Sunnybank74

High school lessons sometimes come in handy, decades down the track. My European geography is very shaky indeed, as we discovered last month when I imagined that if you left Amsterdam because of a volcanic eruption and you wanted to reach Switzerland, you would head east.

Mrs Josie and her French irregulars have helped me out here and there, but truth to tell, I know as much German and Italian and Dutch as French, nowadays, and all rolled together they barely get me a snort and a snigger when I order a beer.

Belgium, and lunch wasn’t quite as easy as we thought. None of us had much in the way of Euro left after Germany, and we either needed some place that would take cards, or an autoteller so that we could draw out further supplies.

We stopped to fill up at an odd service station. It was a servo at the front and a tavern at the back, but it wasn’t the sort of place that seemed to cater for a few quick sandwiches and soft drinks.

So we went off down the road, looking for something better. Which was sort of a Belgian Subway or Quiznos, once we found a place to park that wasn’t ridiculously illegal, marvelled at the roadside shrine at the front door, and looked inside.

Two problems: first, the ordering process seemed overly complex. Doubtless it was just a matter of selecting bread, filling, sauces and salads, but I probably had the best French of us all, and my few phrases weren’t going to be up to the task. Falling back on “point and grunt” might work, but would likely earn us no points with the long queue of hungry Belgians. Second problem was that there were no signs indicating acceptance of any cards we had. We could be seriously embarrassed. And hungry.

So we piled back into the car, hunted around for fatter pickings. No autotellers operational, no diners taking cards.

Eventually I took the wheel, found an autoteller in a neighbouring town – along with parking – and discovered that the brand of autoteller only served Belgian Post Office accounts.

Finally found one that worked for us, got some money, and looked for a food outlet. Seemed to be market day, and a cluster of stalls in the town square was doing fine business. We looked, and one stallholder was slicing meat patties in half – two semicircles – which he cooked and crammed into a half-baguette with salad and sauce. Consensus was that these looked quick and tasty, but what were they called so we could order them? A young woman received hers and began moving away.

“Go, on!” I was urged. “Ask her!”

“Um,” I said in my best French. I pointed at her snack, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

She looked at me, startled. “C’est un ‘amburger!”