You should never learn from your mistakes, W. and I agree. Our trips are always a fiasco. It's always a matter of turning up at the wrong venue, indeed sometimes the wrong city at the wrong time, indeed sometimes the wrong date. We arrive either much too early, sometimes whole days early, or too late – sometimes days too late, and the venue is deserted, no one's there. Or we arrive in the wrong place, having forgotten the address – or rather, having forgotten and then misremembered the address, as well as the time of arrival.
If it is a trip abroad, then it is almost always a matter of flying in to the wrong airport in the wrong part of the country, and having to take a lengthy train journey, or even of arranging another connecting flight at great expense. Or we leave it too late, when there are no hotels to be booked, and we have to book one in a neighboring city, or even a neighboring country.
For how long were we stranded in Freiburg, for example? For how many days, after it all ended, did we wander the streets? 10 days in the Novohotel! 10 days, with the same oppressive breakfast! 10 days, in the hotel bar! 10 days of desperation! It was all my fault that time, W. says, which is not to say it is not his fault at other times. But the Novohotel! In Freiburg! Of all places!
It nearly broke us. It took a great deal of effort simply to get through the day. We stuck to a routine; we decided only routine could save us. First breakfast – an indifferent, stolid, Freiburg breakfast – then out to one square or another for orange pekoe tea. First breakfast, always terrible, particularly the salmon I inevitably overdosed on, and then to the square for a cup of excellent tea. And of course the coffee's terrible in Freiburg. W. had to fight against vomiting his coffee every morning at breakfast. Nearly vomiting! Every morning! Over his plate of cold meats and German rolls!
The orange pekoe tea was an oasis in our day, though, we agree. An oasis at eleven o'clock, before the city got really hot. After that, it was quite impossible. What were we to do? Climb the observation tower again? Visit the cathedral? Inevitably, we wandered up and down the streets, wondering what had happened to us. Dazed, passing the time until dinner, there we were in the streets practically weeping.
How did we manage? We barely managed. Cocktails were a great help, we agree. Caiperenias, for one thing. Pina coladas, for another. My God! But in the end, there was only endless horror, only the endless turning over of days, only the inevitable breakfast and the inevitable orange pekoe tea in the square which allowed us to recover from breakfast. But we never learn from our mistakes, do we? We never begin to learn. We're incapable of it.
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