THE best Bavarian cream pie

My grandpa was stationed in Germany after the war. And when I was very small he told me about this little restaurant that served THE best Bavarian cream pie. Apparently he went there every opportunity he had. He couldn't get enough of that Bavarian cream pie - it was absolutely unreal.

Well, a few years ago, my grandpa found out that he had a terminal illness, and only had a few months left to live. So, he booked a deluxe vacation cruise to Europe that would eventually take him to that little town in Germany with the famous Bavarian cream pie.

A few weeks into the cruise, the ship started slowly sinking off of the coast of Portugal. I don't know if you remember that, but it was all over the news at the time. Well the life raft that my grandpa was in also turned out to be slowly leaking. So he helped all of the people that were in his life raft onto another one, but he wouldn't get on himself because it was already so overloaded. So, my grandpa, and I'm not making this up. This was in the news. My grandpa, at 84 years old, swims for over a mile in the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of Portugal.

Water-logged and exhausted, he hitches a ride and gets dropped off about 100 miles outside his destination in Germany. Trying to cross a main highway, he gets clipped by the side mirror of a car, but not badly, and he manages to hitch another ride with some people headed for Germany.

Eventually he catches a bus and arrives in this little town in Germany that he remembered from his youth. He's thrilled to find the old restaurant that he'd loved so much 60 years ago, and he walks in and takes his usual seat at the table by the window. The waitress comes over and my grandpa says, (my grandpa spoke German fluently, by the way), he says, "I know exactly what I want. You have no idea what I've had to go through to get here. I would love a nice big slice of your wonderful Bavarian cream pie."

The waitress says, "Sorry, Sir - but we're all out of Bavarian cream."

My grandpa says, "Apple's fine."