america visit: restaurant differences

I'm visiting the land of the free for a few weeks and I'm really enjoying the free ice water I get as soon as I sit down at a restaurant not to mention the butter that comes with the bread!

I really find it annoying that I have to pay for bottled water in Europe. I have gotten free tap water at restaurants in Europe but they make you uncomfortable for doing so. And I must admit the bread in Germany is tasty enough to eat with out butter and I'm saving a few calories in the process!

coffee talk

The other day I went to Powwow, a local coffee house, with a friend. It was pretty warm out so I thought a cold drink would be a little more refreshing than the hot coffee which I would normally get. So I ordered an ice coffee. I said, Grüss Gott. Ich hätte gerne einen ice coffee. ( I would like an ice coffee. She said, "ok" and I paid. Then I waited longer than I thought for an ice coffee. And I wondered why the guy in the back was making some sort of ice cream sundae and not my simple ice coffee. Shouldn't my drink come first since I just paid?

In the next minute the guy turned around, smiled at me, said "ice coffee?" and handed the bewildered me the ice cream sundae.

Ok so it wasnt an ice cream sundae. It was a glass of hot coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and whipped cream on top. What I actually ordered was an Eiskaffee. "Eis" sounds exactly like the English word "ice". Eis means ice cream. It is one of the rare German words that actually has less letters than the English counterpart.

If you want an ice coffee, that is a cold coffee with ice cubes in it, go to Powwow and ask for an Iced Kaffee and really pronounce the d. However when I tried asking for an Iced Kaffee in several other coffee houses in the area, they had no idea what I meant...so I suffered not to badly with an icecream coffee. Damn they are really good!