I think all the pieces are in place for Friday morning’s departure now. I’ve had a check list-slash-packing list going for the last several weeks. Sometimes I return home from work with scraps of paper in my pocket on which I’ve jotted other things to add to it. On Friday it was “Eddie Bauer bottle and peanut butter for Martin.”

The “Eddie Bauer bottle” is a great Lexan water bottle that will hold 18 ounces (or, when I get to Europe, half a litre) of a beverage. The cap is spill-proof, which is especially nice. Now that airlines are charging for onboard drinks and airports have jacked up the prices for beverages knowing you can’t take more than three ounces of any one liquid past the TSA checkpoint, having a water bottle along is a must. I carry those little individual drink mix packets ($1.50 for ten packets of the Wal-Mart brand) in my carry-on daypack. Once past TSA, I fill up the bottle at any drinking fountain. Hopefully aboard the plane they won’t deny me basic water for free! I’ll fill up the Eddie Bauer bottle at a water fountain again shortly before boarding to be sure.

Oh, as its name suggests, I got it at the Eddie Bauer outlet in Silver Sands. They always have the coolest stuff there, including lots of great gear for travelers. My daypack came from Eddie Bauer. It’s just big enough but not so big I’ll be tempted to overstuff it.

The “peanut butter for Martin” came to be on the list last week. David, my traveling companion and a longtime friend from our Tulane University days, and I will be visiting my friends Curt and Ann-Louise Borgdén, who live outside of Stockholm. Their middle and youngest sons, Axel and Jonas, still live at home. Their oldest boy, Martin, is in his first year at university in Malmö. He wanted to meet us, and will take the train into Copenhagen and meet up with us a week from Saturday.

I had introduced Martin (and the rest of Curt’s family) to the wonderful “Fluffernutter” sandwich, something I enjoyed as a kid and still do. They particularly like crunchy peanut butter (they call it “chunky”) so David picked up a large jar to leave at Curt and Ann-Louise’s house. I didn’t want Martin to be left out, though, so he’ll get a jar of his own.

Taking presents to our hosts is a tradition. (They always bring me great European food, like chocolates!) Fortunately most the bulkier stuff, including a Sam’s Club-size canister of Creole seasoning for our first hosts, Dieter and Regina Heck and their kids in Darmstadt, and the peanut butter for our friends in Sweden, will be offloaded first. Our next stop being Munich, I also have some locally produced cane syrup (pronounced “sirp” locally) to leave behind for Markus and Rieke, who kindly offered us their flat in Munich while they are on holiday in the Orient. Otherwise, Munich is pretty much booked up for Oktoberfest, which ends the weekend we arrive.

I confirmed my flight info last night. Thank goodness I did. USAir has been diddling with my reservation since I made it in February. This time they told me there is a “glitch” in the first leg of my return flight. As it is the Frankfurt to Philadelphia portion, it’s rather substantial, and a “glitch” is not a good thing. They tried to blame it on Travelocity, which is interesting because I didn’t book through Travelocity. In fact, USAir handled the return flights themselves, which was necessitated because they cancelled my final leg back into Northwest Florida Regional Airport. I gained an extra vacation day out of the mess!

The “glitch” had one bad effect. I lost my window seat. The agent told me the “Travelocity problem” caused the “glitch” and hence it’s not USAir’s fault that I lost the seat I wanted. Even though I booked back in february, I seem to have lost my priority over someone who booked just recently. There’s something really screwed up in our air travel service. Airlines have adopted a “take it or leave it” attitude. “Service” is certainly not something practiced any longer. But thankfully, the agent assured me the “glitch” would be rectified before I try to board upon my return in October. We’ll see.

One good thing I learned: for overseas flights, I’m allowed TWO pieces of checked luggage. I think I’ll take a small duffle bag with the gifts. When the gifts have been distributed, I can use the duffle for souvenirs I’ll bring back. When not in use it will squish up flat and can  be tucked away in my backpack. That crtainly solves the problem of the extra stuff to pack in the form of gifts.

For this trip we booked most of our train reservations before even leaving the States. In the past I have waited until we get to Europe, but I have had several uncomfortable situations in which we find a train—especially some overnighters—has been booked full when we go to make a reservation. The cost to make a reservation here does not appear to be more than it would had we booked it in Europe. David was able to make the bookings through his AAA Travel office in Dallas, which deals with RailEurope. He also got our railpasses (we’ll be using a Eurail Select Pass-Saver, with eight days of travel in five countries) through AAA, which provides the pass protection insurance policy free of charge, unlike if we bought it through RailEurope directly. There are only one or two trains we’ll have to book once we arrive in Europe.

German Rail’s Web site, www.bahn.de, was a real help on this trip. It lists just about every station in Europe, whether Die Bahn handles it or not. For example, we will take a pair of French high-speed TGV trains from Paris to Crestview’s sister city and back. French Rail’s Web site was really convoluted. In fact, the TGV service has its own Web site. I finally gave up and returned to bahn.de and found all the details I needed. You can click a button for printable versions of each itinerary you settle on, but I just did screen captures and printed them instead.

We decided to purchase our roundtrip tickets to Füßen from Munich and back rather than use a day on our railpass. When you get a railpass, calculate the value of each day of travel. If it’s cheaper to buy the tickets (German Rail’s Web site shows you the price), don’t burn a day of pass usage; save some money. I was able to buy our first class tickets online and print out the voucher we’ll present to the ticket-taker.

Yeah, we could’ve saved some money traveling second class, but the train to Füßen is one instance where you’ll wan to be in the first class carriages at the front of the train. Why? Füßen is the starting point, sort of the port of entry, if you will, for explorations of King Ludwig II’s romantic Bavaria, including his famed castle Neuschwanstein. (That’s the marvelous fairytale-like castle that inspired Walt Disney.) The rest of the train, no matter when you go, will be packed with tourists, most of them Japanese. When you arrive in Füßen, there’s a mad dash through the station, across the street and aboard the local country bus waiting to take visitors to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles.

Neuschwanstein in winter.

By being in the front of the train, it’s a quicker dash to the bus. It takes the Japanese, who are a societal people, a few minutes to get oriented before they dash en masse for the bus as well. If you’re getting out before Hohenschwangau, as we will in the village of Schwangau, which is the stop before it, be sure you are by the exit doors in the rear of the bus or you’ll never squeeze through the hoard of tourists. It’s especially tricky if you have luggage to carry as well!

I’ve started a folder of valuable information. From Rick Steves’ France, I copied the pages pertinent to what we plan to see in Paris. It will sure beat lugging the fat guidebook in my luggage. With my interest in World War II history, I spent some time perusing the Third Reich in Ruins Web site (www.thirdreichruins.com), and made a page of notes of places I wanted to see in Munich. I also discovered on the site that one of the Hitler Youth academies, called Ordensburgs, is not far from my relatives’ home in Koblenz. (See my last blog for a bit of information about Koblenz.) These sort of notes, plus rail itineraries, our trip calendar (I updated it last Thursday evening), contact information, flight info, the one set of roundtrip train tickets I had to book online (see above), and city maps are all in the folder, which will travel in my carry-on.

I was still debating taking my laptop up until last Friday. The iBook is a great tool, though, and I will certainly be blogging as we go along. In fact, I may decide to make entries from Europe in this blog my journal, although I am taking with me the handy little 5” x 7” 100-page notebook our friend Janice gave me in a “journalist’s kit” she assembled for my birthday. I think David solved the dilemma: He wants to use the iBook along the way, too, to check e-mail and so on, and has offered to help tote it from time to time. Works for me. I think the iBook will get to see Europe.

There are still several stories for me to write for my “vacation folder” at the News Bulletin. I was hoping to get more done, but several have been gathered just in the last few weeks. Friday looked like it was going to be a good day for writing, until I realized we were parading in Crestview’s Homecoming parade Friday afternoon. Bang went two hours! Pre-departure work will get done somehow, I’m sure. It always seems to.

My next entry will probably be from Europe. Wish me a “gute Reise” (good trip)!