Many many years ago, in February 1986, not long after we’d arrived in West Berlin, Carole and I went out to eat at The Waldhaus, a Serbo-Croat restaurant around the corner from our married quarter.
I’d tried to learn German in Cyprus the six months before we left, it hadn’t really been that successful, but I knew a few words and phrases, enough to be polite. I managed to order the starter, main dish and drinks from the German language menu perfectly fine (they had a menu in English for us ignorant Brits and in our 4 years I never took it), with just a small amount of help from Carole who had learnt German in school.
Then came the sweet. I wanted a simple mixed ice cream. My pronunciation of “Gemischtes Eis bitté” was word perfect and the waiter replied with something I didn’t understand and I replied “ja” and he said something else, and I replied “ja” and this was repeated for a couple of minutes. 5 or so minutes later, the largest sweet I had ever seen arrived at our table, almost a foot tall, a mixture of various flavoured ice cream, cream, various mixed fresh fruit, sauces (many of them booze based) sprinkles, nuts, sweets (candy) etc. There were also two very large glasses of schnapps (which I had to drink as Carole was pregnant with our first child). The restaurant, appreciating my attempts to speak the language, kindly didn’t bill me for the pudding.
Today, I simply wanted a slice of millionaire shortbread - I hadn’t realised it was coming in a sundae until this arrived ………..
Don't feel bad- today I ordered a chocolate milk shake in English at an English speaking fast food joint and was served a vanilla one. Slightly disappointed about tasting vanilla when I wanted chocolate, but I didn't turn the car around and drank it anyway. Thankfully, it was the right size- small! Great story!
You’ll have to start taking Conner and asking for two spoons. Looks good, but not at all what I would think of as any kind of shortbread. Like the portrait and the story.
