#52

The story of a German girl in a youth hostel who said to someone who was smoking “You shouldn’t do that, you’ll get crabs!”.

Cancer in German is Krebs, the mix-up is understandable.

1 Like
#53

D’accord just means OK, doesn’t it?

#54

I lived in Japan for two years, I could do a hundred of these. I remember once making someone in a tiny restaurant so exasperated as I tried to explain that I didn’t want fish flakes with my tofu that he went and closed the kitchen for the night (it was a very small hole in the wall place)

1 Like
#55

Got another one.

I did an internship in Portugal for four months as part of my year abroad and had only been learning Portuguese ab initio for a couple of years at uni. On my first day at work, I went to a cafe for lunch, got really flustered because I couldn’t understand the northern accent and then tried to leave with whatever fried thing I’d pointed to on the deli counter. The door said “puxe” (pronounced “push”) so I spent some time leaning against the door getting laughed at by old men in the cafe while the owner kept telling me to “push!” Later that day I learned that puxe is Portuguese for pull.

11 Likes
#56

:grinning: mate yours are absolute gold.

#57

we got through a week in remote places in Slovenia where no-one spoke English using my wife’s fairly good Spanish vis-a-vis the locals’ fairly good Italian. :thumbsup:

1 Like
#58

Yeah, Tasche vs. Tisch

Silly mistake but I was a few beers deep and getting sloppy and overconfident with my german innit

#59

similarly my ex’s parents had a house in Andalucia they wanted to call it “Three Shells” but accidentally put a sign up at the gate saying “Three Pussies” or something

5 Likes
#60

Were you trying to get cavity search?

#61

I must have been 10 or so, on holiday in Lanzarote. Mum and I went for ice cream. I pointed at the green one and asked for what I thought was going to be mint choc chip. The ice cream seller found my attempts at whatever I was burbling out “Il glace mint chocolat?” or something similar.

Ended up being pistachio.

Hated them ever since.

2 Likes
#62

First time I came to Glasgow to look round we went in this chippy and the woman serving us was Eastern European, we ordered, waited, then the guy frying the chips turned round and started talking to her in Romanian or somethi… oh know he was talking to us in Glasgwegian. Ignored him the first two times he said whatever it was before realising.

#63

I’ve got a mate who was in Belgium, and wanted a travel adapter to charge his phone or something. He went into a pharmacy and, not speaking the language, said to the guy behind the counter, “er… travel adapter?”

The guy just looked at him, so my mate repeated it slower (classic British person abroad strategy), while making a gesture with his hands that was the left hand flat like a wall, the right with all five fingers in like a spider position pressing against the left (supposed to resemble a plug, I assume).

The guy behind the counter said in perfect English, “Yes, I understand you, but this is a pharmacy.”

12 Likes
#64

The word “concha” can mean both. My mum pretends she doesn’t know that they are different words in English and calls shells “cunts”.

6 Likes
#65

:rofl:

#66

This one started off a bit embarrassing but turned out amazing.

Restaurant in Paris, really lovely little place with a wine list as thick as War and Peace and it also doubled up as a chess club so loads of old dudes playing chess at some of the tables. Menu was totally indecipherable to me as a GCSE standard French speaker. Can normally get the gist - ok this one’s chicken, beef etc - but I didn’t understand a word. Feeling tired and not up for trying to converse with the waiter we decided to pick stuff at random, but the waiter started asking us questions… we stared blankly back at him… he started pointing to various things on the menu and doing animal impressions and pointing to unlikely bits of his body - arse, feet etc. Eventually he took us into the actual kitchen and gave us little tastes of everything - like EVERYTHING to the extent we were quite full afterwards. The thing I remember most was these little stuffed chicken stomachs that I obviously liked so much he just kept giving me one after the other, and eating them himself, and gave us some shots back there and stuff. Lovely stuff.

#67

Confusing the French for ‘I am hot’ as in temperature with ‘I am in heat’ i.e. I want the sex

2 Likes
#68

I went on a school trip to Berlin not long after the wall came down - you could travel to the eastern side but it was still v v different to the western side

A girl in the group I was with wanted camera film - so we dopily filed into the chemists, only to find wooden counters and all the stock in little wooden drawers behind those counters

there was no camera film as it wasn’t like Boots

#69

I think that this my favourite so far

#70

First time in Berlin I didn’t realise that if you say “thank you/danke” as you hand over money for something it means “keep the change”. THought we were being comprehensively fleeced by literally every vendor we encountered from the taxi driver from the airport to the first coffee we bought etc etc until in a bar on our first night the bartender explained to us our error as we apparently were about to give him a 45 euro tip for a couple of bottles of amstel.

2 Likes
#71

This happened to me in America. Sort of. I didn’t know you had to ask for your change, or it was assumed you were tipping. Bought a water with a $20, and when they thanked me profusely, I thought it was just that fabled American customer service with a smile.