Previously: European Grand Tour 1985, Part 1: Three months that shook my world.
In retrospect, two relatively odd twists stand out about the inaugural European expedition in 1985.
First, given a lifelong compulsion to write, and considering the ample time I spent waiting for trains, sitting long hours inside them, resting in hostel common areas after a hard day’s touring, or just sitting on park benches watching the procession of life’s rich pageant—in short, with so many spare minutes to harness, I managed to commit little of that first trip to paper.
Only snippets and random observations survive, along with a fairly accurate day-to-day record of my progress. Why? Was it laziness? Probably the issue was the sheer sensory overload being too much for me to handle. When you’re a wide-eyed rube challenged by the simplest of daily tasks, not to mention utterly transfixed by scenes previously only dreamed about, it’s easy to lose the thread.
I know what you’re probably thinking, but it certainly wasn’t because of the volume of alcohol consumed, which brings me to a second observation.
To this day, people don’t believe me when I say that very little drinking took place abroad in 1985, at least compared with my default...
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