I was reminded of this when my viewing of 'The Tale of Despereux' was interrupted by the eastern European gentleman sitting next to me indicating to the flight attendant that he hadn't been brought the wine he had asked for.
'I call you "red wine!"' he said. The German flight attendant was having none of it.
'You nevah forget somesing?!' he responded, leaning towards the man across me, causing me to tilt my head to keep track of Despereux.
The eastern European man tried to protest, but didn't have enough English to keep up.
'OK, I vill get you a red wine, sir. Anysing else? Champaign from fust clahss? No? OK. And zat is no way to speak to a servuh, suh.' he said, waving his finger like Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno saying 'Ich don't think so' and went to fetch the wine.
Later, as I was boarding the plane in Frankfurt to Hyderabad, I had a glimpse of the transportation chaos I was to later experience in India when my fellow passengers juggled children and luggage, shoving and changing seats. The efficient German flight attendants strode, exasperated, from seat to seat trying to calm the storm .
Seeking some vestige of Teutonic sanity, they always spoke to Carrie and me in German rather than the English they used on the Indian nationals. Seeing the desperation in their eyes, I wanted to help. But when I heard something like 'vegetarian' in their question, and guessed they were asking my meal preference, the best I could do was to answer:
'Er. Nein. The chicken...bitte.'
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