Language Barrier

Mike Devine and I sat in a bar in Copenhagen one night, enjoying a few bottles of Tuborg and our hard earned liberty. We sat and drank and smoked and shot the bull for a couple of hours and both of us started feeling some hunger pangs.

We had noticed a couple of the waitresses serving some sort of a meatball on a stick. Hadn't seen any other food being consumed in the joint, so we were both craving some of those "meatball things".

I went up to the bar to get a couple more beers and asked the bartender about the "meatball things". He made a puzzled face and said he spoke no English. We drank another couple of beers and I told Devine we were going to have to leave and find someplace to eat, because I was starving. He laughed and said he would order us some of the "meatball things". Said he had been paying attention to the Danish language our entire time in port and that I should have too, so I wouldn't, once again, appear to be the Ugly American.

He flagged down the nearest waitress and made a lot of gestures with his hands and then shouted "meatball things" at the top of his lungs. She jumped back and started to run, but a passerby laughed and spoke to her in her native tongue and she quickly went to the kitchen and brought us our snack.

Devine was very pleased with his mastery of the foreign language. I was pleasantly surprised with the flavor of the "meatball thing".

Another liberty stop was in Oslo. Mike Devine and I were once again out on the town and got hungry. We had tried a couple of restaurants over the past few days and usually met with disdain from the proprietors. They immediately figured us for ruffians and were very rude. So we were just mainly drinking beer in town and eating back aboard the ship. Well, anyhow, we came across a little mobile kitchen. Like the Roach Coach you see around industrial areas at lunchtime. We walked up and saw the menu board was in English. Cheeseburgers and fries! We were in hog heaven. We each ordered some good old American style food and proceeded to a little side bar that held the condiments. There was red and yellow. Not anything like ketchup or mustard, but they looked the part. Whatever, we were chowing down when Devine saw a little picture someone had scratched into the paint on the end of the food truck. Rather an obscene little drawing of a stick man and woman and underneath the words "do pic" were scratched.

Of course, old multi-lingual Devine decided "do pic" would be a good opening line when and if we met any girls. I had my doubts, but I was along for the ride, good or bad.

That evening, in a beer joint, Mike tried out his new opening line on one of the local lovelies. He may very well still have the red outline of that girl's hand on his face (and it happened 40 years ago). We may never know what "do pic" means, but I think it is better off left out of conversation with Norwegian women.