Stuck in the European airport snow? Lonely planet is sympathising by making thirteen of their Lonely Planet European City Guide iPhone apps are absolutely free right now.

I’m doing my geeky happy dance and downloading them all for later.

Here’s the list—complete with links to iTunes—so that you can grab them all:

• Amsterdam
• Berlin
• Copenhagen
• Dublin
• London
• Moscow
• Munich
• Paris
• Prague
• St. Petersburg
• Stockholm
• Vienna
• Warsaw

The apps will be free until 1:00 pm on December 23, 2010.

Gizmodo’s take on the Geek’s Vacation Checklist has a few of our standby tips on it. Tripit for US based or business travel with lots of reservations, dropbox for managing files on the go, and packing light of course.

We just got a letter in the mail and $20 charge on our credit card from Avis. Apparently we made a traffic violation while in Germany and they are charging us to let us know that. They didn’t even provide the contact number for the German authorities to call to resolve the issue! Not impressed with the Avis customer service here. All I have is a letter with a postal address of the German Bayern authorities and no way to contact them except by sending them a letter. Avis you get an “F” for customer service and assistance.

I do find it interesting that we got a ticket at 8:39 pm on August 11th, at which time we were eating pizza in an Italian Restaurant in Austria and not even in Germany at all! Oh well, we’ll see how it pans out.

We’re back home and its time to put another 3 guidebooks on our shelf. I like this idea of wrapping an old guidebook in a map as a book cover to keep your collection of trip memories without looking like a Lonely Planet dealer. Our guidebooks are mostly DIY Moleskine guidebooks, but I think they still looked pretty wrapped with maps.

Tonight we’re traveling from Munich to Paris by the City Night Line sleeper train ‘Cassiopeia’, leaving Munich at 22:48 and arriving in Paris Gare de l’Est at 09:23 tomorrow morning. We could take a Ryanair flight for 25E for both of us, but then we would have to pay for another night’s hotel. An overnight train seemed ideal. City to city no hassle.

The Cassiopeia has ordinary seats, couchettes (4-berth & 6-berth) and sleeping-cars (1, 2 & 3-bed deluxe and standard rooms).  We’ll be sitting up all night on the plane soon enough so we opted for the 4-berth couchette option instead.

There is a bistro car available in the morning for breakfast, but as we learned before train food is overpriced and usually not very good so we’ll be packing our own dinner and getting breakfast in Paris.

Travel tip:  For a cooked breakfast in Munich or evening meal before boarding the Paris-bound sleeper on your return, try the typically Bavarian Mongdratzerl restaurant, located in the hauptbahnhof itself.

You can book online direct with the German train website. (Don’t worry, its way better than Trenitalia.com and takes American credit cards just fine) You can book up to 92 days in advance. We booked exactly when the fare first became available online for 69E each ($175 total at the time). Booking closer to the date of travel would have cost 272Euro “standard fare” each.

Savings fare is awesome, but it has to be booked in advance, has limited availability, no refunds, no changes. If you can’t commit to a particular train then you may look at  a rail pass or Ryanair. These overnight trains pay to plan ahead.

Disney hopefully has nothing on the original Neuschwanstein castle. No touristy trip of Germany would be complete without a glance of the hoards of tourists in buses, oh I mean fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein.

We’re short cutting the masses and avoiding some of the chaos by booking book online in advance for less than 2E more and 2 hrs of waiting in line for tickets saved. Tickets are 17E for both Neuschwanstein and its sister castle Hoehenschwangau. We’ll use the time saved to take a hike up to get a glance at the view in the picture above and if the weather cooperates we’ll eat our lunch there too.

Mad King Ludwig has had tourists visiting since 6 weeks after his death. We’ll be paying our respects at 9am, right when the castles open. I’m a little hesitant to pay 17E for two 30 minute rushed tours, but I’ll kick myself if I don’t go.

Our next stop will be off guidebook and less cliche.

Off to a meeting in Belgium, center for the EU. I hope we get to meet tons of new people from all over. Hubby hopes that Belgium has as good of chocolate and beer as rumored.

Cartoon Via: penelope-jolicoeur

From the moment I set foot inside an airport I feel like I am being worn out and beat down by the process of travel. I mitigate it as much as possible with snacks, naps, noise-canceling headphones, but really who sleeps well sitting up or enjoys being in motion for more than 12 hrs?

I’d love to pick a long-haul international stewardess’ brain on this, but in the meantime, here is what I’ve found that works for me vs. jetlag. I’ll be employing all these techniques just to focus now that I’m on the ground in France.

Any tips appreciated!

Sleep the week before you leave

Stay rested the entire week before you travel. This means don’t stay up until 2am the night before packing or making the house clean so you have a clean house to come home to. I like coming home to a clean home, but I won’t feel like a zombie for three days of my hard earned vacation to accomplish this.

Stress-proof your body

Your body needs sleep, good food and hydration. Figure out how to get them while traveling.

Hydration – The alcohol may be free, but its de-hydrating. And don’t forget to hydrate your skin. The dry plane air is no fun for skin. While technically it won’t help with jet lag, a little moisturizer on your face will make you feel more human guaranteed.

Food – For longer trips pack accordingly, don’t make yourself a victim of the food they serve. (ah, how happy I am we’re not flying on an American airline) And for short trips its far better to have some healthy almonds in flight than those nasty salt packs they hand out.

Sleep – I don’t sleep on planes. 36 hrs to Hong Kong and nope not a wink in the air, but I have been known to set a cell-phone alarm and crash in the airport.

• Lounge: Trust me, $20 to get into the business class lounge and take a nap in a comfy chair is worth it!
• Set your Watch: I also put myself on the local time of my destination as soon as possible. I enforce this on my body by restricting sunlight with sunglasses (who cares if I look dumb walking through the airport in sunglasses) or forcing myself to stay up to get on local time as much as possible on the way there (subject to flight changes and other travel requirements).
• Eat like you’ve arrived: Eating meals at destination times helps me adjust.
• Try some drugs: I also pack Melatonin to zonk myself out as needed. While controversial for a while, the latest research shows that melatonin does help fight off jet lag. (1-3 mg about an hour before you want to fall asleep, but no more or you’ll be a zombie when you wake up.) I haven’t tried Ambien, but I’m thinking about it.

Drink tea

Chamomile tea keeps me calm, but it also works for nausea and as an anti-inflammatory. Ginger calms tummies too and maybe its all in my head, but a good ginger scone makes me feel less claustophobic too. Sitting there eating a homemade ginger scone with some chamomile tea from Starbucks is a travel ritual that doesn’t get old.

Things to try, that don’t work for me

Acupressure wristbands

No jet lag herbal suppliment

The 6 item challenge is all about living in only 6 items of clothing for a month to get a better feel for what you really need and detach from your clothing possessions. I think its a cool project, but I don’t know if I could travel on only 6 items like this lady: My month of madness, or how I traveled in 6 items

BTW, the challenge doesn’t include accessories or underthings. Still, I wonder what the guys on the OBOW would think of this as a packing technique! Although, they’ve been hung up on men’s trench coats as a packing technique lately, I think they would still be impressed.

Update: As a personal test I tried to do a 6 day challenge for my 3 week trip. I’ll be leaving tonight with 10 items instead. Personal best, but still far from minimalist.

The car is rented. One more thing off of the checklist before we leave on Friday night. I hate to rent when I could take trains, but this trip it just makes sense. Tonight is my last manual driving lesson and I’ll also be buying a Europe iPad GPS app. to join our Michelin Germany map for navigation.

Lessons learned for trying to rent a car in France & Germany:

1. Its cheaper to rent from avis.de or avis.fr (hertz.de or hertz.fr, etc.) than it is to rent from avis.com. Why? I don’t know.
2. You really should call your car insurance company before you leave to see if they cover your European rental. I have USAA (a really good insurance company usually), but they don’t cover you in Europe
3. Call the credit card company you plan on using for the reservation and see what protections they offer you. My American Express had TOTALLY different coverage than our Visa.
4. Renting for Sunday pickup is hard. In France it seemed impossible to pick up on a Sunday except at the airport.
5. Check Europecar, Sixt and other non North-American rental car agencies, they often have better deals.
6. Learn to drive manual, its saves tons of money. We’re talking $50/day in France savings.
7. Pack light, these cars are small!

Wish me luck, and German/French drivers I apologize in advance for my manual skills.