Kaiserslautern, Germany

I'm down to two options to get to the Frankfurt/Hahn airport... either find my way there the day before and get a room for the night or rent a car and turn it in at the airport. The castle hostel is currently reserved for the 8th & 9th of April but the guy told me it was fairly liberal and easy to change the reservations by a day or two should I desire. I picked up a Kodak Advantix camera and enough film to enroll in a photography course. I've got most everything together and just about all the arrangements I need to make have been made. I should be rolling into Amsterdam sometime around the end of the first week of April and hopefully will catch Marc (with whom I've been emailing the past few weeks) for a beer.

Kaiserslautern, Germany

Early this morning the United States officially went to war with Iraq. Just a few hours after the failed deadline set by President Bush for Saddam and his sons to vacate Iraq, US and British forces began bombing the country. With less than two weeks until I plan to leave, the current situation is something of which to certainly be aware however I do not expect it to have any great affect on my travel plans.

Kaiserslautern, Germany

Well, I'm having one hell of a time making arrangements to get from home to Frankfurt/Hahn airport by 6:00 am for my flight to Malmo. They run a shuttle from Kaiserslautern but it's $150 one-way. The earliest train on a Sunday arrives in Hahn at 10:30. So it looks like I'm going to end up taking a train the day before and just grabbing a room (there's a hotel with a free shuttle to the airport) for the night. But that's just fine, I'll start the journey a day earlier. It's all the same to me. I am going to check into the bus schedules tomorrow morning and see if there is a coach solution.
I found what looks to be a really interesting hostel in Holland; A 16th-Century castle-turned-hostel. I'm going to see if I can book a night's stay there. I'm looking for a cheap camera to take along, one that I don't have to worry about being stolen or lost or destroyed or whatever else could happen to it... but something that will still take a good picture. Things are shaping up nicely though... two weeks from today and all looks well.