the summer after i graduated from syracuse, my friend carrie and i backpacked across western europe for two months. we toured all of the usual cities (london, paris, vienna, rome, barcelona, etc.), staying at youth hostels and budgeting our spending money by eating fruit, bread and cheese most days. we never had a problem finding fresh fruit stands in france, spain and italy. but that all changed when we went to germany.
we walked around but couldn’t find a farmer’s market anywhere. our only option was eating out, which was frustrating since neither of us ate pork for religious reasons and everything on the menus was schnitzel this or weiner that. on our first afternoon in berlin, we entered a small cafe and ordered schinken, thinking it was the german word for chicken—stupid, i know, but since both english and german have the same linguistic root how far off could we be? when we received our dish, we were surprised to see ham. we sheepishly told the proprietor that we couldn’t eat what he had placed in front of us and he didn’t castigate us since he was bosnian and didn’t eat pork himself. unfortunately, he was closing the kitchen so we couldn’t order anything else.
despairing of ever curbing our hunger, we entered a traditional german restaurant that had a large menu and was inexpensive. we sat down and noticed we were the only non-germans in the room. our waitress approached in traditional bavarian garb. she looked as if her name was probably brunhilda or gretyl, so stereotypical was her appearance—think big blond sausage ringlets atop her head and bountiful breasts conveniently displayed in a tight corset. carrie and i examined the menu but saw a lot of the dreaded schnitzel. the buxom brunhilda didn’t understand a word of english so we resorted to charades to get our message across. i started clucking like a chicken—and looking like an ass. the diners near us probably thought we were circus freaks. i guess brunhilda was a true blonde or wasn’t impressed by my chicken impersonation because she waved her hand around as if it was a fish swimming in the sea. “no, no! chicken!” we cried. “schinken,” she asked? “no, not schinken, chicken!” by that time, more diners were enjoying the “stupid americans in europe” comedy show. the light bulb must have finally gone off in brunhilda’s head because she paused, smiled, grabbed one her 44 FF breasts and blushed to the roots of her hair. the diners applauded.
we ate chicken that night but i still don’t know the german word for it…
