My Dad was stationed in England when I was a kid. We toured the continent in our Volkswagen camper, camping all over Europe. We would shop in the local stores, and thought we were getting quite proficient at finding what we wanted. While in Germany, we stopped by a local store, and my parents picked out a nice bottle of wine to go with dinner. Turns out it was grape juice....

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One morning when I was eating breakfast with Dutch friends in Holland, they asked what I wanted on my bread. I said peanut butter, thinking I might get lucky and they would have some. Well, instead of peanut butter, they served me peanut oil spread that you would heat up and use when saute vegetables - Yuck!

One my very first morning on a trip to Australia I heaped on some brown stuff on my toast. Took a huge bite and about made it projectile across the room-it was Vegemite! YUCK! <BR>How little Australian children love the stuff is beyond me! <BR>Patti

In our instance we got what we ordered and *more*! <BR>While in Tobago, we ordered chicken rotis from a street vendor (we had already had goat rotis and found they stayed with one for days!!! after) <BR>the chicken ones came with the usual veggies and chicken nicely chopped into bite sized pieces , *bones* and all. <BR>Another evening we had dinner with a friend we had met there. <BR>He made us his mother's Fish Head Soup. <BR>It was nice and spicy, and came with a fish head, eyes and all. <BR>I love new things! <BR>nancy

This is the other way round.... <BR> <BR>I'm from the UK, and I was staying in a hotel in Stratford On Avon, at the same time as an American family. At breakfast, the American lady was served grapefruit segments, and she promptly picked up HP Fruity Sauce and poured in on the grapefruit. <BR> <BR>Now HP Fruity Sauce (as all Brits know!) is a savoury/spicy sauce that we eat with sausage/bacon!

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Oh yes..brings back a very funny memory from our trip to Tuscany last summer. Left my translation book in the car and we went walking in a small town and found a very traditional type restaurant. I had remembered a pasta dish that had been raved about as a local speciality and told my husband we should order it here. No English spoken at this restaurent. So we ordered a salad and panzenella - expected a salad and nice pasta dish. What we got was a salad and panzenella which was a bread salad. What I had meant to order was a salad and pappardelle. We gamely ate both salads but must say I am not a fan of soggy bread in my salad!! Carried the menu translator from then on!!

Only vaguely related but, I went for dinner a few years ago with a friends relatives in Chicago.<BR><BR>The husband, an old guy who'd never been out of illinois, looked and spoke like Popeye, said to me<BR><BR>"tell me, I bin told that in England, if you ask for whisky, they give you scotch. Is that true?"<BR><BR>"Of course" I replied<BR><BR>"You guys are wierd" says he.<BR><BR>At the same meal, we has lasagne for dinner. Nothing unusual for us Brits there, except for the fruit salad on the table. We assumed it was for dessert so didn't touch it, and were very surprised to learn we were supposed to eat it WITH the lasagne.<BR><BR>You guys are wierd.

This is sort of a similar story:<BR><BR>I was in Palermo, staying with friends who were from the city. We went out to eat pretty late, so no real restaurants were open, so we went to a beautiful little piazza that was filled with people (as Palermo is wont to be on a summer's eve). There was a little "take-out"-type store that served a few different things, but most people seemed to be eating sandwiches made out of meat that was stewing in a big metal vat. The guy behind the counter would put some mayo on a piece of bread, slap the meat on, then bingo there was your sandwich. I asked my friends if it was good, one loved it, the other hated it. But everyone around me seemed to be eating it, so I decided to be adventurous and try one. I took one bite and almost threw up, I thought it tasted horrible.<BR><BR>So I asked one friend, what is this meat? And she told me in Italian, and it was not a word I knew. She started pointing to where internal organs were, and I had no idea what she was talking about (we covered the usual liver, kidneys, etc.). The other friend came back to the table, and we asked him how to say the name of the meat in English, and he looked right in my eye and said, "Oh! It's pancreas!"<BR><BR>No more pancreas sandwhiches for me ever again, thank you very much.

I can remember ordering breakfast in an hotel in Nevada. I ordered waffles and my husband ordered French toast and bacon. Two little jugs of syrup arrived and my husband wondered why there were two. To this day he won't believe that one was to go with his French toast and bacon.<BR>I also remember taking an American friend some Oxford marmalade. We had dinner with the couple, the usual meat, potatoes etc., but he put a generous dollop of the marmalade on the side of his plate and ate it with his meat. Nowt so queer as folk!

My nephew and I had taken the ferry from Dover to Calais on a Sunday night - just to say we had gone to France for Dinner.<BR><BR>After an excellent dinner we tried to find a store to buy some gifts, but nothing was open.<BR><BR>Finally, going into a bar we bought several candy bars and, what I thought, was a bag of hard candies. <BR><BR>Back home several weeks later, I opened them and enjoyed a very menthol Cough Drop!

The pancake story brought another memory from long ago - I was driving through the U.S. with my son who was about 7-8 yrs. We stopped at a diner and he ordered pancakes. They came with a big scoop of what he thought was ice cream in the middle. He popped the whole scoop in his mouth and immediately popped the scoop of butter back out!

Visiting a friend's and went out and gathered a basket of blueberries. If you've picked blueberries, you know what a time consuming task it is! Went back to friends house, washed and picked over and had a lovely big bowl of berries for my breakfast. Sprinkled some sugar over the berries and hubbie took a big mouthful. Phooey...we had never heard of a salt cellar before!!!!!

Whenever I'm in Ireland, friends always insist that we go to "American" themed restaurants (which I hate, because if there's one thing the Irish really can't do very well, it's American-style food). Once, the couple we were with order nachos as a starter. When the nachos arrived, they couldn't figure out why my husband and I were dying laughing--on the plate, there were 8 neatly arranged small tortilla chips, each decorated with a little cheese and a slice of olive.

While in Paris many years ago, I ordered "du the" at a restaurant in my best French accent, and they brought me what I had asked for, "deux thes" (2 cups of tea!)

Sue, I laughed when I read your nacho story. A few weeks ago, some friends and I went to the local Dave & Buster's bar here in the US for beers and nachos. We were pretty surprised to get 6 large tortilla chips with cheese and jalapenos on each separate one. So I guess even the American restaurants can't get American food done right.

While in the Cinque Terre last October, we ate at a little restaurant in Manarola. We ordered pasta with mussel sauce. When it came, we were surprised to see that the pasta was black. Well, we started eating it and when I looked at my sister eating those long strands of pasta, I almost gagged! it looked exactly like she was eating worms. It looked absolutely disgusting. Even though it did not taste bad, we couldn't finish it. We were wishing we had our camera so we could show our kids back home that we were eating worms.

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Maybe this isn't unique, but earlier this year in Paris, I ordered (among other things) a salad. I don't recall the exact name and my French is weak. I ended up getting a salad with a side of mashed potatoes, which in the US would be an odd combo. To complete the oddity, the potatoes were seasoned with a fish broth. Not too fishy and not bad, just very different than what I expected. Perhaps someone more familiar with French food will fill me in on what I actually ordered!