The Middle Ages and Team Bonding

I'm lagging a bit at recording life, but for this story it's just as well, because my brother Gi. filled in a missing piece of the puzzle today.

*

Prelude

My team at work was (partly) agog to eat at a Middle-Ages themed restaurant here in Berlin. Dante Alighieri also wrote his Inferno during the Middle Ages, and I'm sure if I ever got around to reading it, several passages would reflect my experience of arranging a date on which many teammates could appear, reserving seats and making sure vegetarian options existed, and assembling the wad of cash required to cover the cost of the meal, which at over 60 Euros per person was expensive and tripped my inner 'excessive capitalism' alert.

During the day itself, one of my teammates who hadn't accepted the calendar invitation told me in passing that they were thinking of showing up too (which of course would have been nice, but I was inwardly aghast at how much perception diverged from the reality of carefully reporting # of diners in advance, etc.)...

Main Event

The restaurant itself glowed charmingly when we finally met in it, and I forgot and forgave the past months of tribulation. Large wood-framed windows almost out of an English countryside idyll, wooden chairs, long tables, candle lighting, and dark pottery dishes.

While I had feared an  onslaught of bacchanalian revelry and noise, in fact the only other people in the restaurant besides the waitress, the singer, and the cook, were two young German men at the other table. Three other groups had cancelled their attendance, a delegate from one of them having the decency to turn up in person to explain.

The waitress and singer were woebegone, but launched into the entertainment undeterred.

First we were asked to order drinks, but these were not part of the prix-fixe menu. I was at that point hoarding my cash like Smáug the dragon so that the team and I wouldn't need to 'dine and dash' later. So I sat like a fanatic teetotaler, not ordering any drinks, while the others (whom I'd warned about our budget) asked for Riesling wine, beer, whisky, and grog at their own expense.

The drinks menu further informed us that we were 'Weibsbilder' and 'Mannsbilder'; that the proper etiquette was to eat with our daggers or our fingers; and that rather than say 'Prost' or anything else when raising our drinking mugs in a toast, we had to say 'To health!'

First the waitress rubbed her hand over Gi.'s arm to see if he was cold; he was wearing a t-shirt and slender chino pants. (His winter wardrobe is legend within our team, part of our family, and parts of the company beyond our team.)

Then she gave us each a white napkin the size of a small tablecloth. She put it around Gi.'s neck personally, making me fear that our teammate's offer to 'switch seats if you feel like the waitress is harassing you,' had some justification. Either way, we were to tie these around our necks to shield our clothing from mishaps while using medieval dining utensils. While our Greek teammate achieved a classical flair, perhaps through atavistic skill, and looked like a lady legislator or philosopher, I felt like I'd reverted into overgrown babyhood and was already mentally burying the photographic evidence of my appearance.

The singer, in her green and red robe and long blonde Guinevere hairstyle, introduced us to the restaurant etiquette.

First she poured water from a pitcher over Gi.'s hands, to symbolically purify our fingers for the meal. (Our Greek teammate was one step ahead of her and had already placed a plastic hand sanitizer spray bottle on the tabletop for all of us to share.)

Then she designated one of the Germans at the other table as toastmaster. As such, he had to stand up periodically, raise a mug, and shout 'To health!' And we had to reply in chorus, 'To health!'

I was designated as food taster. I had to stand up and take a bite of each course before anyone else. Then the other diners had to loudly count to ten, presumably to see if I toppled over 'deceased.' Apparently, so Gi. told me later, the instructions to me had been to exclaim "Es mundet!" at the end. Which I never did, so the waitress always prompted me "Mundet es?" And I answered "Ja" every time, getting a little exhausted by the end of the meal (although now that Gi. has divulged the context, I understand why I was asked!). Yesterday or today my mother also used the word 'mundet' by coincidence, and I shrieked internally.

Then came the food, which tasted very good:

Mead, poured into a beige-and-grey cow's horn at each spot

Crusty grey bread, dipped in bacon drippings (omnivore) or quark (vegetarian)

Gammon (omnivore) or Roasted potato pancakes (vegetarian) with bell pepper stew

Cauliflower soup

The mead was far nicer than the bottled mead I'd had for my 18th century research, the one I said tasted of an industrial mix between cabbage, raw alcohol, and honey. It also did me a favour in my 21st century real-life existence. I'd been avoiding liquor for a few days because I'd found myself tempted to drink strong alcohol to calm myself down while working lately: The experience of drinking alcohol unexpectedly and not feeling any urge to drink more, seems to have cured both my impulses and my anxiety about becoming an alcoholic.

It was after the soup where the Greek teammate asked if she could go out for a cigarette. The waitress, who had been chain-smoking in between her tours of duty, wholeheartedly supported her undertaking. 'Go and "breathe"', she urged us, "All of you!"

One of our teammates found her reminiscent of a dominatrix, but the waitress just reminded me of my ballet teacher.

When we returned indoors, the musical entertainment resumed.

For the first sing-along, the singer chose "What shall we do with the drunken sailor?", which we all knew and sang successfully. (I internally lady-fainted at one or two of the cruder lyrics I hadn't heard before.) But the next few sing-alongs were less successful except at the table with the two German men, because we Anglophones barely knew them. (For example, "Alle, die mit uns auf Kaperfahrt fahren.") There was a call-and-response song with a Latin refrain to which we had to respond "Amen." I was evidently the first diner to figure out the response, because apparently my Catholic upbringing has unexpected practical applications. And for one song, one of the German men and one of our teammates wielded two tambourines as an accompaniment.

But the singer also sang solo. In one of the songs, each verse laid out a different method of how to murder or beat spouses who happen to have a snaggletooth, be overweight, or snore. It was intensely gruesome and I surmised inwardly that I will always remember this team event as our 'Surprise Domestic Violence Song' Event.

But one of our teammates was leaning on the back of the chair gazing at the singer, beaming pleasantly throughout. I was in awe at her sang-froid. ...

At the end of the song, she turned to us and said, "I didn't understand a word of that!" (But, she added later, even if she had understood the German vocabulary, she would have still been smiling, as she likes political incorrectness.)

Altogether we had to work hard for our supper.

If the toastmaster failed to stand, the waitress (who embraced her role as a sort of Lord of Misrule) would bark at him the ruder German equivalent of 'Up off your arse!' I was wondering uneasily about what my superiors would say about this much profanity at a work team event.

But our British teammate professed himself satisfied that the team had seen their leader (me) also being barked at once 'A*** auf!' and then standing there in my capacity as taste tester while the assembled diners "glared" at me and counted to ten.

The second half of the meal:

Duck legs (omnivore) or breaded cheese (vegetarian), round dumplings, red cabbage, mushroom sauce (vegetarian)

Quark with berry sauce and a half pancake

Altogether it turned out to be an epic team event. And although I inwardly perspired about a few aspects, I haven't had this much fun in a very long time.