A Night Out!

Okay, so our last night out to dinner without the kids was… I really don’t remember, but I know it was before Oliver was born! So Chris got home from school kind of late, and by then Elora was asleep and Chris’ mom told us to go out alone. Wow! What a treat! We tried out the Greek Restaurant down the street from our apartment, which luckily had menus translated from Greek into… German! So I understood about a quarter of the menu instead of none of the menu. Nice! After noticing that they had friend zucchini as appetizers we got that, but there was another fried item listed. When we asked the waiter he said, “Aubergene”. ?!? then he walked to the kitchen and held up – Eggplant! I thought Aubergene was just a color that no one was sure exactly what it looked like, but apparently it is a vegetable.
The zucchini was totally awesome, very different from anything I have had in the States, and it came with a cucumber yogurt dip, which was incredibly tasty.
We ordered a plate that we deduced had a large variety of meats on it, and Chris insisted we take a picture, because it was really good. There was lamb chops, mutton, pork cutlets, chicken, lamb kabobs, and pork kabobs.
I wanted a picture of us at dinner, and Chris felt we should have the food in the picture, so he opted to cut off the tops of our heads to make sure out plates were featured in this self portrait. He said how many pictures do people need to see of us anyhow?

After we ate, we could not figure out how to ask for the check. We looked it up in my dictionary, and chose to use the word, Rechnung, which is a bill or invoice. The waiter knew what we meant, but we could tell it was not the correct word, so when he came back we asked him what we should say… “Wie sagt Mann…” I guess he appreciated our attempts to speak to him in German and to learn the correct thing to say, because after explaining we should ask simply for the bill or ask to pay “zahlen” he offered us free drinks. (Meanwhile, I was wondering what in the world Chris and the waiter were talking about, Chris understands German way better than I do). After Chris told the waiter we didn’t want drinks, the waiter left and Chris explained. I felt bad because I did not want the waiter to think we were just being rude in refusing his generousity… So when he returned Chris explained that we don’t drink alcohol, and a lengthy conversation of where we are from, where we are staying, how the dollar is doing compared to the Euro (when we explained how many dollars we were paying for dinner, the waiter said, “Too much!” to which we replied, “Yes, too much, but it’s okay.”) and the waiter told us what days and times the restaurant is open, etc. He was very friendly. I am glad to know that if we just try our best to speak German then people are pretty understanding… Since we made a friend, we think we’ll go back to this restaurant. The food was good, and it was very educational…