All Booked

I really thought booking hotels for this trip would be harder than it was - after hearing that September was one of the high seasons, I figured my email inquiries would be mostly met with apologies and no vacant rooms. But I got tons of offers, including offers from the hotels I was hoping would be available. So, after a few more emails this morning, we're all booked!

Airline tickets? Check.
Rail passes? Check.
Train reservations on first day? Check.
Hotel reservations? Check.

Wa-hoo!

All that remains are the rest of the train trips, which will be easy to handle once we're there - if we even need to do anything at all, since we'll have the rail passes. It's all so exciting...

Chris is starting to get frantic (or at least the Chris version of frantic, which is decidedly more calm than most people), as he leaves for Berlin in less than a week. He's also got to bring two pieces of luggage - his trade show bag, which he'll likely ship back to the States after the show ends, and his vacation bag. What'll probably happen is that he'll throw a bunch of stuff in a bag at what feels to me like the last minute, I'll plan my packing strategy for three days before I even put a single thing into a bag, and he'll end up being better packed. This has happened enough times already that you'd think I'd learn from him and just follow his lead, but there's still a part of me that's convinced it's all dumb luck, and luck has to run out at some point. Hell, I'm also just too paranoid to do it any other way! I'll admit it!

(I feel much better now, thanks.)

We also have our favorite cat-sitter coming to the house on Tuesday to be reacquainted with the house and the feline family, so that'll be another big item checked off. It's all going swimmingly.

And speaking of swimming, I've been hearing horrid stories of massive flooding in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and other nearby countries. I've heard that it's not bad in Munich or Salzburg, the two cities in the flooded region we're planning to visit, but it's bad enough in other areas - people have died. What's particularly sad to me is that in Portugal they're dealing with devastating forest fires and not enough water, and in Bavaria they have too much water. I wish there was a way to equalize these things.