Don't mention the war

I attended a charming little Prenzlauerberg dinner last weekend. I soon realised I’d been invited along only so that some of those present could practice their English with a native speaker. Even so their social skills astonished me with their paucity: one man leaned across the table to ask “are you married?” and then “do you have children?” When both of these elicited the answer no he looked stumped and the person next to him wondered aloud “well what other questions are there to ask?” at which point he came up with the stunner “what’s your income?” I was tempted to ask some questions about 20th Century German history in response, just to show them that there are interesting questions there for the asking. Of course instead I ended up talking about football all night, which is all well and good but I may as well have spent the night in the Oscar Wilde – at least that way I’d have got something to eat. There was nothing I could consume at the dinner because although I had informed the woman who’d invited me that I was vegetarian, she hadn’t passed this information on to the person cooking. A low point came when one of the hosts got out a laptop and started shopping for a new sofa. Needless to say as soon as was humanly possible I beat a hasty retreat, resisting the urge to teach them some new English expletives as I left. I should add at this point that on previous occasions I’ve been to several very entertaining dinners in Berlin, but the incident only served to strengthen my prejudice against Prenzlauerberg and its wannabe cool inhabitants.