Salami adventures

Two friends of mine, following their trip to the Netherlands, invited me over for wine, cheese and salami. Tonight, I learned that gouda from Holland is better than gouda from here. I'm also told Heineken is impressively superior over there too and is the second most-transported liquid following crude oil. That sounds suspicious to me, but it's late and I won't bother researching it.

But this does afford me the occasion to tell a story.

In 2000, I visited Prague and decided to bring my dad a salami. He, like me, is a devotee of encased meats. I had a special difficulty adjusting to Czech and spent 10 days struggling to say "thank you." So to buy a salami, I elected to walk into a salami store and look up the word "best" in my Czech-English dictionary. They seemed to understand and pointed at a salami hanging behind the counter. I bought two. One for me and one for my dad.

On the way to my return flight in Frankfurt, I stayed at an inn in Eisingen, Germany. Upon checking in, I saw the previous occupant left three salamis in the fridge. One was a hard salami, like I'd bought my dad; the other two were soft and gelatinous. I wasn't a fan of those and suspected my dad wasn't either. While I knew someone who'd be willing to take a hard and soft salami, I doubted he wanted three.

That left me with an extra salami and no one to give it to.

I'd stayed at this inn on the way into Prague and the innkeeper had been very kind, humoring my attempt at conversation in French, since I knew no German. So I elected to give it to him.

I went to the front desk and offered it to him. He looked at it. Puzzled over it. Then gestured as if to say, "for me?" I returned a gesture that indicated, "yes, for you."

He puzzled over it some more, then took it through the doorway behind the front desk, into what appeared to be a kitchen, where someone who appeared to be a cook popped up. The two of them conversed in German, so I don't know what transpired. But it appeared the innkeeper gestured toward me and told the cook something like, "this young American fellow has just given me a salami."

More conversation followed. Although I don't know what was said, I like to think the chef wondered whether this was an American custom, to give an innkeeper a salami. Perhaps it means I appreciated his hospitality. But does it have to be a salami, they wonder, or would any foodstuff do?

In any case, the innkeeper elected to accept my gift, which he acknowledged by returning to the front desk where he bemusedly said, "Thank you."

Sometimes I wonder whether either of them even liked salami, and, if neither of them did, whether they accepted the gift so as not to offend me.