Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg (general ebook reader .TXT) 📕

with sauce of mustard and leafy vegetables from the earth.” I tried to imagine a hybrid of a salmon and a trout, and what it might taste like.

I opted for a simple garden salad and Monk chose a bowl of white rice. We weren’t being very adventurous in our culinary choices, but it was only our first night. I figured I’d ease into it.

It was enough just to be sitting there, regardless of what I was eating.

If someone had predicted only two days earlier that I’d be taking a trip to Europe with Adrian Monk, I never would have believed it. In fact, I would have said it was impossible.

“What we’re experiencing now is very special,” I said. “I hope you appreciate it.”

“I’m trying not to see the antlers,” Monk said. “That’s the only reason I’m looking deeply into your eyes.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about being here, halfway across the world. This is what’s special.”

“Special is another way of saying not the norm,” he said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I like the norm,” Monk said. “Norm is good. I wish I was named Norm.”

“But now here you are, in Europe, experiencing an entirely new culture. Isn’t it exciting?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Then how does it feel?”

“Like a deep, penetrating nausea,” he said.

“This is a great opportunity, Mr. Monk. You should embrace it.”

“I don’t embrace,” Monk said.

“When was the last time you had a vacation?”

“When we went to Hawaii,” he said.

“That wasn’t a vacation. We spent the whole time investigating a murder.”

“It was fun.”

“It was work. A real vacation doesn’t include a corpse.”

“Then what do you do?”

“Nothing. That’s the whole point,” I said. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to wake up with no commitments to fulfill, no demands on your time, no mysteries to solve, and the whole day in front of you in a place you’ve never been before. That’s a vacation.”

Monk groaned. “No wonder I don’t have them.”

“Open yourself up to the experience,” I said. “You might like it.”

“I’ve had experiences,” Monk said. “I’m not a fan.”

Our food was delivered then, and we ate in silence. By the time we’d finished the meal, the jet lag had caught up with both of us. It was only about eight o’clock, but we were both fighting a losing battle to keep our eyes open.

We went back to the bed-and-breakfast and retired to our separate rooms.

As I slipped between the sheets and rested my head on the fluffy pillow, I thought about the day to come.

Tomorrow wouldn’t begin with us standing over the victim of a brutal homicide. We had nothing to do except relax and explore our new surroundings.

I congratulated myself. Going to Germany with Monk had turned out to be a wonderful decision, not just for me but for both of us.

He just didn’t realize it yet.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mr. Monk Goes on Vacation

Thanks to the jet lag, I awoke at four a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I used the time difference to my advantage and called home to check on Julie.

I assured my daughter that I was having a miserable time so she wouldn’t be jealous. It wasn’t a hard sell. She could imagine what traveling with Monk was like. I felt a little guilty having a European vacation without her, but not so much that I was ready to take the next plane home.

Does that make me a selfish person and a bad mom? I hope not.

After the call, I read through the guidebooks for places to see and things to do and skimmed the German-English dictionary for helpful words or phrases for traveling with Monk.

I couldn’t find any direct translations for “please excuse my friend, he means no offense” and “do you have any disinfectant? ” in German. I made a mental note to ask the Schmidts.

I also wrote a list of nearby places that Monk and I could visit after we exhausted all the possibilities of Lohr, which, judging by the size of the town, we’d do by early afternoon.

Friderike was hard at work in the kitchen when I came down at seven a.m. She was preparing eggs, sausages, and biscuits, which Heiko then brought out to the butcher-block-style table where Monk and four other guests were waiting.

Monk wasn’t eating the hot breakfast, of course. He was having toast, cutting off the crusts and carefully painting the bread with jam.

I sat down across from him and introduced myself to the other guests—a businessman visiting one of the factories, an older German woman who didn’t speak English, and a young couple from Belgium who couldn’t keep their hands or lips off each other.

Heiko set a bowl in the center of the table. There were a dozen white sausages floating in steaming-hot water. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do with the sausages, so I waited to see what the others did.

The businessman took one of the sausages out of the bowl with his spoon and set it on his plate. He cut the sausage open at one end, picked it up with his fingers, and sucked the meat out like he was drinking through a straw.

Monk cringed from head to toe and I have to admit I didn’t find the sight too appealing myself. The businessman saw me watching him and appeared to be amused by our reaction.

“Weisswurst,” he said, indicating the sausage. “Very good.”

The old lady took a sausage out of the bowl but she didn’t suck the meat out.