To find at short notice in the centre of Vienna a restaurant which would offer at least one nice vegetarian meal, is not as easy as it would look. It’s Friday afternoon and we are circling through the Vienna streets in a vain effort to discover such a miraculous place.
In the end our effort succeeded. The menu hanging by the door of restaurant Bastel Beisl promises that even non-meat eaters can eat here. So we ducked into the cellar area. At that moment we didn’t know what our dinner experience will be.
The waiter brought us our menu. He is not very friendly. He would be more suited to the role of a sergeant on a parade ground than that of a waiter. He looked down at us grumpily as if he was silently asking: What are you aliens doing in MY restaurant?
We study the meal offer, half expecting that the sergeant, excuse me, the waiter orders us to: “About face! Forward march!” Surprise, surprise – the only vegetarian meal they advertised so proudly outside on the board is not available. Doesn’t matter, croquets with poppy seed from the desert menu are also good.
Having ordered tea we had another surprise. Our friend is vainly searching in his tea pot for anything other than hot water. He therefore asked politely if he could have tea with his tea. The waiter’s expression told us clearly that we wanted too much.
Despite this tea arrived and the waiter left with a meal order, he even smiled! “See, at the end it won’t be so bad,” I said cheerfully. My optimistic enthusiasm was stopped by Ben’s expression of unbelieving astonishment. “He… he, all the time we were ordering, he was standing on my foot!”
Other guests of that Viennese restaurant that day probably wondered why three Czechs cry with laughter with their heads on the table.
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