Just a quick note on flight plans and LARS. A LARS agency is very unlikely to have your FPL to hand. It could be downloaded but its not really necessary, as long as ATC know where you are, where you are going, and what your route is.
Contact vs Freecall: pretty much what others have said. 'Contact' means that the next agency has all of your details, 'freecall' means they have none. There's also 'continue with' which means that the next bod has some of your details! I should point out that 'some' places will say contact xyz without a full handover which is misleading. So unless you've been given a new squawk I'd assume its a freecall.
Please appreciate that we try to handover as much as possible, but sometimes it isn't for many reasons: workload, radar coverage, and even at the request of the next agency being the main ones.
Enjoy this glimpse summer! GW