Thursday, May 24, 2012

THE NIGHTS OF THE JUNK FOOD DINNERS

It's bad enough to have the same hotel breakfast for 15 days straight. (So I made myself braver by making it a hobby to concoct a new sandwich everyday from the daily assortment of cold cuts tucked in between a variety of cheeses and the usual bits of tomato, cucumber, and bell pepper that are pressed in between a sliced crusty Brotchen liberally lathered with the ever present butter and marmalade). [Of course, I made a variation of what cold cuts and cheeses are for the day but the veggies, the spread, and the Brotchen were eternal fares].


It's worse to endure the daily mostly potato-centered fare of the Aubergine & Zucchini near Convention Land that goes by the name Maritim Hotel. (These are mostly french fries, a mashed version then and now, unpeeled/peeled boiled small ones twice or thrice, and the more appetizing but rare garlic sauteed boiled and sliced minis). [[I say the saving grace of the Bonn potato medley is its accompaniments of bockwurst [more popularly known as the frankfurter], burgers [which they say originated from Hamburg], fried fish fillet, fried white meat [that I later discovered to be chicken], and schnitzel [which is actually a slice of fried lean pork] that all came bathed in a gravy that tasted like Jollibee's].


But the evil of them all are the nights of the junk feed dinners, usually in the second half of the negotiations when time out is almost midnight, and the restaurants are therefore closed. (Sometimes, I make do with a panini sandwich and a bottle of coke from the gas station near the tram station; on some rare occasions, I survive with a doner kebab which we know better as shawarma from the only open Turkish restaurant in Bad Godesberg; and twice I lived on McDonald's garbage food). [But there's always crunch time when the going gets fueled by chocolates, candies, cookies, coke and all the sugar required for staying awake as we negotiators try to outsmart each other in who can talk in circles more and say hell in the most polite way possible].       


FOOTNOTE: Photos were all downloaded via Google and not mine.   

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