base camp across hundreds of kilometers of rugged territory. Oddly, Malcolm felt that he was doing exactly what he was meant to.
5th July 1980
Berlin
For Inga to have one of the teenagers that she worked with being her niece was not a surprise. Most of her nieces and nephews had gone through similar things and some of them had even spent time with Inga, it was what she did.
The other students in the Youth Center had gone home for the day, leaving Inga with her niece who she had taken for the weekend as a favor to Tilo and Nancy. Cleaning up was going to take awhile so Inga was happy to have the help even if Anna wanted to do nothing but pout. All the students who had been referred to Inga were considered at risk and/or troubled, so Anna didn’t stand out in the least. The others had simply recognized that she was going through some things and left her alone. Inga had heard all about Anna’s behavior over the last few years, playing the Queen Bee and the bullying. The trouble was that her peers had outgrown that sort of behavior and had fallen away from her clique. Anna, who had already been lonely and insecure throughout adolescence had found herself living in fear of being surrounded by those who would have loved nothing better than to expose her deepest secrets out of revenge. Anna had reacted by doing what any member of their family would have done by going on the offensive. It had not gone well, only succeeding in making things worse.
Anna had managed to get a passing score when she had sat her Abitur. This was after having to convince her school that she would get that passing score because they had felt that her failure would make the school look bad. Inga understood that was part of the curse of having high profile parents. At the moment, Nancy and Anna had hardly been able to spend more than a few minutes around each other without it turning into a fight. Inga had offered to let her niece stay with her for a few days until tempers cooled. Besides, if Anna was going to be living in Berlin in a few months it would probably be a good idea for her to get to know the city.
“You are starting university this autumn” Inga said, “It’s an opportunity to start anew, I think it will be good for you.”
Anna didn’t respond, she just continued stacking chairs. Nancy had told Inga all about what had happened at Wahlstatt, how Anna had pulled the fire alarm in a fit of jealousy and like always, it amazed her just how her sister-in-law could reach the right conclusions while approaching the matter from the entirely wrong angle. Nancy thought that it was because the boys at the Wahlstatt Institute had lavished attention on Mathilda Auer instead of her. She had told Inga that she didn’t understand the animosity that her daughter felt towards Mathilda, who had come from a difficult situation and had accomplished so much at Tzschocha. Nancy felt that the two girls should have been friends as opposed to bitter rivals and didn’t understand. That was hardly a surprise considering.
“We cannot control these things” Inga said once she was certain that no one could overhear, “Your crush unknowingly rejected you, so is this how you are planning on spending the summer?”
Anna just stared at her, having gone from sulking to livid in a heartbeat. She still didn’t say anything though.
“When you told me what your little secret was back when you were thirteen, I kept my end of the bargain and didn’t tell anyone” Inga said, “Do you remember what I asked in return?”
“I hate you” Anna snapped before stomping off. A few minutes later she came back with a broom and was began attacking the floor with it. As strange as it might have sounded, that was actually progress.
Kashmir, North-West India
The region had been a battlefield in the recently concluded civil war that had wracked India for much of the last three decades. It had been a bitter conflict that had been fought along not just political lines, but sectarian as well. Malcolm had once heard a line about the Thirty-Years War in a television show; that it was hard to find a negotiated peace when both sides were convinced that God was on their side. Of course, the next line was about how convincing them of that was a delightful bit of the Devil’s handiwork. That perfectly described the situation that the expedition had found in Kashmir when they had arrived in India with the heavy presence of the Indian Army after the losing side of the recent conflict had turned to banditry. The representative of Indian Government had warned them that it was suspected that the other side was gearing up for another round, but currently lacked the resources. That had been a delightful thing to hear, shades of the Greco-Turkish mess with aspects of the Chinese conflict thrown in. Perhaps it was understandable that the Indian Government had responded to the presence of the expedition by burying them in red tape and insisting that a large contingent of the Indian Army escort them to the base camp. All of the expedition’s gear had needed to be accounted for and God help them if it fell into the wrong hands.
Despite all of that, the expedition had managed to leave Lahore by train with only manageable delays. What Malcolm had not mentioned to anyone was that he had hidden in the bottom of his pack the high-resolution maps of K2 and the surrounding region. The Indian Government would be extremely upset if they knew those existed. That was a small thing though as the expedition was going to have to figure out how to get tons of equipment and supplies from the railhead to the base camp across hundreds of kilometers of rugged territory. Oddly, Malcolm felt that he was doing exactly what he was meant to.
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ITTL the partition didn't occur. The politics are interesting.
Part 155, Chapter 2832
Chapter Two Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Two
6th July 1980
Tempelhof, Berlin
Sophie looked at the frame of her bicycle and wished that the paint would dry faster. All the parts were in boxes scattered about the shed and she needed to have it reassembled and tuned before she left for Moscow. Fortunately she had Doug helping her.
“I thought that you said that red bicycles go faster” Sophie said, unhappy about what they were doing. Giving a bicycle a rattle can finish that looked good had been something that Doug had taught her when they panted it. She had painted several other bicycles since then but had never wanted to touch the paint on this one.
“Yes, I said that” Doug said, “But I figure that whatever bike you happen to be riding is going faster, under the paint it will still be the same bicycle.”
They had stripped the red paint off Sophie’s favorite bicycle and were replacing it with the black, white, and silver, the team colors of the Black Eagles. They had already sprayed on the flat-black primer coat. Sophie had been advised that her no-name bicycle, with its bright red paint which had become famous after she won a gold medal riding it in Montreal, was considered a likely target of sabotage. This was as the team on a whole had been warned that cheating was expected to be rife at the Summer Games in Moscow despite the best efforts of the IOC and a small army of officials they had hired. Sophie was really starting to understand why so many of her elders had an almost pathological hatred of all things Russian.
Sophie sorted through the cans of gloss black that would go on the next layer. Then the rolls of masking tape, along with the cans of white and silver to finish it. They were going to do the three-color paint-scheme that was popular with racing bikes everywhere. Alida Baruch, the Head Coach of Women’s Cycling team would probably be happy to see that she had done this. It didn’t matter that Sophie was the Captain of the Black Eagles, Alida had been pressuring her to show more solidarity with the team because she was hoping that they would do better this time in team events.
“I figure that steel is a lot easier to paint than fiberglass” Doug said with a smile. He was referring to the incident last year where Sophie had helped her friend Ziska paint her prosthetic leg in bright stripes, much to the horror of Ziska’s mother. When Ziska had explained the idea to Sophie she had explained that she was tired of hiding that her right leg ended just below her knee. So why not make a statement? The trouble was that the process of painting the fiberglass was rather different from painting a bicycle frame.
“Yeah” Sophie replied.
Near Tyson, Vermont
This had not been Stevie’s idea, if anything he would have run the other way if he had been given a choice. His parents had heard that as the child of an Army Officer he was eligible to attend Camp Laconia in distant Vermont with Uncle Sam footing the bill and Dad was a Chief Warrant Officer. It would be fun they said, he would spend most of summer vacation doing all sorts of fun things as opposed to moping around Fort Meade like he had last year.
Of course, Stevie wasn’t stupid. He had lost count of how often he had to listen to his father talking about how the first rule in every Army throughout all of history was to never volunteer. And the second rule; always get cash up front because nothing was free. Doud had found all of that hilarious, because he was on the same bus that had left Fort Meade with fifty other kids back in June. The part that had been left unsaid, the thing that Stevie had been volunteered for and the real cost had been on full display from pretty much the instant they got off the bus.
As it turned out Camp Laconia was far worse than Stevie had imagined. The name said it all, Laconia. The Camp’s Staff had made a point of telling them that the name had its origins in Ancient Sparta and while throwing boys who didn’t measure up off a cliff wasn’t an option they had other means… That had something to do with him being too exhausted to do more than fall into bed each night and not wake up until they were rudely awakened just before sunrise. The days had been filled with long hikes through the woods, mostly up steep hills, followed by what were deemed practical lessons. Even things that should have been fun like swimming became grueling trials with a whole lot of yelling involved. Admittedly, the Camp Counselors teaching them target shooting with real guns had been a whole lot of fun. Stevie had never seen a .22 rifle before he had gotten here, but he had earned a marksman’s badge which he had been happy about for a few minutes.
What confounded Stevie though was Doud. At first glance, Doud would be extremely unlikely to do well in Camp Laconia. Instead, he seemed to know how to do everything that was asked of them backwards and forwards. Doud had told Stevie that it wasn’t that different from what his father demanded of him anyway. Still, Doud figured out a way to subvert the whole thing by keeping a set of D&D dice in his pocket, something that he had told no one else.
6th July 1980
Tempelhof, Berlin
Sophie looked at the frame of her bicycle and wished that the paint would dry faster. All the parts were in boxes scattered about the shed and she needed to have it reassembled and tuned before she left for Moscow. Fortunately she had Doug helping her.
“I thought that you said that red bicycles go faster” Sophie said, unhappy about what they were doing. Giving a bicycle a rattle can finish that looked good had been something that Doug had taught her when they panted it. She had painted several other bicycles since then but had never wanted to touch the paint on this one.
“Yes, I said that” Doug said, “But I figure that whatever bike you happen to be riding is going faster, under the paint it will still be the same bicycle.”
They had stripped the red paint off Sophie’s favorite bicycle and were replacing it with the black, white, and silver, the team colors of the Black Eagles. They had already sprayed on the flat-black primer coat. Sophie had been advised that her no-name bicycle, with its bright red paint which had become famous after she won a gold medal riding it in Montreal, was considered a likely target of sabotage. This was as the team on a whole had been warned that cheating was expected to be rife at the Summer Games in Moscow despite the best efforts of the IOC and a small army of officials they had hired. Sophie was really starting to understand why so many of her elders had an almost pathological hatred of all things Russian.
Sophie sorted through the cans of gloss black that would go on the next layer. Then the rolls of masking tape, along with the cans of white and silver to finish it. They were going to do the three-color paint-scheme that was popular with racing bikes everywhere. Alida Baruch, the Head Coach of Women’s Cycling team would probably be happy to see that she had done this. It didn’t matter that Sophie was the Captain of the Black Eagles, Alida had been pressuring her to show more solidarity with the team because she was hoping that they would do better this time in team events.
“I figure that steel is a lot easier to paint than fiberglass” Doug said with a smile. He was referring to the incident last year where Sophie had helped her friend Ziska paint her prosthetic leg in bright stripes, much to the horror of Ziska’s mother. When Ziska had explained the idea to Sophie she had explained that she was tired of hiding that her right leg ended just below her knee. So why not make a statement? The trouble was that the process of painting the fiberglass was rather different from painting a bicycle frame.
“Yeah” Sophie replied.
Near Tyson, Vermont
This had not been Stevie’s idea, if anything he would have run the other way if he had been given a choice. His parents had heard that as the child of an Army Officer he was eligible to attend Camp Laconia in distant Vermont with Uncle Sam footing the bill and Dad was a Chief Warrant Officer. It would be fun they said, he would spend most of summer vacation doing all sorts of fun things as opposed to moping around Fort Meade like he had last year.
Of course, Stevie wasn’t stupid. He had lost count of how often he had to listen to his father talking about how the first rule in every Army throughout all of history was to never volunteer. And the second rule; always get cash up front because nothing was free. Doud had found all of that hilarious, because he was on the same bus that had left Fort Meade with fifty other kids back in June. The part that had been left unsaid, the thing that Stevie had been volunteered for and the real cost had been on full display from pretty much the instant they got off the bus.
As it turned out Camp Laconia was far worse than Stevie had imagined. The name said it all, Laconia. The Camp’s Staff had made a point of telling them that the name had its origins in Ancient Sparta and while throwing boys who didn’t measure up off a cliff wasn’t an option they had other means… That had something to do with him being too exhausted to do more than fall into bed each night and not wake up until they were rudely awakened just before sunrise. The days had been filled with long hikes through the woods, mostly up steep hills, followed by what were deemed practical lessons. Even things that should have been fun like swimming became grueling trials with a whole lot of yelling involved. Admittedly, the Camp Counselors teaching them target shooting with real guns had been a whole lot of fun. Stevie had never seen a .22 rifle before he had gotten here, but he had earned a marksman’s badge which he had been happy about for a few minutes.
What confounded Stevie though was Doud. At first glance, Doud would be extremely unlikely to do well in Camp Laconia. Instead, he seemed to know how to do everything that was asked of them backwards and forwards. Doud had told Stevie that it wasn’t that different from what his father demanded of him anyway. Still, Doud figured out a way to subvert the whole thing by keeping a set of D&D dice in his pocket, something that he had told no one else.