on friday night i heard a very interesting story in one of my favourite hamburg restaurants, café paris. apart from the oysters, a friend of mine told me a tale that i find difficult to believe, but am kindly allowed to impart to a greater audience. here it is.
suppose the chairman of a huge corporation decides that he is bored and whishes to be a bit better informed. for this he decides to have a journalist flown in, let us say from some country in the east, a journalist experienced with one of the provinces where currently a civil war is on – good entertainment for one evening in the auditorium. the pr department is set to work and smoothly hammers out a flight plan and minute program for the visit – only everything goes wrong.
when the journalist is received at the airport, it turns out that she doesn´t eat or drink during flight since the secret service of her country tried to do away with her, poisoning her tea on a plane once and sending her into a coma. the honoured guest is welcomed by some high ranking officials, who forget to ask her out for lunch, as does the following german press agency colleague, who interviews her without thinking to offer her anything. perhaps she is to polite to ask, earns the equivalent of 300 dollars a month – she cannot afford to go for lunch.
my friend, responsible for the reception, finds the lady in question in the afternoon hungry and angry. it turns out that she ventured out of the hotel to buy two eggs, since her hotelapartment has a stove – but sadly no pan (the luxury of the west, who on earth cooks for himself?)
it is an interesting fact that the invitation list for the lady´s lecture contains only to brass – of course it is impossible to ask the lesser, perhaps more interested editors to attend. unfortunately, nearly none of them turns up. in an instant, the authorities decide to invite the journalist school´s young students, just in time.
let it be reported that the first thing to eat our lady from the east sees after her lecture is a cup made of chocolate, filled with mousse and a spoon, baked as a bisquite. the two eggs she donates to my friend, so that they are not wasted and she retires early. so much for the only opposition against this little, provincial war.
didn´t our poet bertold brecht write once: „erst kommt das fressen und dann die moral“ – lunch first and then the morale? the only thing to be said for the whole event is that this time, sadly, it was the other way round.
