First day in Germany

[caption id="attachment_438" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="John and Jami outside the Frankfurt Zoo."][/caption]

UPDATE: Ten photos on Facebook.

The first day in Germany is done and it's been a good one. Our hotel is just two blocks from the train station. We spent the day just walking around Frankfurt, with our only two goals being to try Apfelwein (apple wine) and to try to find the hotel near the zoo where I used to have Sunday brunch with my parents. Accomplished the first; nit certain about the second. Had a great dinner of pork sandwich, Schnitzel and potato salad at the train station. Enjoyed buying beer and wine at a minimart and drinking it at a table in the train station. Jet lag isn't too bad, although those of you inclined to do the math will note that it's 2:48 here in Germany ... a little hard to sleep.

By the way, I'll be writing most of these updates on an iPod Touch, so don't expect great works of literature.

Packed to Go to Europe!

[caption id="attachment_434" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Jami and John wearing our backpacks packed to go to Europe."][/caption]

We're packed to go for Europe. We leave from Lincoln at 6:40 p.m., then from Chicago at 10 p.m. After that, Frankfurt and a whole lot of beer, brotchen, and bratwurst. There are some more photos of us and our packs (!) on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2236531&id=17220214&l=8adc24145c

Cozy Inn, Salina, Kansas

[caption id="attachment_428" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Two slider-style burgers from Cozy Inn in Salina, Kansas."][/caption]

"When you go to the Hole, you smell like the Hole." It's a reliable prediction regarding The Watering Hole in Lincoln, Nebraska. But the Hole's clingy aroma of grease pales in comparison to that of Salina, Kansas' Cozy Inn in both pleasantness and potency. When you go to the Cozy, you smell like the Cozy ... as do your clothes, your car, and any room you enter for hours thereafter.

Cozy Inn's been around since 1922 and they're still using the same tiny grill to fry up slider-style burgers. In the tee-niny cooking area behind the six-stool counter, the cook presses small balls of fresh hamburger meat into a bed of sizzling onions. The resulting odor is captivating, but will stick to you like glue. Do not eat there prior to a business meeting. Four sliders, chips and a pop will run you $5.74, if I remember correctly. There's nothing else on the menu. Highly recommended.

A Special Message from the Tarp o' Hugeness

The Tarp o' Hugeness has room for you tonight.

We're going to Europe!

We bought the tickets last night for a July 7-28 trip to Europe. We fly into Frankfurt from Lincoln (it was $45 cheaper than leaving from Omaha or Kansas City, if you can believe that), then possibly head to Heidelberg to stay with a friend of a friend. After that it's Munich for joy by the liter in the Biergarten, then Passau to rent bicycles for a 200-mile mosey along the Danube to Vienna. From there we finish in Budapest, where a friend has graciously loaned us his apartment.

North Table Mountain Decorations

The trailhead sign at North Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado, is festooned with ceramic art. This is a picture from our early-season April climbing trip.

Nice 'N Spicy, Best Flavor: Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant

Jami and I found ourselves in South Sioux City, Nebraska at lunchtime recently and figured we had a good chance to find a great local Mexican restaurant. So we took a random turn off the fast food-festooned highway and after just a couple of blocks ran into something even better: Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant.

Just the idea of Thai food in South Sioux City drew us in. It wasn't until we left the restaurant we saw the delightful "Nice 'N Spicy, Best Flavor" sign in a far window. That sign would've sealed the deal had we been wavering. But we wavered not, and entered confident in the notion that if a Thai restaurant advertising a specialty in vegetarian food could remain open in South Sioux City -- indeed anywhere in Nebraska -- it had to be good.

And oh, how it was. While the Thai version of the Home Shopping Network blared loudly from across the gigantic dining room, Jami tucked into the Gai Himapan ($6.95), sliced chicken sauteed with pineapple, onion, scallions, and roasted cashews. Actually, both of us tucked into it because the waiter, who was well-meaning but quite rushed preparing what must have been a takeout order for a small banquet, brought us a double order by mistake. (He didn't charge us for the extra order). The thin, complex sauce permeated the moist chicken and the crisp-tender onions to the point where I resorted to holding the plate up to my mouth, the better to push food into my mouth with the chopsticks rather than take the slower route of grabbing individual pieces. Even this soon proved an inadequate way to consume the delicious sauce fast enough, so I tipped the plate to pool the sauce and scooped it up with a spoon. It was that good.

All this time the entree I'd ordered, Drunken Noodles, competed for my attention. The wide rice noodles were almost meaty to the tooth, tossed with bok choi, cabbage, perhaps some Chinese cucumber, and a few other ingredients that escape my memory now but were tasty and generous in portion at the time. The waiter asked our heat preference on a scale of 1-10, and I ordered a 7. I'll go for a 6 next time. I think the price for this was $6.95 as well. Oddly, the takeout menu I grabbed doesn't list it.

A couple at another table ordered the soup, served in a tureen with flames shooting out the top. There are also a number of appetizers, including the Stuffed Chicken Wing: "Chicken wings stuffed with ground pork, silver noodles, mushrooms and deep-fried peppers and served with sweet and sour sauce." I have no idea how they fit all that into a chicken wing, but I want to find out next time I'm there.

Thai-Laos Kitchen Restaurant, 1215 Dakota Ave., South Sioux City, NE, (402) 494-7625

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