Julie will be in Paris, France until Dec. 17.

It would seem you can take the girl out of Medill, but you can’t take the Medill out of the girl.

In all honesty, I haven’t really gone looking for adventure. But it seems to find me anyway.

So it was pure coincidence that the weekend I went to Berlin just happened to be when George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl came to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s surprising that I even found out about it, since it was barely publicized at all in the German media, to the extent that neither Kathryn nor I were able to find out the time of the event. So, on our last morning in Berlin, we went to the Friedrichstadt Palast and asked the people who were sure to know: the journalists.

As it turned out, Bush and Gorby were scheduled to arrive in the not too distant future, so we decided to stick around. And, being as I am, I proceeded to take all kinds of pictures and videos of the twenty-somethings in front of the theater who brought signs and flags to welcome the politicos. It wasn’t until Kathryn and I, poised with cameras in hand at the back entrance of the theater, started being asked for information on Bush and Gorbachev’s arrival by the big time journalists with boom mikes and HD video cameras that I realized my Medill was showing.

I was having the time of my life out here in the cold, documenting an historic event. This was how I spent my Halloween day, no less. Standing at the back entrance of the theater, waiting to see George Bush, and listening to some big network journalist discuss his Halloween costume behind me:

“What I have is traditional Hungarian farmer’s clothes.”
“Is that going to be that scary on Halloween night?”
“Well, I could always spice it up with fangs or something.”

While I complain about Medill classes as much as the next girl (301 last winter turned me into a soulless automaton for three months), there was still something really special about being present for the commemoration of one of the world’s most important events. It was far and away one of the best experiences of my life. And since I was definitely not a guest, and I wouldn’t say I was a civilian either, I guess I count myself among the ranks of the journalists.

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