Childsmenu

1 pizzetta

&

1 horn of ice cream

&

1 drink

(coca-cola, orangina or limonade)

pizzetta can be replaced by hamburger or pastes

Feel like feeding your kid paste? At a restaurant? In a foreign country where you don’t speak the language? I didn’t think so. And when I saw this sign posted in one of our local restaurants I felt compelled to fix it—after I picked myself up off the sidewalk where I fell down laughing, of course.

I know the owners. They come in and out of the tourist office a lot when I’m there. I’ve eaten in their restaurant on several occasions. It’s where I had my first French Movie Star sighting. While I’m far from a regular, I’m hardly an unknown.

So you can imagine how shocked I felt when, after gently explaining to the wife of the husband-and-wife team that the sign was tad incorrect, I was basically told to go fuck myself. Not only was my English translation not needed, she insisted the sign was in Dutch, and that, in any case, her husband had translated it On Line. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh Kaaaaay.

So I walked meekly back to the tourism office, ego shattered and all sense of well being lost, figuring that I should probably never ever again offer to do something nice for my fellow man, or woman in this case, handed our Super Tourism Office Girl the post-it note with my correction scribbled on it, explained how horrible people are, and left town.

When I picked the kids up tonight I noticed the sign had been changed.

Then I ran into STOG who gave me the scoop. See, Husband came by the office about fifteen minutes after I left looking for me. She gave him the translation, explaining that offering a variety of glue on his children’s menu would probably not do much to bring in English-speaking clientele, and how I was just trying to help out—“Elle est gentille comme ça, vous savez.”

He got his free translation, and instead of an apology, I got a menu to correct.

I’m thinking, maybe offering glue to the Anglos might just be good for them after all…