Dine Like You're Dining With Royalty
...you never know when good manners will come in handy
A new monarch took the reins in Denmark today. Having lived in the land of fairytales for ten years, the country where I met my wife means a lot to me. This morning, we were up before 3:00 am to stream Danish TV as the country’s citizens filled the streets of the capital, Copenhagen, to celebrate the occasion.
Fun fact about King Frederik X. He crashed our wedding.
Kirsten had a client who was a promoter for some Danish music legends. A “friends-and-family” deal allowed us to hire Henning Stærk and his band. As the dance was kicking off, then-Crown Prince Frederik, who was on a night out with some of his special forces friends in the hotel wine cellar, recognized the music. He hung out in the doorway of the ballroom to enjoy a few tunes. (Unbelievably, although we allowed the uninvited guest to enjoy our wedding, we weren’t invited to his wedding two years later.)
This post is to pay homage to the country that means so much to us.
It’s also a little reminder to those who say they don’t need to learn something because they’ll never have any use for it…
When I was a kid, the title of this story was often repeated by my parents during dinner. It was one of the least-liked lines my brothers and I heard. The only sentence that got a worse reaction during dinner-table discussions was when my Dad would answer my little brother’s complaints with: “Did I ever tell you what it was like when I was a little boy?”
The man who brought this line into our lives was a Norwegian engineer. My parents became acquainted with him when he was in our small mountain town working on a gondola project. I don’t remember the man, and many years would pass before I truly understood the meaning of his words. They certainly meant nothing to three little hillbilly boys growing up in the Rocky Mountains with no dreams of ever visiting England and dining with the Queen.
The man told my parents that he raised his children to be polite, educated and well-informed citizens. Table manners were enforced by telling them to “dine like they were dining with the queen!” He reasoned that if they ever found themselves in a formal situation, maybe even with a royal presence, they would be prepared and capable.
My brothers and I wondered what it looked like in his kids’ school cafeteria. We envisioned these dainty educated children, sitting quietly and politely drinking their tea with their pinky fingers pointing out, while food fights and other “normal” canteen chaos erupted around them.
Attention to detail was never a big part of my conscious life growing up. My mother loved to tell the story of a family Saturday Spring Cleaning day. To her amazement, I stayed in my room for hours before I finally emerged and proudly declared that my room was ready for her inspection. She couldn’t find one single thing that had changed since I had entered the room three or four hours earlier. I had likely passed the time sitting on the floor commentating on an invisible hockey game in which I was also the star goalie… in any case, no socks had been put in dresser drawers and dust bunnies peacefully watched the hockey game from under my bed without disruption.
My attention to detail changed quite dramatically when I started in the hotel business. The hotel was an extremely well-run, five-star property. Attention to detail was everyone’s business and everyone was good at it. We had Mr. P’s Pick-Up Club. Mr. P was an accountant, so his attention to detail was useful there. Membership in his Pick-Up Club was mandatory. It meant that wherever you were in the hotel if you saw something that should be fixed, you fixed it. If there was a scrap of paper on the ground, you picked it up. If a chair in the lobby had been moved, you moved it back to where it belonged. Lots of people complained about Mr. P and that they were being asked to do something that “wasn’t their job”, but I’m willing to bet that almost every guest experienced the result. It was a great hotel.
When large conferences and banquets were hosted, staff from many departments were recruited to transform the conference room into an elegant dining room. Some people would be tasked with looking down long rows of chairs to ensure that they lined up perfectly. Others would walk down the length of the dining table to ensure that knives and forks were exactly one thumbnail from the edge of the table. When the guests walked in, the perfection would strike them at first glance.
As my grandma would say, “There was a place for everything and everything was in its place.”
30 years later, I found my understanding of what the Norwegian engineer had meant. It wasn’t about being asked to dine at the queen’s table as it was being prepared in case she came to dine at yours. Knowing that you have paid attention to detail is one of the best ways to relax in the moment.
After moving to Copenhagen, marrying the love of my life and getting a ten-year-old daughter as a bonus part of the package, I’ll admit that I used the same sentence to try to teach her table manners and etiquette.
She responded just like I had when I was ten.
One of our hotels in Copenhagen had a long-serving duty manager who, if her husband’s father’s father had been a firstborn rather than a second-born child, might have ascended a throne. Instead, she was on the periphery of European royal families and worked in a hotel. Her family socialized with the Royal Family. She played bridge with the Queen.
She was a real Princess.
One evening she invited us to have dinner with her at the hotel. Our daughter was excited and nervous. I was nervous too! How much of that “Dine like you’re dining with the Queen” had sunk in?
As we sat down, our daughter, proving she was more excited than nervous immediately broke the ice and asked for permission to ask the princess a question.
“What’s it like to be a real Princess?”
After the laughter and surprise subsided, we all agreed that princesses are people too.
They might just be a little bit better at dining like they're dining with the queen because sometimes they get to practice in real life.
Stay safe, Always Care
P.S.: On December 30, the day before Queen Margrethe II announced her pending abdication during her New Year’s message to the people, Princess Ilona zu Schaumburg-Lippe passed away. May she rest in peace and may warm memories of her live on in others as they do in us.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and gave me a life I never dreamed of.
In addition to my love for writing, I’m a professor, an educator, and a consultant with a passion for hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
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