Crackly Cackles with Confectioner's Kink

To all of you out there who have been loyal, long-time readers of this work of art, namely my blog, namely me... you know that we have to, from time to time, take one of our shows on the road, to drive to a little town somewhere in the Black Forest that is too small to have its own opera house and perform one of our pieces in their municipal theatre. For whatever reason, getting on a bus and driving 2 hours to the nether-regions of German hickdom and putting on a show and then driving back, is stressful. We had two of these this week.

I try to go onto the Schlemmer Atlas website before I go on one of these trips in order to find out what kind of decent restaurants one can find wherever we are going. Schlemmer is Germany’s Michelin Guide, or, for you Americans, an online Zagat. Before I went to Schramberg, I looked up where a nice restaurant was, and even made a little map on Mapquest to find it when we arrived. I asked a lady that I found near the theatre where ”Hauptstrasse” was. She asked what it was I was looking for, and I blanked when I tried to remember the name of the restaurant. I only had the address, and, if she could just point me to the right street, I am sure I could find it.

“Oh. Well, what is the address?”
“Hauptstrasse 11”, I said.
“You mean ‘Schlossberg’. Just go down the hill here and you’ll find it.”

Great, I thought. Cute, little town. Good food. Easy show to sing. Great.

I find the restaurant. I go in and the place is empty. I mean, it seems as though not a living soul had been there in decades. Two wrinkly old ladies in all-black and pearls were sitting at one of the tables, smoking what must have been two cigarettes in each hand judging from the carcinogenic cloud hovering like a ghostly presence above the table—an early morning mist out which stuck two ghastly figures.

The ensuing conversation should have prompted me to turn on my heel and flee, but I didn’t. I don’t know what it is about ‘fight or flight’ but the flight part of it always seems to elude me. What can I say, I am a pussy, especially when confronted by a couple of old rags whose pussies have long-ago grown shut and wrinkled into the “oyster shucker” comment from “Something about Mary.” They seemed to be digruntled by this fact and I am not helping... Even perhaps more frightening would be that they, in their decrepit states, could actually still be gettin’ it on but with each other. You ick me out, imagination. Stope that. Anyway, I was filled with fear from their black bleeding auras, convinced somehow that if I didn’t eat their food and like it, I might become a part of tomorrow’s fare.

The ensuing repartée went something like this:

“Guten Tag. Sind Sie offen?”
“Hätte nicht wir würden geschlossen.”
“Uh...ok.” I start to leave, only realizing that this was a joke. In fact, as it turns out, it is the perfect German joke, the one designed to make whomever has just had the effrontery to speak to you turn instantly to dust. Turning back, I then say,
“Ah, das war ein Witz. Entschuldigung, ich brauche manchmal ein bißchen Zeit die zu verstehen.” And then promptly found myself a table in the back where the glares and cancer of my “hostesses” could affect me the least.

A quick translation, and, hopefully a clarification, as well, as to why I needed a moment: “Good morning. Are you open?”
“If we weren’t open, we would be closed.”

Since “geschlossen” or “closed” means closed both in the sense of “not open for business” and “locked”, she was telling me that, of course they were open, otherwise they would have locked the door. This kind of statement has the effect of both saying “of course we are open, stupid. When you turned the door handle, and pushed you found yourself inside, didn’t you?” and, more subtly, of course, “If we had seen you coming, we would have closed up shop and pretended no one was home.” Perhaps, ok, very perhaps, I may have overblown the second innuendo about the same time that I was dismissing the images of spiders crawling up and down the arms of the pale-white Hexes and the baby’s arm that one of them seemed to be devouring à la “Nightmare Before Christmas”. I think an escape with an obligatory “eek” might have been in ordnung.

I pulled myself together in a dark corner. The food was actually not bad. It did sit heavily in my stomach, though, because, as I left the restaurant, I walked out of the door to look on what seemed a familiar image. There, across the street stood the hotel I had seen earlier on the web. Huh? God-dammit. I went to the wrong, fucking restaurant. I kicked myself all the way back to the theatre.

Note to self, write down the NAME of the restaurant when completing a web search for a nice restaurant next time. Who knows what ill-advised patrons lips or belly button may be gurgling through my digestive tract right now.