Kafka in Paris

In the autumn of 1910, Franz Kafka travelled to Paris with the brothers Max and Otto Brod. The young men had been enthusiastically studying travel guidebooks and literature and had brushed up on their French. However, Kafka felt unwell because of furunculosis right from their departure and had to break off the trip after a few rather exhausting days and seeing the most important sights. How this contrasted with Kafka's experience the following year of five days on the Seine with Max Brod when fully fit! Gustav Flaubert and Napoleon Bonaparte, the Louvre and Versailles, the Invalides and the Carnavalet Museum, the metro, the cinema, and any number of chic Frenchwomen. So it did him good to spend a subsequent week in the Erlenbach Sanatorium near Zurich to recover from the exertion. 

Never in my life have I been as consistently cheerful as I was in the weeks travelling with Kafka. … It was a great joy to live close to Kafka. 

Max Brod, Travel Diaries

Paris is all lines: the tall, thin chimneys growing out of low chimneys (with all the ones like little flowerpots), the utterly silent gas candelabra, the horizontal lines of the venetian blinds, which cast dirty lined shadows on the walls of the suburbs, the thin slats on the roofs we saw on the Rue Tivoli, the dashed glass roof of the Grand Palais des Arts, the scattered, divided windows of the offices, the bars on the balconies, the Eiffel Tower, which is made up of lines, the dashed effect of the side and middle bars of the balcony doors opposite our window, the legs of the outdoor chairs and the café tables are lines, the gold-tipped railings of the public gardens. 

Franz Kafka, Travel Diaries