HIST 390BP

I couldn't find my Paris/Berlin travel journal for about a year, but yesterday I accidentally discovered it. In the drawer I now remember putting it in. It's funny reading what I thought was important to write down:

• "I had 'canard avec pomme'—duck and potatoes (not apples)—and some French lady asked me to dance, but I was highly embarrassed and declined."
• "We each had to pay €2 for 'musique', which wasn't very good. The lady liked to sing off-key (Germani said he had been there 20 years earlier and the entertainment had been the same). The rest of us played games that penalized the dull-witted. Bredohl lost this game, he couldn't figure out that Julia was describing him when she said 'patent leather shoes, purse.'"
• "The S-Bahn had technical difficulties, and there happened to be a soccer game, so you can imagine the soccer hooligans piling on the U-Bahn (the one headed for Olympic Stadium)."
• "Breakfast is fantastic in this hotel. Did I mention that yesterday I paid €2 to honk a homeless man's bicycle horn, then got a 'free' homeless paper for doing so?" [I still have to learn German so I can read it]
• "Germani is terribly out of his element in Berlin. Yesterday he stepped on a snail and then a dog sneezed on his foot. Today he poured coffee all over the tablecloth. At the KaDeWe he couldn't find us at the meeting place we had arranged; we saw him come out and take off in another direction, and though Bredohl ran, he missed him. Then he went missing for half an hour after he fell behind when Whatshisface led us through Kreutzberg and Bredohl had to go find him again."
• "Germani and Bredohl looked like they wanted to climb in the playground. German accent: 'Ian, I'm hanging like a monkey!' British accent: 'Thomas! I'm in the cubby!'"

Sadly, the journal ends midway through Berlin. It's astounding just how much we saw and how far we walked each day, especially in Paris where marathon-man Germani was guiding us.