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.

Sun, Aug 31 - Germany - last day :(

9.16am - whole grain bread rolls with quark, jam and kiwi, on my parents' balcony, with Laurence and Jacob, and Schadeck castle in the background.9.23am - a close up of the German bread rolls we've been eating, with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds and sesame

9.49am - some Bienenstich (simple cake w/ vanilla custard) and a tea made from dad's home grown and dried lemon verbena, while catching up on Obama's convention news, at Mom & Dad's, with Laurence and Jacob

10.21am - wild blackberrries along the path up to the forest, on a little Sunday hike with Lo and Jacob.

Almost everywhere we go we stumble on places where Nadi and I used to play when we were little. The area below also happens to be where the women of the village used to do the laundry in centuries past, before there were washing machines. It's also the place of a small American military camp after WWII, and just a few steps away from the place where refugees like my grandparents where allotted a tiny piece of public land to grow potatoes and onions, part of which they then traded with the American soldiers for canned meat, oranges and chocolate. When my dad was three or fours years old, some US soldiers taught him how to throw an American football right here. And my grandmother was killed by a falling tree while chopping trees for firewood with other refugees less than a mile from here.

a German cousin of Bonnie, Margo and Falvia

and more countryside. I wanted to take Lo and Jacob through the woods in the background, too, but they were ravaged by Germany's first ever tornado a couple of months or so ago. They're still trying to clean things up. They've done a good job of some parts we've been to today, but others are just impossible to get through, strewn with fallen trees. And this is an area that is protected by surrounding mountains (Westerwald and Taunus) and as such not terribly exposed to winds in general. Crazy times. Tornado in Germany. Who's ever heard such a thing? And what's next?

11.35am - got home super thirsty. It's a hot day out, in case you can't tell from the pics.

1.12pm - a Korean chicken hot pot, at the Alte Burgschaenke in Schadeck, with Mom 'n Dad (who's back from the annual Master Brewer conference where he'd been for the last couple of days), Kay and Anja, and Jacob and Laurence, who are off back to Paris after this.
This is at the centuries old village pub that for the last 30 years or so has been run by a small Korean family. These are the guys who taught me how to eat with chop sticks when I was about 10. Very nice people. They have family in Los Angeles, too ( I bet half of Korea does), and at some point, they told us, considered moving to Los Angeles. But then they went for a visit and decided Los Angeles and the lifestyle there was "too wasteful". So they ended up here. They have a couple of traditional German things on the menu, pork chops and sauerkraut and the like, as well as some random other Asian dishes ranging from Nasi Goreng to duck with peanut sauce, but overall, they've turned this village into a place where people eat Korean when they go out for Sunday lunch and don't even think about it twice.

3.56pm - blackcurrant cake and some of the puerh-coffee tea (with coffee beans, but brewed like a tea) that I gave dad for his birthday, after taking Lo and Jacob to the train station.

4.04pm - and some more cake, what with it being my last day and all...

a little farewell trip through the garden - this is one of the many apple trees planted by my granddad

and my dad's yellow zucchini

and my mom's roses, finally getting some decent sun

7.18pm - cherry tomatoes from the garden

7.23pm - braised fennel w/ orange juice. I'd bought the fennel in Frankfurt and had wanted to make it for Lo and Jacob, but of course forgot all about it. Didn't find it until today when I was raiding the fridge to see what I would take back to the States. So made it today for a last dinner w/ Kay, Anja and Mom.

7.33pm - last serving of Mom's vanilla apple sauce

8.07pm - and a farewell Botinchen

Sat, Aug 30 - Germany - spaghetti ice cream, grapefruit beer

10.38am - half a bread roll w/ a different kind of peppered salami (w/ green pepper on the inside, rather than black pepper on the outside), and half a bread roll w/ quark and jam, plus OJ and tea ( didn't have the kiwi), at Mom & Dad's, with Laurence and Jacob13.09pm - dessert before lunch - a spaghetti ice cream at Gelateria Venezia, with Laurence and Jacob, after a bit of a walking tour through Limburg's old town. This is vanilla ice cream squeezed through a pasta maker, with raspberry sauce and grated white chocolate that's supposed to look like parmeggiano. What a classic - love it!

13.09pm - Laurence had a German/Italian iced coffee, which comes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream at the bottom, and whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top.

On the left, Jacob is trying his first Radler (beer mixed w/ lemonade), and rather enjoying it.14.44pm - a Turkish soft drink, at Yufi Doner by Limburg train station, with Laurence and Jacob

14.47pm - a wrapped-up Turkish doner kebab (veal), at Yufi Doner, with Laurence and Jacob. Here, Jacob is trying his first beer mixed with Coke, another German classic. He seemed a little perturbed by the idea at first, but then gave it a good try. Don't think it's his new favorite though...

15.25pm - for dessert, we shared some coconut chocolate that Laurence had picked up from the new chocolate store (Schokoladenhaus) in the old town

7.05pm - a very pretty, fuzzy peach from the wine estate in Baden, at home, with Kay, Anja and Jacob, while Laurence was having a nap

7.15pm - and some more of the same white peaches, they're perfect right now!

7.46m - Anja's fabulous home made veggie pizza!!

9.19pm - 'healthy' German soft drinks

9.40pm - and another German classic, if more contemporary than beer-and-lemonade or beer-and-coke: this is Hefeweizen mixed w/ grapefruit juice! Very tasty, and a hit particularly with the ladies. My dad, who's a Master Brewer by trade, is appalled...

Fri, Aug 29 - Germany - BBQ at Nadja's

10.48am - half a bread roll w/ peppered salami, the other half with wild berry jam, some OJ, at Mom & Dad's, with Laurence and Jacob1.15pm - mom made lunch - a white fish whose name I'll have to ask her for, some fresh bell pepper stew and saffron rice, with Mom, Laurence and Jacob

1.51pm - some redcurrant cake for dessert, with Mom, Laurence and Jacob

4.35pm - after a little nap, more cake at Nadja's: this is her mom's famous homemade apple cake w/ whipped cream, plus some coffee, with Nadi, Nathalie, Julian, Elena, Laurence and Jacob

4.46pm - some plum cake, at Nadi's, with all of the above

4.56pm - some mini cream filled puff pastry thingies called Windbeutel, offered by my adorable goddaughter - I just had one though. Honestly.

7.15pm - and before you know it, it's time for some sausage! Thomas, Nathalie and Jacob took turns manning the grill while we were pigging out on Nadi's delicious potato salad, greek feta salad, bread w/ herbed butter and an assortment of grilled meats - this is the Thuringian sausage...

7.29pm - ...and this is the grilled pork. Don't think I got to try the grilled turkey.

7.23pm - and meanwhile, we opened some of the rose we brought, which we got from Walldorf the other night, under Nadi's lovely apple tree. Ah, good times. Thanks so much, Nadi!

10pm onwards - another bottle of the rose, back at Mom & Dad's, with Laurence, Jacob, Mom, and Anja and Kay who came up to spend the weekend with us. Jacob and Kay soon switched to beer, us girls stuck with the wine, and we stayed up until the wee hours chatting up a storm and learning a lot about Kenya, where Jacob is from.