What’s been the impact of the euro? “Higher prices,” grumble many Germans, who’ve coined the term “teuro,” a play on the German word for “expensive” (teuer), to describe how shops and restaurants have purportedly hiked prices to take advantage of the introduction of the new currency.
Now one Berlin café is bucking the trend - and the spirit of the single EU currency. The Böse Buden, or Bad Boys Bar, has begun to distribute coupons offering its all-you-can-eat buffet for Dm1 during off hours. Normally, the buffet, which serves cheese, salami, omelettes and yogurt in the morning and soup, salad, sausages and hamburgers in the afternoon, costs E3 ($2.94).
Stephan Schlage, a co-owner of the bar, says the “promotional gag” has been drawing as many as 50 takers a day. “We hope, though, that customers drink a little bit,” he confides. “If people only eat, we have a problem.”
The Böse Buden’s owners are no europhobes. Across town their Kother bar is offering a E1.5 buffet; customers had complained that they had run out of marks. “Germans like the euro,” Schlage says, “but they don’t like the price increases.”
To make the point, he gave a coupon to a local newspaper to pass on to Finance Minister Hans Eichel, whose office is nearby. Eichel has yet to show.
