At Work on European Travel Stories

After spending three weeks reviewing and editing photos taken during my month long trip in Europe, and another three weeks trying to die from the Death by a Thousand Coughs, I'm finally able to focus on stories based on my six country, ten stop trip.  Here are draft ledes for three of those stories:

• “You must sip the vin nouveau, slowly.  It is very potent,” said Auntie Marie.  Drink too much of it, and tomorrow morning you will wake up feeling like coal miners in the Ruhr are drilling mine shafts into your skull.  It will indeed be a very, very unpleasant experience.”  (Touring the Alsatian wine growing area along the Rhine River in Eastern France).
• They stood there in their wet suits, surfboards cradled under their arms, watching and waiting.  Watching the water, spin and boil.  Waiting for just the right wave to ride.  And then, when the white water curled just right, they’d hit the wave, one by one, and ride until they wiped out, disappearing under the waves rushing by.  Coming from California, and having vacationed in Hawaii, this scene shouldn’t have struck me as all that unusual.  But here in Munich, at least a few hundred miles from any ocean or sea, it was downright bizarre.  (Sunday in the park in Munich).
• “I’m know I am ugly, but I glow at night” read the sign on the marquee of the Michelberger Hotel located near the end of the U-Bahn #1 and just a block from the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall.  Tucked in between the hole-in-the-wall Kebab and Asian food cafes was the Exotixx (presumably spelled with a double “x to indicate the strength of the porn videos and “adult” books offered for sale).  I was almost bowled over by bicyclists (some talking on cell phones) whizzing downhill toward the wall while I stupidly stood right in the middle of the bike lane shooting photos of the hotel.  But I lived to tell about it, and see what has become of that famous line dividing the Free World from the Communist one.  (Sightseeing in East  Berlin).