Travel gadgets: trip in review

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And the medal winners are:

GOLD - Sony VAIO VGN-TZ340 (rosé)
My best-ever impulse purchase, for an accidental reason. I had no idea how helpful the built-in webcam would be, but free ooVoo video calls home were a lifeline for LG and her parents and thereby also for me.

Plus, the every-other-day video calls provided a neat justification for me to have the laptop and WLAN (wireless internet) in the first place. "This? Oh, this is for LG and her parents, you know. Me? Maybe just a little Facebook/Travelblog/Flickr/CNN between calls...."

The built-in SD slot made it quick and easy to upload my day's photos to the laptop. I wish I had switched over to the Flickr desktop Uploadr sooner; it was much better than the standard web uploader over slow/less-reliable connections.

I was seriously annoyed to have to pay 30€ for T-Mobile WLAN access at our Berlin pension (hotel), but it really did pay for itself when I discovered I could log in from the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and later the Frankfurt am Main Flughafen (airport) for the rest of the month using the same subscription.

SILVER - Canon PowerShot SD1100IS (brown), 4G SD card, extra Lenmar battery
Can't say enough about this wonderful camera. It takes great pictures and fits easily in my pocket for quick access and/or to hide from the museum attendants. 😊 The image stabilization allowed me to capture a few dark interiors that really didn't come out well on the 2005 trip. A 4G SD card meant I never had to worry about running out of space, and although the Lenmar extra battery didn't have the same life as the Canon battery, it was a fine backup.

BRONZE - Eagle Creek ultra-light wheeled luggage (tree frog green)
One of the most satisfying moments on each leg of our trip was the moment we stepped off the train, airplane, whatever, and saw the look on our hosts' faces when we told them no, this really is all our luggage. For the whole month. And about half the time, whoever was meeting us could easily grab both pieces and carry them for us. 😊

Nobody else has tree frog green luggage, which was handy at the baggage carousels.

LG really passed the train-stairs test, several times over (ability to haul her bag, and herself, up the often-quite-steep stairs into a RegioBahn, TGV, ICE, EuroCity, etc. train car before the doors close). Props to her for doing it many times without complaint, and props to both LG and her mom for packing light enough to make it happen!

Finalists:

Sony GPS-CS1
Not perfect, but a lot better than trying to remember where all the photos were taken. It's really getting to be time for there to be a smaller and lighter one of these, though. If I could find a portable GPS navigation unit (user-friendly maps, reassuring configurable voice, etc.) that also keeps uploadable logs, that'd be the perfectest thing ever.

BUILT NY neoprene carrying cases
Durable and stylish.

Lufthansa's new Seattle-Frankfurt nonstop
Somebody still knows how to operate a civilized airline, just not in the U.S. Decent legroom, personal video screens, and not one but two real meals included in the price of the flight. Awesome to have a real nonstop from Seattle now (although SAS to Copenhagen is pretty great, too).

iPod 4G mini (green)
Sure-fire way to keep LG happy on long car trips and, to some extent, long plane trips. If the kid in the back seat isn't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Disappointments:

Unlocked quad-band GSM Motorola RAZR (lime green) and OneSimCard with Estonian phone number
I went to a bunch of trouble to research and mail-order this stuff before I impulse-bought the laptop which rendered them almost totally obsolete. Oops. What might have worked better: a GSM smartphone with a German sim card with a data plan and a number that isn't international long distance for my German friends. Or, you know, Gmail and ooVoo.

Nintendo DS with Guitar Hero: On Tour
Forgot to field-test this one for 8-year-old hands. Turns out LG really can't reach the fret buttons comfortably in any configuration. She didn't play the DS much at all, and almost never played GH:OT. Unfortunately, a sure-fire way to get her to demand to play it anyway was for me to express the slightest interest in playing it myself. 😊

Honorable mention:

Eurosport coverage of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing 2008
A wonderful way to spend quiet evenings at home/in our pension. I do not think CNN International would have been OK with LG even if it is the only English-language choice all the rest of the time. Thank goodness the Olympics were an option.

And Eurosport RULES!! We watched week 1 in German, week 2 in English (UK feed), a smidgen in Czech (because we could). No interminable "features". No fake suspense or pumped-up drama. Just sports. Sports!! I didn't like NBC's coverage much before, but I don't know how I'll be able to stand it now knowing how much better the alternatives are, even in languages I don't speak.

Plus, the UK feed features something called "Tagging" which turned out to be a collection of the day's bloopers. LG demanded to see the "Fail" segment each night in Praha before going to bed.

Deutsche Post
Mailing stuff (gifts & souvenirs, finished books, guidebooks after leaving the city they're a guide to, anything overpacked) home to oneself, rather than schlepping it around or risking it at the airport, is a very good idea and should be budgeted for.

Finally...

I am pleased to report that my frequent gadget updates on this blog did not cause anyone to stalk and rob us on our trip... this time. (Hi mom!)

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