Summer 2005 – Page 10 – Not Your Average Engineer

Chris had a girlfriend named Tina (and as of winter 2010, he still does). She was studying abroad in Italy for a term. Her flight home was out of one of the airports in Germany. She had planned to take the train to Munich where she would stay a day or two and then proceed onward to see a few other places in Germany before leaving. Chris decided he wanted to surprise her by showing up randomly as she checked into the hostel. Because Chris was active-duty Navy at the time (and still is as of 2010), he got free flights anywhere in the world that the US Military has regularly scheduled flights. Thus one evening at the end of July, Chris showed up at my doorstep in Karlsruhe.

It was late in the afternoon and we were hungry. Not to be one to sit around in town, I suggested to Chris that we take his rented VW Passat Wagon, complete with manual transmission which he had learned to drive on the way down from Frankfurt, to France for dinner. The French border is only a few minutes away from where I was staying. Chris had a road map of Germany that the rental company gave him with the car. It had a little bit of France shown on the side. We used that to navigate our way into the French countryside. More or less… Less than more. The map wasn’t very detailed.

After quite some time and as it was getting dark, we pulled into a small French village of maybe 150 people. In the main square there was a sign for a restaurant and pub. We went inside to find about ten old guys sitting around a table and an older woman serving them some beer. We inquired if there was any food to be had in German. Even though they had been speaking German when we walked in, they looked at us funny and didn’t respond. Trying again in French, they responded and suggested we go back up the road a bit to where there was another restaurant. This particular one either didn’t have any food, was closed, or didn’t like our type.

At the other restaurant we were taken inside and shown to a table in a different room than where the other patrons were eating. Before long we had both ordered filet mignon wrapped in bacon. It was absolutely divine. As we were paying the waitress asked us if we were Polish. We looked at each other and said that we were not. Then she asked where we were from. When we said America she was very surprised. Evidently the last Americans through the town had been during World War II.

After dinner it was quite dark. We had some difficulty finding the way back to Karlsruhe but made it home by about midnight.