Mon, Sept 1 - Düsseldorf - Los Angeles

6.47am - locally grown apples and peaches. Only got to eat half before we had to make a run for the train station.7.38am - banana flavored soy milk, on the train to Düsseldorf Airport

8.23am - an egg sandwich Mom packed for me, plus an apple-cherry juice drink, still on the train to Düsseldorf Airport. This is somewhere outside Bonn.

10.24am - a Milchschnitte, at Düsseldorf Airport. My grandma used to buy these for me when I was little, so they always bring back fond memories. Note how the gloom dispelled within 10 minutes....

10.38am - a farewell fluffy Spritzkuchen, at Düsseldorf Airport.

11.21am - the Viking fish sandwich ('Wikinger') from Nordsee. You may gather by now that I'm not expecting to be fed well on this upcoming flight... I'm flying airberlin, some charter airline that just bought up LTU, and convinced as I am that it'll be pretty lousy, I'm engaging in preventive overcompensation.

11.36am - piña colada lassi, made with real pineapple and coconut. Great stuff.

3.10pm - and here we are on air berlin. Went for the veggie option, which came nicely wrapped:

3.12pm - it looked somewhat less nice once uncovered, but turned out to be eminently edible. Cheese tortellini with a decent tomato sauce, some coleslaw on the side, and some nice Italian crackers with peppered goat cheese. Who would have thunk. They were even serving wine, but I didn't want any.

4pm - but I did go for some Baileys on the rocks after lunch, while reading about Luca Toni. With my dad, I'd watched part of the Bayern-Berlin game that Bavaria won 4:1. Interesting how what seems like half the German national team plays for Bayern Muenchen.

6.09pm - some Tuc crackers that I've been carrying around since Paris, and some (organic! fair trade!) chocolate sesame snacks, while catching up on more reading

8.23pm - then air berlin served some tea or coffee w/ Italian chocolate cookies, not half bad.

10.42pm German time (1.42pm LA time) - this is where things went downhill. These are some cold (!) chicken nuggets, with more of that coleslaw we had for lunch, more of the same crackers and goat cheese we had for lunch, a cold, hard bread roll, and a lame sugary lemon muffin. I stuck w/ crackers, cheese and tea.

11.30pm German time, 2.30pm LA time - airberlin trying to make it up to us with some chocolate.

5.04pm - Ritesh picked me up from the airport, and we went straight to Satsouka for some salt ramen. Somehow didn't taste that good today, but ah well. My tastebuds must be all tuned to Schnitzel f now.

5.09pm - the Udon with tempura shrimp, from the place two doors to the right of Satsouka, in the food court of the Mitsuwa Japanese market. This is the kind of stuff I'd miss in Europe. How many Japanese supermarkets with food courts are there in Germany, or even in London? Paris, apparently, doesn't even have much Korean food, if any, according to Laurence.