The militant waitress slammed our plates on the table. We girls were faced with giant mountains of salad, the husband with a tray of brown sauce and two unappetizing roulades. This was followed by a large bowl of broccoli and a even larger bowl of potatoes. We easily had enough food at the table for six. Underneath my mountain of salad were any number of other mixed salads, all of them punctuated with meat.
Our unit soldiered away as best we could, but we could not complete the mission of eating all the food in front of us. We are not sure if we were purposely denied our share of the canned fruit cocktail dessert for not finishing our meals. “It was fine,” we all said, “just a little too much food.” The militant waitress looked exasperated. “It is always so,” she said, storming off to the kitchen.
Having nothing to do, we went to bed. The rooms, though questionably decorated, were very clean but the blankets were too short. Take note, readers; I am just over five feet tall. And I am telling you my blankets were too short. I thought I had slept okay, but the scent of boiled meat must have been too much for my sleeping psyche as I woke up feeling queasy and a ill.
Reluctantly, we went down to tackle breakfast. The militant waitress was ordering around a blotchy faced indentured servant, who at one point, came out of the ladies room looking as though she’d been crying. “She’s got the wrong end of Frau Mueller this morning,” husband speculated. “Let’s rescue her!” I suggested, imagining smuggling her off to freedom, perhaps to the cozy bakery where we’d stopped on the way to our Westerwald gulag. Our companion was more circumspect. “She must find her own freedom ... ” she suggested. “Plus, once we’ve got her, what are we supposed to DO with her?”
Meanwhile, to the husband’s left, sat a taxidermied duck, looking annoyed. The room was full of dead animals - a fox, a deer, the pelts of several wild boar, a badger, even a squirrell. Perhaps Herr Mueller was a hobby taxidermist. The duck frowned, I reached over to turn him away from us as the militant waitress marched in. “Be careful!” whispered the husband. “Frau Mueller will find out!”
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