the things we do for mcdonald’s

You know how on Friends they have Central Perk and on How I Met Your Mother they have MacLaren’s?  Well, we have one of those in Salzburg and it’s called O’Malley’s.  And we like to say we run that place and we sort of actually do run that place because we know the staff and they let us do whatever we want, whenever we want.

Yet I was still so reluctant when Caroline said, “Let’s go get some McDonald’s fries and bring them back here and eat them!”. 

See, here’s the thing about McDonald’s in Austria (yes, there’s “a thing”):  Austrians (for the most part) are pretty strict about what goes into their food.  For this reason, they are very proud to say that their McDonald’s ingredients are 100% Austrian, which means the fries taste incredible (made with homegrown, local-ish potatoes).  Also, they don’t just sell “french fries”.  They sell curly fries, waffle fries and potato dippers (which are, like, really fat fries aka the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted).  Germany doesn’t have these options, for some reason.  So whenever we cross the border to Austria, we usually find a way to add “eat McDonald’s fries” to our itinerary.  And that’s all we order there – fries; never an actual meal (although I’ve been known to order the occasional “spontaneous strawberry milkshake”).  So that’s why Caroline suggested that we get fries and bring them back to O’Malley’s (because why would we want to eat them at McDonald’s?  that’s just not fun).

But since O’Malley’s sells food, I figured it would be frowned upon to waltz right in carrying bags of McDonald’s fries.

But at the same time, I really wanted those fries. 

Which is how I went from the initial hesitance:   

to collecting everyone’s money, trekking through the cold to buy 4 orders of fries and hiding the bag under my coat so i could smuggle them inside without being questioned:

(oh and surely that can’t be grease on the bag……I probably just dropped it in a puddle or something.)

I should mention that I pitched the idea of having a “fry party” under the table, out of fear that we were all “going to get kicked out!!!!!” - a notion at which my friends scoffed (and rightfully so, I do admit).  However, I should also mention that these same friends assured me we could eat them in plain sight ever so discreetly, which is what we ended up doing.  I thought we’d pulled this off well enough until our friend Danny, the O’Mally’s manager, later told me, “Of course we saw you eating those fries; you were passing the bag around and taking photos.  We just didn’t kick you out because we like you.” 

See what I mean?  We run that place.