WIESBADEN, Germany – When Adrian Maade steps away from his job as the Quality Assurance/Quality Control appliance inspector for Installation Management Command Europe in a couple months after 14 years, he has some very specific plans for what he wants to do next.
“I am going to take some motorbike trips mainly doing wild camping,” said Maade, who will celebrate his 39th anniversary with his wife, Henny, in November. “First on the list of road trips is a three-to-four-week journey that will take me along the entire Spanish coast, the Portuguese coast, over the Pyrenees, and back to Barcelona.
“My retirement is in a few weeks,” he said with a smile, noting that he actually retired in June but accommodated a request to stay on an extra six months. Road trips are nothing new for Maade, who enjoyed getting out to every garrison as often as possible, to help the inspectors at their furnishing management offices.
“We support the garrisons 100 percent. We do not go out there to try to find fault and check what they are doing but to advise, support, help them solve problems as best as we can. Over the years I have created an extremely good relationship with each and every garrison,” Maade said, adding that, while COVID-19 slowed down the trips, he still made his way out to some of the garrisons.
Having good leaders was an important part of Maade’s own job satisfaction.
“I’m very lucky to have the management that I work for. They trust me 100 percent and support me. All I have to do is just to report to them on what I was doing and follow up on what they need me to do. I find that very nice, when somebody can trust you in that way,” he said.
After closing up their businesses in his native
South Africa, Maade, his wife and three sons moved to Mannheim, Germany in January 2001, to embark on their next chapter. After the Army in Mannheim closed down they moved to Kaiserslautern, which is close to where Henny was born. Maade worked for the Army’s appliance-repair contractor for nearly seven years as a technician before joining the civilian workforce as appliance inspector in November 2007.
“It was something totally different. I had never done an administrative job before as Henny managed that side of the business in South Africa. I am a master electrician by trade, and I had always run my own business from the age of 23 as an electrical contractor and other endeavors, including a sheet metal business,” Maade said.
Besides that eclectic background and experience, Maade has also taken up another hobby that he is looking forward to cultivating: gardening.
“We’re going to be growing all of our own vegetables. I’ve been growing vegetables for a couple years now, but we’re going to be growing all our vegetables without any chemicals,” he said, using a system called hydroponics, a cycle that begins with composting and ends with the plants growing in air and water.
“Most of my systems are up and running,” he said noting that the system can be set to run on its own for several weeks without him touching the process: the perfect system for being able to take off on trips.
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