We both worked late last night, and then went for dinner at the Bavarian Grill in Plano. This German restaurant is always full of people, who eat sausage and drink beer. A lot of Germans came to Texas in the nineteenth century, so German heritage things and places do well here.
We got a table after only a five or ten minute wait. The menu featured "wilde wochenende" specials, such as hassenfeffer and boar. I chose the duck, as duck is for me a Thanksgiving meal. My wife chose two
bratwurst mit sauerkraut. My wife ordered a huge flask of bier, while I ordered a huge flask of Diet Coke.
A band in the corner of the restaurant played "Du liebst im herzen" and some polka-oriented numbers. I love accordion music, and I told my wife, without managing to sell the point, that we simply must go see the International Accordion Championship the next time it is in Plano.
I love that nobody needs to be a purist about these heritage things. Nobody blinked an eye when the band brought some teens up on stage to sing "Edelweiss", as, unlike some hip folk club, nobody is going to snidely say "that's not GERMAN! It's not even AUSTRIAN! It's Broadway!". But when the two teens did not sing out, I wanted to hop on stage like Christopher Plummer, and sing "blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever!" until the whole audience sang along, and then my wife and I could make our escape to Switzerland. A lot of people put on chicken head hats and danced the Chicken Dance, which is really quite fowl.
I had a bread pudding for desert,while my wife had the best apple strudel I ever tasted. I am not an apple pie or cobbler or tart or strudel guy (I like raw apples right well), but this exceptional dessert almost made me a convert.
Today we have Thanksgiving Dinner with my brother and his wife and their son, at a Marriott hotel where the Diet Coke will flow freely and perhaps there will be a pumpkin pie. I originally felt disappointed, a bit, that my wife has to work a half day on Friday, so that we cannot go to Arkansas for Thanksgiving.
But then, yesterday, a client called with something that I need to do tomorrow. So it all worked out.
I feel pretty thankful today, so I suppose I am a seasonal guy. We got our first frost today, and that all seems just right, somehow. I wish they still showed the mummers' parade on Thanksgiving. We'll go for a walk before lunch,and then we'll
feast.