Past Journal entries

The following are excerpts from my journal that I have typed up for... I was going to say "your enjoyment" but I will stick with "the record" instead.

Paris to Budapest
The line to check in for my flight between Paris and Budapest was thick with human drama. Behind me in line, a middle-aged, average-looking man talked on his cel phone:
-I was at work all day after arriving here and now I’m at the airport. This is the first chance I’ve had to call you since I got here.
-It’s like that when I come here.
-I called you as soon as I could
-I will destroy all the photos and delete it.
-No, I don’t want to fight about it.
-It’s a digital photo, so all I have to do is delete it from my computer.
-There is no original bc it was a digital photo and I will delete it.
-OK
-If you change your mind and decide to meet me in Budapest, I’ll be there until the 28th.
-Well, last year we met in Budapest, and we had no future.
He turns away so that I can’t hear the conversation.
-Well, I have to check in now. I’ll call you later.
(He was not yet at the front of the line.)
In front of me in line, there was a woman with a 1-year-old and a 5-year-old. The 1-year-old kept crying and the 5-year-old drove the stroller into me and everything else around him. The woman wilted and rolled her eyes when I made eye contact with her. The 5-year-old had some of the widest eyes I had ever seen. The 1-year-old did not. The mother gave her baby a bottle that looked like it contained yellow juice but there was unmixed powder at the bottom.
Boarding the plane, there was a group of Albanians in front of me with red passports. Behind me, Americans with someone from someplace else who spoke excellent English with a very cute accent. They were discussing curry: “It’s like a spicy stew. I don’t like it. You know that yellow spice?” I felt sorry for them. I also wanted to get away.

Budapest
Things that Markus (a friend from the conference in Budapest) thought were funny about me:
- that I get excited by toy train sets (at the Transport Museum in Budapest)
- that I collect beer coasters and postcards
- that I carry a compass.
“You are such a strange girl,” he said.

Koper
“We only have toast,” replied the waiter to my attempt to have desert for dinner. Instead I had 0.5 l of beer. I misjudged this town – it’s good-sized but appears to have no restaurants. That’s fine. I’ll save my money and have my lunch out, but tonight it has left me unprepared.

There’s a little girl on the bus between Piran and Koper, facing me, licking the side of the bus and reminding me of how I used to like to lick the side of the bus or my mother’s car. I sometimes still have the impulse. Will she?

It’s pouring rain here and I am sitting in an incredibly pleasant café across from the palace. The music is good (later, Gregorian chanting of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven; does that count as Muzack?) and the chair comfortable. I say incredibly pleasant except for the fact that I am freezing my ass off. This can’t possibly be August in southern Europe.
I guess now I have to have some experiences so that I can write about them. I wonder what portion of the world’s human population is motivated by that need – to do things in order to tell about them to be interesting.