Here it is, it’s Saturday. After several weeks of travelling around and having a house guest when I was home, I finally have a day off (I got roped into working on Sunday) to myself. Thing is that as usual, this social butterfly made mention that I was off on Saturday and within about 3 hours, my Saturday day off calendar was full.
I LOVE My friends, and I Love the fact that I rarely have to actively seek something to do with my time. There’s always someone with something going on that I can join – or if I mention in passing that I want to do such & such, it’s quickly – that’s awesome – lets do it – and done.
Anyhow, part of the plan was that after not having seen my dear Norseman, Scott, (he’s such a sweetie!) in quite a while, we’d meet up at Potsdamer Platz and go to lunch. From there, who knows – maybe wander the city if the weather was nice, or maybe pop in for a movie if it wasn’t bad.
I get to Potsdamer Platz way late (my train line is under construction.. don’t get me started than to say that a 45 minute trip is taking 2 HOURS – 5 trains and a bus between stations) which means around 2PM instead of the 1PM we were rather expecting. Anyhow, after meeting at the internet cafe (seriously a great way to kill time while waiting on someone), we headed up the street to the cancun mexican restaurant for lunch.
Now, I have to say that the Cancun Mexican Restaurant is what Germany thinks that mexican food should be like. It is, in no way, shape, or form anything like what we in the US know as mexican food -heck, not even what we would call southwestern food. They do, however, make a mean margarita, and delicious strawberry dacqueris.
After looking over the menu, the waiter comes, and asks us what we want to drink. Scott and I both agreed that we’d order a caraffe (1.5 liters or about 8 oz size glass of daquiri for for each) of strawberry daquiris to share. Only, the waiter didn’t understand what we wanted. I pointed to it on the GERMAN menu. He still didn’t get it. So, I say “not the small one -the big one” in German. He still doesn’t understand. I say a “caraffe” you know – the 1.5 liter of daquris. He shakes his head “no”. So then, Scott tries in English. “A pitcher?” making a sort of large size hand shape indicating the caraffe. The waiter replies – Ohhh .. Yaah.. Pitcher of bier? Dark, light, white? No, we both reply – of daquiris.. strawberry daquiris the large size of Daquiris. “Ok” says the waiter, “I must check with the bartender.”
We thought he got that we wanted the caraffe … because he shook his head yes. Only, when he came back, he brought a literal BEER PITCHER of daquiris. A BEER pitcher – and two glasses. This amounts to about 3.5 liters of daquiris for two of us. Scott and I looked at each other – we had a literal bucket of daquiris…. and two glasses. Neither of us had eaten breakfast, and well… we couldn’t really send it back and say it was TOO MUCH, now could we? After all, we had asked for a PITCHER … and this was clearly something lost in translation….
Fast forward by 35 minutes (and to be fair, a couple calls to folks to see if they’d like to join us but no one did….) ….2/3 of the pitcher is gone, and our food has arrived. We’re starting to feel a little buzz, and are thankful for the food. Only, it apparently wasn’t enough food – because as we ate – the more we were feeling the alcohol… (hot food weighing the slushie daquiris into melty goodness that floods through the system faster)…
and since we had nothing else to drink, we of course, finished off the pitcher of daquiris.
In the end, we were a bit “slushy” by the time 3PM rolled around. Yeah, no kidding. To the point where we started walking toward the flea market on the other side of the tiergarten park and halfway through, I decided it was a nice sunny day.. and I didn’t feel so good. Scott.. “we’re finding a bench to sit down on right?” Me: “Nope.. not so much…. Ahh.. look, a nice patch of grass…. I’m going to sit (correction: lay) right here until I feel better. DOH! SUNSHINE in MY EYES. Oh well.. sunshine. Nice.. sunshine good… Oh well…”
Eventually, I did feel better, and we got up and went and found a bench.. across from a statue of a guy riding a horse. Marcellus called – and we told him what had happened. Funny thing is that when he asked where we were, my only answer was “In Tiergarten park, somewhere, across from a statue of a guy on a horse”.. He replied with “Um.. yeah, ok that’s a little vague. You’re in Europe, across from a statue of a guy on a horse… Naahh, doesn’t exist.” (LOL if you know Europe, there’s about a million of these things… almost everywhere you turn….) But.. for the record, here’s the guy on the horse statue:
And a picture of us sitting on the bench… with me feeling a little better…
From there, we started walking toward the flea market, only.. we got side tracked (SHINY) by a burger king – where we paused for Scott to get ice cream and me to get french fries….
Feeling a bit more sober, we then went off to John’s house to watch battlestar gallactica, the latest episode of lost and have some pizza. Later, we went to a movie – and caught a few pictures of the set up for the premier night of the movie “speed racer”.
Amazingly, I did have my camera though all of this – and I only made one drunk dial (sorry T for bugging you, but I hope the hiccups and giggles in the middle of the message made you laugh) because I owed it to T. All in all, I suppose the philosophy of “this will make a good story for the blog”, and “Bottoms up – it’s 5 O’clock somewhere” from me – and “You know it’s alcohol abuse if we don’t finish this pitcher” from Scott… worked out in the end.
Oh – and the total cost for that big ass pitcher of Daquiris? 20 Euro. That’s it. Less than the cost of the movie we saw later. Go figure!
