On the lighter side, no one knows how restaurants will be able to operate yet, to keep their customers safe but just as importantly their serving staff too.
Here is one restaurant in the Netherlands that has an idea for diners outside.
One thing I particularly enjoy about life is serendipity. In fact, the reason I’m contributing to this blog is because of a connection that goes back to my college days.
When something like the above comes along, curiosity gets the better of me, and I simply MUST know more about it. What language is that? Where is this place? Who thought of it, the owner or the waitress? I appreciate cleverness, and this is both timely and clever.
Now for the serendipitous part: the language is Dutch and a friend helped track down the visual clues to a restaurant in Amsterdam.
Wait…Amsterdam? I was there 3 months ago! In fact, I stayed in a hotel only 1.3 km away from this place. It was my first time in that part of Europe. Rainy and gloomy that time of year, but I’m sure the canals are beautiful in the summer. Hopefully I’ll get to go back to Amsterdam when the world begins traveling again, and when I do, this restaurant will have a new customer.
That’s what I’d humbly suggest everyone takes away from this ordeal; that this may be our new normal, and we haven’t figured it all out yet. So try to recognize and relish the little things that you would not have ordinarily encountered in your pre-COVID-19 existence. For instance: outside of Italy, “al fresco” dining simply means eating outside, like the video above, loosely translating from “in the cool [air]” according to Wikipedia. Italians though, say “fuori” for outside or “all’aperto” for “in the open [air]”. If you were to say “al fresco” in Italy, the expression means “in prison.”

How apropos for us now.
Published by