Speaking of which, yes, they call those foods those things here, too, plus there's a tasty cookie called an Amerikaner just to keep things balanced. The last two days we've had a fantastic time seeing Hamburg. First, I must say Drea's family are as wonderful as she is. Even though her kids (aged 7 and 10) speak slightly less English than I speak German, this wasn't a problem for long. I took a wild guess at gifts and brought them each a Mariners baseball cap and an origami kit, which were bigger hits than I could have imagined. Little Lars attached [View Full Entry]

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Grüße von Hamburg! Finally! The flight from Seattle to Copenhagen was half-full at best, so I got an aisle-window pair to myself. Pretty sweet. Individual headrest-mounted movie screens are fab except you give up precious footroom for the box of hardware that controls them... so the extra seat was even nicer. All in all an uneventful flight, all 9.5 hours of it. The SAS live forward- and downward-view cameras are cool, and it was interesting how the crew engineered our sleep time to minimize jet lag (made us all close our windows for some artificial night during our all-daylight polar [View Full Entry]

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Yes, it's the final installment of the "getting ready to travel" series. I'm all packed and chores are pretty much done. In about 7 hours I'll be settling in for an 11.5-hour journey over the pole to Hamburg. Here's hoping internet access will be plentiful, fast, and cheap... but not so cheap as to encourage excessive pontificating on my part. Have a great June, everybody! [View Full Entry]

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I set my alarm for 01:00 (yes, A.M.) so I could call München to make a reservation for the Euraide bus tour of Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Wieskirche. My first-ever international phone call! It wasn't any different from making a domestic call. My home phone didn't light up or play special music to celebrate or anything. ;) I've come several full circles on bus tours catering to Americans... there was a lot to love about seeing Scotland [View Full Entry]

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Today I ventured up to Edmonds to the Europe Through the Back Door Travel Store. (The fact that EBTD seem to be steadily rebranding themselves to be Rick Steves' Whatever is kind of too bad, but it's going to save me a lot of certain people's snickering whenever I talk about them.) I bought my German Railpass there last month and scored a coupon for 20% off merchandise, so after some deliberation and comparison-shopping I came away with: * Germany & Austria 2005 guidebook * Prague & Czech Republic 2005 guidebook * Clean Kit: 2 micr [View Full Entry]

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Yes, only 20 short days until I embark on a major tour of northern Europe: Germany, Czechia, Austria, and perhaps a bit of France and Denmark. Excruciating technical details of the sights I might see can be found at Deutsche Reiseplan. Yes, I'm trying to list the information in its native language... it's good practice. The less-obsessive reader might prefer to wait and get details in English right here as the travel unfolds. Handy items I've acquired or borrowed in preparation for the trip: * Plane ticket * Ger [View Full Entry]

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