My personal view of the Hahn Air Base

My personal view of the
Hahn Air Base

The Hahn Air Base was part of my life since I was born. I live in Lautzenhausen and so the Hahn Air Base was directly in front of our village. My mother told me, that when I was about two or three years old I ran away crying when a jet flew at a low height over our garden. That must have been my first experience with the Hahn Air Base.
My father started working in the BX about five years before I was born. So I learned some things about „The American Way of Life" very early. My parents had many american friends and many of our relatives were also working on the Base.

Since I was about 8 or 9 I knew the Americans mostly from living in many of the flats or going out in one of the countless pubs and „Gaststätten" in Lautzenhausen. At about the age of 12 or 13 I started to help my father on the Hahn Air Base. So I got on the Base very often. It was like going in a foreign country. I liked being there. I went on the Hahn Air Base very often until it was closed in 1993.

It was a shock when we heard the Air Base will be closed. My father got unemployed but that was not the problem (by the way, he is a taxi driver today and most of the time he is picking up people at the Hahn Terminal, in a way he is working 'on the base' again!!!). The problem for me was, that there ended a part of my life. I still miss the „feeling" of being on the Air Base.

In December 1997 the Frankfurt Flughafen AG has bought a major part of the Hahn Airport. Today (Nov. 2003) the 2nd passanger terminal is completed but it looks like it is already to small for all the passangers. Ryanair is the biggest airline on the airport but Hahn is getting more and more popular for other (cheap) airlines.

Many of the buildings on the base were torn down and parking lots can be found in their places but that's the price for the progress. A lot of conctruction is going on and the base is changing all the time. I live about 200 miles from the base today and it is always very interesting to see what's going on when I come to visit Lautzenhausen and drive over the base. I am always on the base when I am around because my mother and her husband have the Restaurant Fairway Mediterrano at the golf course. By the way, when you take a taxi from the airport you may be sitting in the car with my father! He is driving a taxi today. It looks like I will ever have something to do with the base.

There is one thing all the companies forget to mention in all speeches: the life that was on the Base and what it meant for our region to have it there.

All the success on the Hahn Air Base today can not bring the feeling of the „old" Hahn Air Base with its life and feeling and the wealth for all the people working there or living with the Americans in the villages around the Base. I can only say, that there is something missing in my life and that there will never be something like that in the future.