“Ever try roasted chestnuts?”
My colleague posed the question as we approached a booth in Munich’s City Center.
Inside the booth was a lady shoveling chestnuts into brown paper bags.
“Maybe,” I replied.
It was like asking me if I’d ever had bison. Odds were probably good that at some point in the previous four-plus decades I’d eaten a buffalo burger. But the experience hadn’t been memorable enough for me to say so definitively.
My mind instead goes to the Bing Crosby song.
Chest-nuts roasting . . . on an open fiiiiire . . .
“Wanna get some?” my colleague asks.
Sure, I say. We’ll do it for Bing.
I walk up to the lady at the chestnut booth. She looks like a solidly built German grandmother, ready to hand you a butter cookie.
I pause for a moment to take in the scene. There’s some kind of oven behind the lady, presumably roasting the chestnuts. Next to her is a large, metal mixing bowl, from which she scoops already-roasted nuts into paper bags. In front of the booth is a sign that says “Kastanien,” which I assume means chestnuts in German.
It’s a crisp, fall day. The mood is light. People seem happy. The vibe is very . . . European.
Then, yelling.
“Klein oder groß!” the suddenly angry grandmother barks at me. “Klein oder groß!”
Instinctively, I take a step back.
What could I possibly have done to offend this lady?
The now-evil grandmother points at the sign hanging at the front of the booth. It has German words on it I don’t understand and some random numbers.
I continue to stand there, still not understanding what the hell is going on.
My colleague comes to the rescue.
“Small or large,” he says. “She’s asking you if you want a small or large bag.”
That’s it? She’s all pissed off, because I didn’t tell her small or large?
I put my right hand in front of me and pinch my index finger into my thumb as I mouth the word small.
She dips her scoop into the metal mixing bowl, empties the contents into a paper bag, and then shoves it toward me.
I meekly hand her my five-euro bill. She gives me a one-euro coin in return and a look that says, “Move it along, son.”
What the hell, lady?
Now, this whole episode doesn’t bother me for reasons you might expect.
Sure, the chestnut lady was rude, and I didn’t appreciate that.
But what gets me more is that she got me all wrong.
See, I am never the guy who approaches a situation like this without a plan.
When I go to a restaurant, I’ve already studied the menu online and know exactly what I want. Maybe I’ll listen to the specials when I get there, but my mind is mostly made up.
And that’s because plenty of other people like the same places I do. They tend to fill up quickly.
So, unless you’re Jay Z, with a platoon of waitresses fawning on you, you’d better have your shit together when someone comes around to take your order. Otherwise, you’ll be left waiting.
I’ve seen it happen too many times.
“Could we get a few more minutes?” my wife asks the waitress, unable to decide between the seabass and filet. She hadn’t done her pre-arrival menu study like I had.
“You understand what you just did, right?” I ask. “Now we won’t see her again for half an hour.”
She gives me the eye-roll.
But, in fact, by the time we see the waitress again, we’re ready to do shots of olive oil straight from the bottle on the table just to get by until the salads arrive.
It wasn’t always this way.
Back when I regularly ordered dry martinis and rare steaks, waiters and waitresses took notice. I was clearly a guy to be taken seriously.
But now, for health reasons, when I order my sparkling water and kale Caesar, I don’t command the same respect.
And that’s unfortunate.
I enjoy commanding waiters’ respect. It’s the mark of a gentleman.
The same goes for German street vendors.
I don’t know when I’ll be in Munich again.
But I’ll be ready for you, chestnut lady.
You better cinch up your lederhosen.
Because I’m going to order the shit out of a small bag of those stupid nuts.
Just to show you how it’s really done.