Finding Food in Wuppertal (Carol)

Last night we drove to Wuppertal, the town in Germany where Eric’s dad was born and lived until he came to the states at age nine. Since we were blessed to have a navigation system, we were quickly able to find the street where Gunther lived, a steep strasse with beautiful old buildings curving around the bend. After enjoying the moment, we decided to enjoy some dinner in Wuppertal. A restaurant was not so quickly found, however! We drove through downtown, down by the river and saw the Schwebebahn (we rode that today—it’s like an elevated tram that hangs under its one track which is suspended over the river; it swings sideways when it goes around curves!) We couldn’t find any of the cute restaurants that were so plentiful in other cities.

Finally, we found a spot where we thought we could walk to a café. As Eric parallel parked, we noticed two guys sitting on a nearby bench laughing at us. (I think the laughing was due more to the beer they were drinking than Eric’s parking—everyone parks on the sidewalks over here!) As we got out of the car, they came over to us and started up a conversation, all in German, of course. When Eric said, “We don’t speak much German, English” the reply was “Ohh! 4 to 1!” (The score of the recent Germany v. England world cup game) When I tried to clear up the misconception, “No, we’re not English, we’re American,” the second guy replied, “Oh, sorry for you!” (He meant sorry, the U. S. is now out of the World Cup since we lost to Ghana.) Then the first guy proceeded to tell us in very broken English all the places he’d been in the U. S.--Las Vegas, L. A., the Grand Canyon (“BIG”) and Bryce Canyon (“not so big”). The smell and their slurred speech made it pretty clear that their current bottles of beer had not been their firsts. When they asked us what we were doing here, Eric told them about his dad and said we were looking for a place to eat.

Guy #1 to Eric: Oh, no! You don’t want to eat here! We live here. Ghetto! Walk around the corner and go about ten minutes to city center.

Guy #2 to Carol: You have navigation system? Drive car to Landhaus Dreyer! Food is (puts fingers to lips and pulls them away with a smacking sound). You go there.

Guy #1 to Guy #2: They can walk! Only 10 minutes!

Guy #2 to Guy #1: No! They drive!

As the two Germans began to argue over where we should eat, I decided that wherever we ate, we weren’t leaving our car there with two drunk guys who knew we had a nav system in our rental car. By now Kristen had our map out and they were both trying to show us where to go to find a nice dinner. Guy #2 scrawled out a street name on the back of the map and I spelled out the restaurant name I thought he had said. He nodded and grinned. We hopped in our car and Eric shook their hands and thanked them for being so friendly. “No,” laughed guy #1. “Not so friendly, just drunk!”

We drove away, a bit relieved, and still hungry. In the front seat, Kristen was clicking away at the GPS which shortly responded with, “Calculating route.” “Hey!” she cried, “The place is legit!” “What place?” we asked. “Landhaus Dreyer, the restaurant those guys told us about! It actually shows up on the GPS. Let’s go there!”

Now would you go to a place recommended by two inebriated strangers who mostly spoke a language you didn’t understand in a non-tourist city where you’d never been before at 9:00 at night?

Well, you know us. As we followed the British-sounding directions we laughed to think about what sort of place this might be if we ever did find it. To our surprise, about eight minutes later, we pulled up in front of a very nice German restaurant where we were ushered to an outdoor table under trees glowing with lights and paper lanterns. It was managed by a mother and her twenty-something daughter, our waitress, who switched from German to flawless English when she met us. It turns out she was studying Anglo-Germanic linguistics and had done an “exchange” year in Minnesota (“a one-horse town with five churches!”). We had a delicious dinner with gracious hosts at a great place! God is ALWAYS watching over us!