On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Years ago, I visited Germany and was amazed that a good deal of the > country drank soft drinks at room temperature. When I was visiting > Berlin, we went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I had a heck > of a time making the waiter understand that I wanted tap water with > ice in it! He looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted another head. > :-) > > I got the same reaction in London when I requested iced water at > breakfast. The staff got used to the request and began bringing a > pitcher of iced water every morning.
Heh. In most cases, I prefer my drinks without ice. So I loved it in England because I never had to say "no ice" the way I do here (and half the time in the US, the wait staff forget and bring me iced drinks anyway). I routinely confused English wait staff, though; I could pass for a Brit till I opened my mouth, when my American accent was obvious -- but wait, no ice, maybe she's not American after all... I endeared myself to the staff on a British Airways flight by asking for lemon squash, no ice, for my drink. Americans never ask for squash, but they keep it on board for the occasional Brit who does. At the end of the flight the steward pressed the rest of his bottle of squash concentrate in my hand as a gift. You can buy it here in the US, but typically as a "gourmet" item, and expensive. (Ditto with demerara sugar, used routinely for coffee in England but obscenely expensive.) Back to costume, sort of: The key to passing as a Brit, at least a decade or two ago, was the shoes. I wore Clarks or similar walking shoes, not athletic shoes. American tourists typically wore white athletic shoes. It might not be so obvious a difference now, as black athletic shoes and many other styles of walking shoes are more popular in the US now. I was shoe shopping this week for the first time in ages, and saw Skechers with athletic-shoe soles and construction, but tops that looked like casual flats. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
