The War is Over

(Before you read this, keep in mind that some of my best friends are German and that two of my grandparents were 100% German.)
 
My husband and I went to dinner last night at the fancy new restaurant/hostellerie down the road.  The weather was so warm that we sat outside under a bright full moon. The warm night breezes didn’t require that we don jackets.  The restaurant had a professional photographer taking promotional shots of the candlelit diners.

At dinner we were surrounded by Germans, which is an oddity around here.  When we purchased the property back in 2001, the realtor told us that the Germans didn’t come down to our area of France because they committed a few atrocities and the old people just wouldn’t be kind to them.  But now the old people are dying off rapidly, and this new restaurant is owned by a German and his French wife, so we’re seeing lots of cars down here emblazoned with the Deutschland “D” stickers.

I commented to my husband that I didn’t know if having an American Jewish couple in the restaurant’s brochure would attract or deter the clientele from Allemand. 

Surrounded by our visiting neighbors from the north, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to envision what France must have been like during World War II when the Germans ran the place. The Germans that sat closest to us were very tall, all were blonde, and horrors, they drank BEER with their gourmet meal.  I thought the wife of the chef, an Italian, who serves as the hostess, was going to have a heart attack when a portable phone belonging to one of the German men rang loudly, and in response, he carried on a very loud German conversation.

My husband was complaining softly to me about how loud the Germans were (if you knew me you would find this humorous) and I pointed out that I thought that we Americans had a lot more in common with the Germans than we did with the French when it came to manners.  My intelligent husband surprised me by expressing surprise that I would make such an observation.

When the bill was presented to us, it was accompanied by two fliers announcing future soirees at the restaurant.  The first was an Edith Piaf night.  But to my great shock and outrage, the second flier trumpeted the news that in August there would be two nights celebrating BAVARIA!!!!!!!  I hope the participants don’t get feisty and go looking for a kike to roast because the selection in our village only leads to one door and that’s ours.

At least the British and the Scots here have the decency not to stage Boiled Mutton Dinners and Haggis Nights. 

Next to the table of the six big, loud German beer drinkers, a group of eight British folk were seated.  I pointed out to my husband that both nations had tried unsuccessfully to take over the area (the British were here during the Hundred Years War) and now they were taking it over with their money. Seizing the opportunity, I pointed out the futility of war to my husband.

Our memories were spurred by that sage comment, and we both commented on a poster we had seen at a demonstration against the Iraq War in San Francisco last year that asked, “Why Don’t We Just Buy Their Oil?”

When you think of how many people were slaughtered in World War II, and then you look at the Germans surrounding you in a French restaurant, having a good time drinking beer with foie gras, laughing and talking loudly, and spending the same currency as the French, you can see how ridiculous, stupid, useless war is.  In my humble opinion, all wars are economic even if they are staged under the banner of religion; so therefore, there is always an economic solution to war.

The bright side to having a good French restaurant, attracting German clientele is that it’s very pleasing and hopeful to see the children of mortal enemies eating pleasantly side by side.  For added color and drama, there was a man seated at the table beside us who was old enough to have been a Nazi soldier.  Yes, I have to admit that the war is over, and one shouldn’t be xenophobic, and it’s awfully nice to eat together in peace. However, I have to draw the line at staging Bavarian Nights in the neighborhood.