A little disheveled, dragging my suitcase beside me, I walked out of baggage claim and into the front waiting lobby of the Paderborn airport. Two and a half hours sleep at a London hotel, then the flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt and then to Paderborn. The lack of sleep was getting to me. Was I supposed to call Robin when I landed? I looked around the airport waiting area.
Robin sat in a chair at an empty bar and waved when I noticed her. She broke into a smile and let out a hearty laugh.
“Oh good, there you are," I said with a sigh. "I wondered how I was going to find you.”
“No problem, Dave. I’ve been here since 8:30. Dave, this is Summer. She just got here a minute before you did. She’s one of those people who always arrive just in time. Don’t you, Summer?” Robin gave Summer a knowing look.
I looked at the woman standing next to Robin. Shoulder-length chestnut hair. A toned body like Robin’s and almost the same height. A few wrinkles, enough to say she was definitely over 20 years old but was she over 30 or just liked to exercise outside and the tanned skin emphasised the lines? I couldn’t tell.
I reached out and shook her hand. “Hi, Summer, nice to meet you.”
I reached out and shook her hand. “Hi, Summer, nice to meet you.”
Summer smiled, looked in my eyes, nodded her head, and then looked down as she let go of my hand. “Yeth,” was all she said.
“Well, Robin, I guess you’re probably hungry. Shall we go somewhere to eat?”
Robin looked from me to Summer. “I don’t know Paderborn that well. There doesn’t look to be much here in the airport I want to eat. Does Paderborn have anything?”
Summer nodded her head. “Well, Paderborn does have a few places. We might as well drive that way since we’re going to the Cumulo office close by.”
“Great! Dave, you got all your bags?”
I nodded my head.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go to Summer’s car.”
I looked at the scuff marks on the back of the front seats. “Do you have any animals?”
Summer nodded and smiled slightly.
“Dogs? Cats?”
“No. Children.”
“Oh really? What ages are they?”
“I have a boy and a girl.”
“No, I mean how old are your kids?”
Summer looked at me in the rearview mirror and gave me a questioning look.
Robin leaned over to Summer from the front passenger’s seat. “How old are they?”
“The oldest one is four and the youngest one is seven…seven months.”
“Wow! That’s a baby.”
“Yeth.”
“That’s great. Do you get any sleep at night?”
“Sometimes, yes. He likes to eat. Eat, eat, eat. When he was first born, I went to sleep at 2 each night.”
“Hnnh,” I said, turning my attention back to the car. “So this is a 318…I have a 325 but it is not diesel.”
“For a diesel, this is very quiet,” Robin added.
I agreed. “Yeah, I don’t hear the ‘packety-pack’ of a diesel.”
“This is a fine automobile. You will hear no ‘packety-pack.’”
“A fine but dirty automobile,” I said, smirking. I saw Summer’s slight frown in the mirror and decided to try a different line. “You know, a friend of mine has a very fine Lexus but she has let her children tear up the insides. I asked her why she would let her kids tear up such an expensive car. She said I don’t know her priorities. Her priorities were her children, not cars.”
Summer nodded. “Me, too,” she said and gunned the car to 180 on the road.
Miraculously, Summer found an open parking spot on the street in downtown Paderborn. “We can park here and walk to a restaurant.”
Robin turned to me as we stepped out of the car. “Have you ever been to a biergarten?”
“No.”
“Well, it’ll be your first time.”
“I guess so,” I said, looking down the street at a group of young women crossing 50 yards in front of me. I knew I was in Germany, the store signs and roadside markers had certainly told me that. What I hadn’t expected to see were women dressed in jeans and T-shirts, as if I was cruising the sidewalks of New York City or New Orleans. I then realised I was sweating in the warm, humid air. “It’ll be good to drink something cold.”
“You probably won’t drink a beer,” Robin said, with just a touch of a commanding voice. Or was it just a friendly hint? One of those paragraphs spoken in a few words, something like ‘Summer doesn’t yet know you. We’re about to go visit the customer who is going to meet you for the first time. I’m strongly suggesting you wait to drink until later this afternoon.’
I went ahead and said, “But you said it’s a biergarten.”
“Yeah. But I’m going there to eat food.”
I got her point. She abstained from alcohol. “You don’t drink anyway.”
“No, I don’t,” Robin said as she turned to Summer and smiled, with just the faintest smudge of victory curling up in the ends of her lips.
We sat outside, on a table next to the sidewalk. I picked up the menu, seeing what looked like the German phrase for “Do you lust for ice cream?”, under the picture of a woman’s pair of brightly colored lips photograhed just as she licked the edge of a cherry. I wasn't sure what the socially accepted definition of sex was but the picture was a little more obvious about lust than I'd see on an American restaurant menu, Hooter's aside.
“Oh, I see you want the ice cream?” Robin asked rhetorically, interpreting my lusty grin for a desire for food.
“Maybe later.” I set the dessert menu down just as the server appeared with lunch menus.
The server looked first at me, starting with “Gut’ abend” and continuing on in German, asking a few questions I didn’t understand.
I looked over to Robin with questioning eyes.
Robin turned to me and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”
“Drink? Oh yes,” I burst out, ready to use one of the German phrases I knew. “Ich möchte Tee drinken.”
The server pressed on the screen of the PDA in her hand and held the PDA in front of me, reading off a list to me in German. I was able to look over her hand at the PDA screen to see it was a portable food order system. I figured out at least one word I could recognise.
“Pfeffermintz, bitte,” I said, not really wanting peppermint tea but trying to act like I understood her.
“Pfeffermintz, bitte,” I said, not really wanting peppermint tea but trying to act like I understood her.
“Danke schon.”
Robin and Summer placed orders for sparkling apple juice while I tried to sort out the lunch menu. I knew some words right away and could figure out the gist of others. From the words in one category, I thought the descriptions were associated with pizza. “What is this?” I asked Summer.
“Oh…ah,” Summer said, setting down the menu. She cupped her hands and then mimed a bowl shape in the air. “Like pitza. It is very flat and thin.”
“Pizza?”
“Yes, but the toppings are…cream…and…”
“Cheese?”
“Yeth.”
“This one looks good. It has feta cheese and olives.”
“Yeth.”
“So, guys,” Robin interrupted, “what are the plans for the day?”
“We have the meeting at 3…”
“Are you guys staying in Paderborn?”
I looked over at Summer. “I don’t know. I couldn’t clearly tell from Summer’s email. Are we staying…”
“We are leaving for Augsburg after the meeting.”
“So you guys aren’t spending the night?”
“No.”
“Then I better cancel my hotel reservation and change my plane flight for tomorrow.”
“If you wish.”
“Or we could stay the night here,” I suggested.
Summer shook her head. “We have a long train ride to Augsburg and an early meeting tomorrow.”
“What time is the meeting?”
“Nine.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess you’re right.”
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