“Ich bin ein Berliner.” I am a sausage-burger. The words echoed senselessly down the ages. Nearly fifty years later they rebounded off the empty echoing walls.

Horst, the young German entered Café Metro in Lincaster City UK on a Sunday lunchtime with his friends, who he was eager to impress. Aged 22 he was here studying for an MBA at one of the most prestigious Business schools in Europe. His new-found English student friends were impressed by his supreme confidence and generosity. They selected their Italian delights from the cooler, and ordered them, to be toasted while the young female barrista performed a juggling act trying to get their orders for coffee right.

Danuta, aged 18, the Polish barrista struggled. Horst insisted in addressing her in German even though her English was word perfect. She had had only four hours of sleep from serving at a night club the night before. Somehow she managed to conjure up the feast, despite Horst clicking his fingers and ogling her like a concentration camp victim. Like a Hindu Goddess her two arms seemed to multiply balancing crockery and espresso machine and toaster to serve these superior people.

The happy crowd of students draped themselves over the leather armchairs and talked of Kant and Kunst, and who was fucking whom at the postgraduate centre. Danuta, somehow performing a magical balancing act brought out their orders on trays balanced on her thin matchstick arms against her flat chest. She listened to their intellectual chit-chat eager to chip in, while she served them, but they were so stupid. She dragged herself back behind the counter, her legs felt like they had been machine gunned with lead.

After the orders were settled and the spoils divided, Horst marched back to the counter with his coffee cup. He whispered in a low voice, in German. In translation it meant ‘’hey potato-head, you forgot my milk’’. Danuta leaned over his cup and spat into it a creamy gob of mucous. Horst smiled at Danuta, and taking a spoon stirred it in as he made his way back to his admiring English students fan club.

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