Ich Spreche Deutsch!

Hallo, Ich Heisse Duck; Munchen ist sehr gut, ja? Ja.  Abendzeitung! Blah blah blah. 

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm, Sweden.  I badly need a shower but it looks so dirty that I’m worried it’ll shoot out grime instead of water or alternatively just come to life and consume me in its filthiness.  There’s a baby panda being measured on the television though so everything’s nice and balanced.

Anyway, I am in Stockholm, where I cannot speak a word of the language; compared to Swedish I’m practically fluent in German by now.  I can do all kinds of things, like ask for beer, ask where things are, and say ‘excuse me’ if I bump into someone, which is all you need, really.  There have been some quite funny moments over my last three weeks in Munich involving me using some very haphazard German in order to get my point across.  Today, at the airport, I forgot to bring a little plastic bag to put my liquids in so I had to buy one from a machine.  The machine, alas, did not accept my €2 coin, leading me on a wild goose chase around the airport:

This was probably not exactly how it happened but my memory is fuzzy.

One of my favourites was when I was trying to ask for a take away box for my food in a restaurant but I forgot the word for ‘takeaway box’ right has I was about to say it, making me do a really weird hand motion:

It’s kind of difficult to depict, but it made it look as if I was asking for something else entirely.

The trouble with Germans is that they are too nice; they don’t allow you to struggle through your sentences and learn as you go, but, instead, they cut you off and begin speaking in English.  I was very pleased with myself when I was ALONE IN HAUPTBAHNHOF STATION and managed to ASK FOR DIRECTIONS!!!! I walked proudly up to a lady in a reflective jacket and this happened:

After our tour of Scandinavia, which I’m sure will involve having very expensive ice cream stolen by seagulls at the Helsinki docks, we will be returning to Germany and I’ll get more opportunities to practice my superior language skills.

Auf Wiedersehn!