An encounter with the Third Kind

When I visited India this December, on the way I made a stopover in Switzerland, you know, just to be able to write in my resume that yes, I have been to Switzerland, even if it was only for a couple of days. 'Cause boy, if you haven't been to Switzerland, and people who've been to Switzerland come to know about it, they will embark on this lengthy narrative of the time they were there and what they did and why you should really visit this awesome place if you ever go there and why haven't you been there yet, don't you have a sense of adventure at all, are you poor, etc, etc. So the stopover was mostly a tool which would enable me to tell such people to shut the fuck up, that yeah I have, in fact, been to Switzerland.

But it was nice. Yeah, apart from the fact that it snowed all the three days I was there and the glacier I climbed up on top of (by climbing up I mean took a cable car) was so goddamn cold that my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth, it was a nice trip. Beautiful glaciers, great mountains and nice food. Speaking of food, anyone who is planning to go to Der Schweiz, here's a tip for you. Bring along with you an idli-dosa making kit and an electric cooking range. 'Cause my God, is the food freaking expensive. And my problem is that whenever I travel somewhere, I like to experience the native culture in its entirety. Which includes the food. So I won't live like a backpacker, you know, go to a McD's or live on toast and jam. I like to go to the neighbourhood restaurants and feed on the local delicacies.

In this case, it was a problem because the food was so costly. So the second day we were there, we decided to have dinner in the hotel lounge. There is some psychopathic section of my brain which somehow manages to convince me everytime I take a vacation or go somewhere that no matter how expensive food might be outside the hotel, the restaurant inside the hotel will sell it to me cheaper since I am staying there. And this, even after finding out that the miniature Jack Daniels in the hotel room cost as much as a real bottle of Jack Daniels would in a liquor store.

So my wife and I, we entered the hotel lounge and were led to our seats. We were then handed the menus, which allowed us to look at them, quickly do a Swiss Franc to dollar conversion and realize that the house of cards I had built in assuming that the food would be cheaper here had just come tumbling down. I had never seen food cost so much anywhere else in the world.

There are two kinds of people in this world, based on their reaction to an overpriced menu in a decent restaurant. The first kind rip their dignity out of its hiding place deep within their souls, skewer it with the steak knife and leave the restaurant, only pausing long enough for their picture to be taken by hotel management in order to be sent to the "Cheapskates Weekly", which is a magazine every restaurant in the world subscribes to.

The other kind, which I belong to, experience a sensation akin to what you would experience if someone tried to steal your wallet out of your pants pocket and managed to steal your pants along with it. A stunned disbelief, followed by a feeling of abject poverty and shame. But, after that initial wallop, we stiffen our lips and go along with it. Hell, if I'm gonna fall off a cliff, I'm gonna enjoy the scenery as I do that. So we drape the napkin over our quaking knees, call the waiter and proceed to order a lavish spread despite the strong dent it's gonna make in our bank balance.

So I ordered the lamb something, my wife ordered the vegetarian something and food was being consumed by both of us, when I observed another Indian couple enter the restaurant. Look at that, I said to my wife, how innocent, how fragile, how hungry they look, little do they know what's in store for them. I was interested in watching their reaction to the menu. What kind of human were they? I was curious. Luckily, they were assigned a table next to us.

The wife went first. Covering her mouth with her hand, no doubt, in order to utter an expletive, she pointed to the menu with eyes rolling around. The husband looked subdued. He read to the end of the menu and then turned it over in a frantic hope that the back of the card held the secret low low costing menu no one else knew about. No such luck. Been there, done that.

The waiter appeared. The husband asked, "Is this all you have?"
The waiter deemed that question unfit to be answered and stayed silent.
After pausing for a while, the husband said, "You know, I'm not very hungry, do you have salads?"
The waiter replied, "Sure, we can make one for you."
The husband said, "How much would it cost?" The waiter told him how much. The husband took a moment to ponder this information.
"Do you have any pastas?"
The waiter pointed to the menu. "Here".
The husband looked at the item he was pointing to and said, "You know, I'm not really that hungry, I don't need all that meat in my pasta."
The waiter, rising to the occasion, said, "Well, we can make a pasta with no meat.
"I don't want vegetables, either", said the husband preemptively.
"You just want steamed pasta?" queried the waiter with a hint of nausea.
"What else can you put on it?", asked the husband.
"Well, we can put some tomato sauce on it. Spaghetti with tomato sauce. Would you like that?", asked the enterprising waiter.
The husband brightened. "Yes, that sounds good. How much would that be? "The waiter told him. Apparently it wasn't that bad 'cause the waiter wrote it down in his notebook.

"And for you, ma'am?", asked the waiter. "I will just have a coke", replied the wife. "Can you bring an extra plate please?"

Brilliant, I said to myself, making a note in my head about this third kind of diner I had just discovered. Got to try this out tomorrow.

But the next day, all my plans pretty much went down the drain because as you know, it's difficult to change oneself. Once a splurger, always a splurger.