Germany trip prep, packing tips

Spider in our garden one recent morning.

So I leave a week from tomorrow with Allison and Jodi for Filkcontinental in Germany. I am SO hyped. We've been having two practices a week lately in preparation, and I've been madly studying German again.

The convention is held annually at Die Burg Freusburg, a 950 year old castle on a hilltop in the Siegtal valley, north of the town of Freusberg, near the village of Kirchen. Closest major city is Siegen. We're going to visit with Julianne Honisch in Frankfurt before the convention, and with Katy Droëge in Hamburg afterward.

Allison found a a great online guided tour of the castle, for those interested. There's an area map at the bottom of the main page. Also see the comments section in this LJ entry of Allison's for more photos as well as con reports from previous years.

Starting to figure out what I should pack. I'm trying to minimize my luggage as much as possible; my tendinitis is much improved these days, and it would be bad if I wrecked my arms lugging stuff through the whole airport process. Katy has generously volunteered to let me use her tambourine throughout the convention, for example (that thing takes up an awkward amount of space in my luggage, I find). Also reviewing various online packing tips:

Travelsense packing tips
Backpackademia: How to pack for Europe
Travellerspoint packing tips
How to reduce security delays through how you pack
Travel-library.com packing tips

Any other packing tips out there?

Thanks to my friend Harald for finding out where Flickr had listed that sunrise photo that suddenly got so popular.

So much to do before our trip, so little time. Must get back to work. Meanwhile, here are some pics, all of which were taken when we visited Jeff's mom on the weekend:


My mom-in-law baked these for dessert. Yummm. From L to right: chocolate cookies, butter tarts (without pecans), butter tarts with pecans, big butter tart (I think), orange marmalade tarts.


One of my mom-in-law's cats. Fairly hefty, don't you think?


This was carved by Jeff's grandfather (who founded Ridpath Furniture in Toronto).

Aug/Sept 2005 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal comments