Berlin : A tale of two restaurants

Our first evening in Berlin we looked for an "authentic" German restaurant for dinner. There was a pub not too far from our hotel that seemed to serve German fare, so we gave it a shot.

Now, as I've mentioned before, the service industry in Germany is not one of the country's strongpoints. When we came into the restaurant, we were exiled upstairs to the non-smoking area. When I asked the waitress if they had children's high chairs, she siad "Yes, downstairs". I thought this meant, that they have the high chairs and they would bring one up. However, after no high chair materialized after quite some time, I deducted that she meant that if I wanted a high chair, I was free to go downstairs and get one. Why they would keep the high chairs downstairs in the smoking area is another question.

The waitress seemed rather harried, and we soon realized why. Although it was a rather large restaurant, she appeared to be the only waitress. After finding our seats we waited, and we waited, and we waited. After about 15 minutes with no contact from our waitress, we looked around the area we were sitting. Not one table had food. Every single table was waiting either to be served, or to place their order. We decided this was a bad omen, and decided to seek another establishment.

We went across the street to the Italian restaurant, and were treated to the typical experience in an Italian restaurant - polite waiters, prompty cooked food, etc. So, although we didn't get to fully enjoy the authentic German restaurant experience, in many ways we did.