Small thing, but I don't know how I'm going to top the surreality of waking up one morning on a trip to Austria with my high school orchestra to hear the TV playing a German-language kids show doing a puppet version of Monty Python's dead parrot sketch. "Das vogel ist tot" indeed. Mostly I was surprised that I was able to recognize it given my total lack of German language skills beyond counting to 5 and saying "I'm sorry, I'm a foreigner and don't speak German" because sometimes the American stereotypes are absolutely true.

Overall I actually had a lot of fun on that trip, and got to be absolutely insufferable about having been to Europe when I got back. See again, American stereotypes.