Pulling Pints in German

You took the job because they said English would be fine. And mostly it is, right up until a regular fires off a question at the speed of a passing tram, the card machine this mid rush, or someone needs to know that very second whether the soup has nuts in it.

Pulling Pints in German is the phrasebook for exactly those moments. It skips the grammar drills and vocabulary lists and gives you the real things you actually say behind a bar and across a dining room, in the order a shift throws them at you.

Every phrase comes three ways: what it means in English, the German you say, and a simple respelling written for an English mouth. No phonetic symbols, no foot. If you can read it, you can say it.

Inside you will find the German for greeting and seating guests, taking drinks and food orders, describing beer, wine and whiskey, handling allergy questions, dealing with complaints and a dying card machine, managing reservations and the beer garden, splitting the bill and taking a tip the German way. There is even a section for the moments nobody wants but everyone eventually meets, from a guest who has had one too many to a genuine emergency.

Best of all are the things the textbooks never mention. The false friend traps that catch every English speaker, such as why you should say "mir ist heiss" and never "ich bin heiss" unless you are feeling very friendly. The regional words locals actually use. Panic Sheet for when your mind goes completely blank on a busy Friday night.

Whether you are a student earning beer money, a traveller working a Summer season, a nervous new arrival or a seasoned hand in an Irish pub, this book gets you confident enough to earn the tips, and fast. If you run a bar, employing native English speakers, put a few copies of this book behind the bar, your customers and staff will thank you later!