Saturday, April 18, 2009

Jason asks a stupid question

We walked from Jason's office to Germany yesterday. (Two days ago, we walked from there to France. We are truly international travelers!) It was a bit chilly and we were all starving and our destination was farther than we had originally thought, so when we got to the mall, we were crabby.

We headed straight for the food court, at which point Jason announces he needs to go to the bathroom and leaves me with the two children and a few Euros to procure dinner. Sarah spots a McDonalds.

I get to the counter and say in my best German, "Ein Happy Meal mit cheeseburger." The man behind the counter says, "With fries and a coke?" Shockingly, he has figured out that I am English speaking. Sarah gets her happy meal (fries and Sprite and mayonnaise on the side).

Then Jason reappears and takes the children to a table while I go order our food. There was a Greek or perhaps Turkish restaurant that was serving pita bread with meat and yogurt sauce and such.

Again, I look at the picture menu (thankfully!) above the workers' heads and order in my best German. The man looks at me blankly. Since he's probably Greek (or Turkish, hard to tell), he may easily identify me as English speaking but he does not speak English. He points. I say, "yes." He points again. I'm confused. He puts together an order. He asks a question. I say, "Ja!" No idea what he asked, but he starts putting things on my sandwich, so I guess he was asking if I wanted everything on it.

He makes two things up, which somewhat resemble what I thought I ordered, but had some definite differences. Then he puts it into a bag and hands it to me. I take it to the cashier who asks, I presume, what I had in the bag. Oh dear. I have food. I try to tell her what I'd ordered (which may or may not have any relation to what is actually in the bag). She asks another question. I shrug. She rings me up for some amount and I hand her money and she hands me change and I leave.

I make it to the table and Jason, noticing the bag, says, "Why did you get it to go?"

"Because," I said, "I don't speak German."

For the wrong order, it was very delicious.

2 comments:

  1. How funny that the guy totally spoke English back to your attempt at speaking German...

    Poor girl!

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  2. Ha ha ha ha! Great story. :) Oddly, I'm imagining all of this happening in what looks like the Marketplace Mall food court.

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