When in Rome: Pull Up a Chair

On our "date day" this Saturday, we had a truly German experience while at a restaurant.  Some complete strangers sat at our table with us.  We were only sitting down for a beer and a quick snack of fries and a pretzel before heading off to walk around and shop.  When you go into a restaurant in Germany, there is hardly ever a hostess, so you just seat yourself anywhere you want.  We found a free table in the back but I felt a little bad because it had five seats and the place seemed kind of busy.

As we sat down and put our coats in the chairs next to us I thought to myself, "I wonder if we'll end up sharing a table today."  See, I had read before moving to Germany that the locals will simply ask if the empty seat(s) at your table are free and just sit right down with you!  And you can feel free to do the same if you can't find a free table... I don't know if I'd ever have the guts, though.

Sure enough, as we were almost done with our snack, a big group of people came in.  I think there was a soccer game that day, so everyone was dressed in the Ktown team's colors (red/white/black... and hot pink hats...?  Not sure what that's about).  After a few minutes of standing around at the corner tables with their beers, a gentleman came up and asked if the seats at our table were free.  (In German, but we understood the general idea of what he was asking.) 

So we shared a table with complete strangers for the rest of our meal!  It was so funny!  I do regret that we didn't find out if they spoke English... we could probably have had a fun little chat with them.  But we were trying to hurry up so we could let more people sit down.  And we were a little weirded out anyways :o)  Or, at least I was!  It was just funny 'cause it's so different than in the States... there's no way someone would ask to share a table with strangers!  But it was totally no big deal.

The Germans... so practical!  "Hey, there's three free seats at your table, mind if we join in?"  Well sure, why not?

The rest of our date was fantastic.  I think we're really onto something with the whole going out during the day thing here.  I mean, it's more work for our sitter to watch the girls while they're awake the whole time... but it's much more of a break for us to get out for lunch.  By the time we got back home with them it was time to feed them dinner and put them to bed!  And then we still had the whole rest of the night for a marathon tv session ;o)  It was perfect!

Here's some of my fantastic cell phone photography:

I think I'm stealing this idea someday... it's just a metal file cabinet with flags painted on it.  I was like "psssht I could do that... couldn't I?"  Jesse seems to think so ;o)  I was thinking it'd be fun to do some sort of decor with paintings of the flags of all the countries we visit while we're over here!  

I thought these frames were really neat... and totally DIY-possible!  The one in the background has the buttons to a keyboard!  How creative!

Looking down from the top floor of the three story bookstore we found!  It was like Barnes and Noble on steroids... and in German ;o)  I'm sure they have an English section, we just didn't ask.  But it was so wonderful and fun... tons of little nooks to sit and read.  Definitely worth revisiting and browsing more thoroughly!

We found a section in a random store with music and movies and we thought it was funny that they wrote the title of Up in German, but the titles of all the other Pixar movies were in English. 

The dinner that almost killed me.  I thought it was going to be a small cheese platter... but apparently it was meant for sharing.  With six people ;o)  And Jesse was hardly any help cause he had his own meal to eat!  Don't worry, though... I put forth a valiant effort and the rest was gone by the end of Sunday because the girls love cheese.  I also put some of the blue cheese on our burgers Sunday night.  Mmmmm.

All in all a wonderful date day.  And we didn't even argue about anything... which made it downright romantic! ;o) 

So the moral of the story is: share your empty seats and go out during the day. 

The end.