November 2007

We Knew You’d Be Coming So We Baked A Cake

30 November 2007

A coupon for a free piece of apple or cherry-yoghurt cake with purchase of a tall cappuccino good until 31 January.

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T Minus 6 Hours

30 November 2007

Officially we re-open tomorrow at 7 am, but we’re hoping to have things cleaned up this afternoon so we can serve guests inside this evening. Even with all the debris in the way, several guests per hour will fight their way to the door only to be disappointed by the closed lobby. Give us a [...]

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T Minus 24 Hours

29 November 2007

It’s finally starting to look like what we imagined…

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Grand Opening In The New Style

27 November 2007

The past 10 days have been crazy hectic, but we can now say with 99% certainty that we will open our McCafé this Saturday. We’ve been handing out coupons, we’ve given interviews, we’ll be giving a reception for press and politicians (and a few friends) next week, and we’ve got an ad in the local [...]

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links for 2007-11-23

23 November 2007

How to Sync Google Calendar with Outlook and Smartphones Automatically Why did my wife have to buy a stupid mobile windows smartphone?!? And why did she have to pour a cold alcoholic liquid on the screen? (tags: outlook gmail calendar dont_ask_me_why_i_bookmarked_this)

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You Can Say You To Me

20 November 2007

Now that I’ve stuck my foot firmly in my mouth with regards to Ami, I’ll now try to stick it in even further with a couple of more German terms, namely the second-person pronouns “Du” and “Sie”. In English we did away with the informal forms “thee” and “thou” ages ago, but in German one [...]

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PapaScott On Tour (Not)

18 November 2007

I had really hoped to make it to the Whiney Expat Blogger in Germany Meet-Up in Dresden this weekend. I cleared my own schedule and have the weekend off, but alas my time depends on two other schedules as well. I couldn’t leave Christopher alone with Frauke on the weekend our construction starts getting serious, [...]

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Customer Order Display

17 November 2007

Yesterday as part of our remodelling we installed a new drive-thru order taking system. It features a Customer Order Display, where the guest can see his order as it is being entered into our POS. We wanted to make sure it was up and running before we close the lobby for construction next week. For [...]

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Is “Ami” an Insult?

16 November 2007

At American im Odenwald Martina wonders why an American in Germany would name a blog AmiExpat. Isn’t “Ami” an insulting term for Americans? I’ve never felt insulted by the term Ami, and said so in her comments. Germans are always coming up with funny shortened names for things, like Wessi, Ossi, Sozi, Fundi. Such terms [...]

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Find The Entrance

16 November 2007

Somewhere behind the big red trash container, the cement mixer and the scaffolding is the main entrance to our restaurant. Yes, we’re still open! And we’re still running double digit increases in our guest count over last year! Here are some more photos of the construction. In the meantime we’ve put our own branding on [...]

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The Subjunctive Mood is a Sign of Weakness

12 November 2007

I’ve reported before that in Germany you have to say no very directly for it to be understood as no. I’ve recently discovered that the same principle can apply to “yes”. Recently in a hotel Frauke mislaid her cell phone and sent me to the reception desk to check if anyone had found it. Indeed, [...]

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Towed Away

9 November 2007

This is what can happen in Hamburg if you park near the river and you don’t pay attention to the weather report (from jenskunath.eu).

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Best. Online. Shop. Ever.

9 November 2007

I can only agree with Cem and Der Shopblogger. The Hema Shop beats Amazon, Ebay, and everything else. It is the best online shop ever and is worth a visit, even if you can’t read Dutch.

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Why Didn’t You Park There?

9 November 2007

This is yet another episode in the ongoing series “Germans are Strange and Wonderful Creatures”… During a particularly hard week of night shifts, I needed to get to the bank on Wednesday morning. Our bank has the proverbial “bankers’ hours”, they’re closed on Wednesday afternoons. Wednesday is also market day in Buchholz, and the rare [...]

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What Time Is It?

8 November 2007

After my entry yesterday, here is yet another in the ongoing series “Germans are Strange and Wonderful Creatures”… Ten days ago Europe switched back from Daylight Savings to Standard Time, turning the clocks back one hour on Sunday morning at 3 am. Our McDrive is open until 4 am on weekends, and we made the [...]

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What If You Get Stopped?

7 November 2007

Yesterday I left my wallet at home when I drove to work. At 5 am, I’m lucky to remember anything on my way out. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice my wallet was missing until after work and I had just filled my tank at the Aral gas station across the street from the restaurant. The only [...]

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Construction

5 November 2007

We’ve started exterior construction. We’re expanding the lobby in three directions. The restaurant is fully open, but the patio and PlayLand are (obviously) closed. Interior remodeling is set to begin in two weeks. The McDrive will remain open during the remodeling, but the lobby will be closed. Re-opening with McCafé is scheduled for the beginning [...]

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