This is probably one of my favorite stories to tell because it gets you wondering ‘what the hell happened to get you kicked out of Germany?!’ I suppose I should start off saying it wasn’t the literal country but the restaurant located at Disney World’s Epcot in Orlando, Florida. How does a family get kicked out at the most magical place on Earth? It begins with being a part of my family.

We love each other, truly we do, somewhere deep down inside even though we might not always show it. Being on vacation, in public, should have been enough to have us acting lovingly. But when you’re at Disney with all the crowds, wishing they would disappear so you can get where you want and not have to stand in line for an hour in the heat, tensions can boil.

Especially as dinner time rolls around. Hunger and heat make people cranky.

It’d been a lovely day from what I can remember; the mishap took place back when I was 14 – and the last time the full family has been to Disney. (I of course have been back – far too many times in my parent’s awful opinion. (There’s no such thing as too many times.))

We spent the day park-hopping and having a grand time. (Unless you were my brother who prefers Universal, which is cool but no Disney.) Anyway, we made our final hop to Epcot because it’s got all the fancy & fabulous places to eat with restaurants inspired by countries from all around the globe. I was hoping for the Italian restaurant because as a picky eater it was one of the few restaurants I knew I would enjoy.  (Although I am mad at them for removing my manicotti from the menu.)

Everyone had their opinions as where to eat, but my dad’s outweighed ours and Germany (the actual restaurant name is Biergarten) was where he chose for us. He wanted German food for his German roots.

Of course I was vocal. I knew there wouldn’t be anything there for me but dinner rolls, if we were lucky. My brother also voiced that he didn’t particularly want to eat there. My mother, being reasonable and sensible, suggested we should go elsewhere because she was thinking of us kids… and herself. If we didn’t eat, we’d be complaining and she’d be having a headache.

Instead we were handed menus to look over before completely ruling it out. Breaded Pork. Sausage. Sauerkraut. Pickled Red Beet Salad. It was all gross, gross, gross, gross! Yup, it was ruled out in my distinguished opinion. Even my brother, a non-picky eater, couldn’t find something that appealed to his liking. My mother again suggested it was time to find a new restaurant that we could better agree upon.

This did not please my dad. At all. His temper fried and he lost it on us. He began shouting at us to ‘leave, just get out. I don’t want to see you guys. I’ll eat here by myself, but go. Get out.’

There was one problem as we all stood in awe of my dad’s temper tantrum. (How he didn’t manage to get himself kicked out was some other sort of Disney magic.) He had all the money.

He handed my mom three twenty dollar bills as he told us to figure out dinner on our own, all while still kicking us out. ‘Get out of my face. I don’t want to see you. Go. Leave. Just leave. I don’t care if you starve. Just go.’

As we left, we heard people murmuring ‘that sounds like our family.’ (So if you’re judging my dad, just know there are more people like him than you think. Remember, dysfunctional is the typical family.)

Kicked out of Germany, we went on the search for our dinner, which was not easy. Sixty dollars may seem cheap but in the world of Epcot it ruled out just about everything minus McDonald’s… Except the McDonald’s cart only served fries and had closed for the night. Fabulous! Starvation was exactly what I wanted. Not.

Luckily, we were able to find one (and seriously, the only one) restaurant that we could afford. The American restaurant, the Liberty Inn! Sadly we just barely had enough for the counter service food which we could have got in any of the other restaurants back in the main portion of Disney. So much for a nice meal, the whole point of going to Epcot.

We enjoyed that mediocre food and then the spectacular light show, IllumiNations, before the park closed. We sat at our rental car for close to an hour, watching all the cars file out till we were close to the only car left and my dad finally showed up.

He said that he was surprised we waited for him after he kicked us out and that he’d been lost in the parking lot for the past hour. That partially made up for being kicked out of Germany, but not as good as the actual story, because how many people can say they’ve been kicked out of Germany?

Brianna Krueger is the Chief Editor for Wandering Educators.

All photos courtesy and copyright Brianna Krueger