393 - My First Trip to Europe X

For those asking, Mom’s doing a bit better.. she’s hoping to get out of the hospital and back to a rehab place in a few days.

So, Bernd arrived and had a beer with me. When I told him the story about the bartender and my key, he laughed, explained to her that I didn’t have any marks yet and to make sure she puts my beers on my room tab. She smiled, smiled at me apologetically and we continued to chat.

I started to think, most people I’ve met already in Germany spoke very good English, why not this barmaid? Bernd explained that most German people were required to take 8 years of English in school, but some took other languages. He had asked her, and she had just began taking English classes.

We left to head to the hotel where all the other company employees were staying for a big dinner for about a dozen of us. We had a wonderful meal, and somewhere in the middle, one of the other employees (Rich) showed me that this hotel had a bowling alley. A one lane, bowling alley. Where you had to set up your own pins. Candlepins. *LOL*

After dinner, the waitress came around and asked me “Do you want Slivovitz? I asked Rich who was sitting next to me, and he said “Oh absolutely…” so I said yes without knowing what I said yes to.

Just about everyone had said yes, and in a few minutes the waitress delivered a tall, thin shot glass with a clear liquid in it. I decided to sip carefully, as you never know… and it was quite delicious as it’s a fermented plum brandy. All in all, it was a great dinner.

The next day, (Friday) I awoke, showered and changed and headed down to breakfast. I was kind of stunned to see breakfast as being: hard rolls, cheese and lunch meat. No eggs, no pancakes, no donuts. I asked Charles, and he said this was a typical German breakfast. I ended up with a hard roll and butter and vowed to fix this at some point.

We worked all day and Rich and I figured out that there was a long weekend coming up as May 1 was a holiday there, so we decided we were going to take a company car, and explore for the weekend. (more on that Monday)

For dinner, Rich and I took a company car and went to a place I saw not far from my hotel named “Colorado Steakhouse”, looking for a old fashioned home cooked steak. Entering the restaurant, I had to laugh as this was a far from any kind of a “Colorado Steakhouse” as you could imagine. It was actually a Romanian restaurant. It didn’t matter much as we were quite hungry. The waitress happened to be the wife of the owner, and she sat down to talk to us for a few. I asked her “Why the Colorado Steakhouse?”, and she explained that when her husband and she opened the restaurant, they were looking for a name, saw a map with Colorado on it and chose that name!
After dinner, she asked “Do you want Slivovitz?”. Feeling like a pro now, I said “Absolutely!”, but when she delivered it, it had a yellow tint to it. I asked her about it and she explained “we make our own Slivovitz here, and we add a bit of honey to it to make it more smooth”. It was incredible, and we thanked her, left a generous tip and left.

Saturday morning, Rich picked me up and we headed to…. Amsterdam!

Have a great weekend…!