Auf Deutshe, bitte

I'm in Germany.
The past few days have been packed with linguistic confusion.
From the moment the Pani (Frau?) at the bus stop (wo ist die bushaltestelle bitte?) asked me something and I answered: 'nie wiem... uh... no... crap... ich weiss nicht', I knew it would be disastrous.

It started out well. I bought a beautiful Berlitz phrase book and CD from Borders in Stansted airport (at 6.45am there's not even too much of a queue) and hit the books straight away. With a large cup of coffee.
By the time we landed at Frankfurt-Hahn, I was at least able to ask for a ticket to Saarbruecken. Not bad for a Friday morning. The ticket guy answered by giving me directions, and that's no problem: apart from anything else, it usually consists largely of gesticulation, and how can you go wrong with that?

The bus terminal at Saarbruecken Hauptbahnhof is extremely complicated, with buses in two lanes and trams down the middle (four 'platforms' in all).

I was there for over an hour.

It wasn't even a linguistic problem: I simply couldn't spot my bus (being woken up at 4am doesn't do much for my powers of observation).

Twice I saw the vehicle in question drawing in to land over on the other side of the bus station. I picked up suitcase, computer bag, handbag, waterbottle and passport and legged it across the tram tracks, narrowly missing falling over the steps in the middle platform.

I reached the other side just as it was pulling away.

The second time I made it, presented myself - rather out of breath - at the drivers' doorway, and gasped 'Jugendherberge bitte!'
- You have to go back to the other side.
... said the bus driver, in English.

After another half hour, another six or seven buses which were manifestly not for me, and the company of several different bus stop drunks, I gave up and headed for the taxi rank.

Three days later, my German is only slightly improved: I now know the following:

Abendessen
Mittagessen
Fruhstuck
Wurst
Ein Weissbier bitte
and 'Ich mochte gern eine Flasche Wasser fur die Dolmetscherin'

The essentials, really.

Tips for language acquisition... (ensure tongue remains firmly in cheek at all times) part I.

There's this brilliant website for student/trainee interpreters which is full of advice for practising etc. By far the best time to consult it is last thing at night, so you can go to bed and dream about all the great things you're going to do tomorrow.

One section on this website is a series of ten tips for learning a new language, written by an EU staff interpreter- using Polish as an example- and they are beautiful, really beautiful, all about crosswords and song lyrics and etymologies (I love etymology, don't get me wrong- don't get me started either, you'll regret it). However, given that I am the sort of irresponsible person who doesn't live in the Real World and forgets to empty their bin on a Friday and hangs out with malorientated motorists, students and sacristans, most of them are utterly beyond me.

[Here's the link: http://interpreters.free.fr/language/dekalog.htm]

So, with all due respect and a great deal of humility, I have compiled my own ten observations on how to eat, sleep and breathe foreign vocab (Don't inhale. It might go to your head). These are strictly aimed at former pre-exam crammers who only limped through their A-levels by burning vocabulary onto their retinas in the half hour before the doors opened and consequently have a short term memory with a strict "one in, one out" on-the-door policy within any twenty-four hour period.

Here are numbers one to five:

1/ Alcohol. Ok, so it's stating the obvious. But anyone who's tried to speak French will know how a ballon de rouge or four can turn you into Proust with beer-goggles (also known to improve singing ability, even in the most hopeless cases). Although in the case of Polish it may simply increase your confidence to the extent that you start adding -owac and -owany to the end of English words and conjugating everything in the genitive just to hedge your bets.*
If all else fails, you can always sit and translate the label on the back of the bottle (for 'translate', read 'bug your Polish friends for translations of...').
Warning: any vocabulary gleaned in this manner will almost certainly be forgotten the next morning.

2/ Biology. Remember those girls who came back from their Erasmus semester with a photo of some sloe-eyed Sicilian in their purses and a fluent command of the Italian idiom? Fraternizing with the natives is a long-established method for acquiring vocabulary without trying too hard, and you may even enjoy yourself. For fairly logical biological reasons, this works much better for girls than for guys. The irony therein is that Polish women, without exception, all look like supermodels**, while the guys look, well, pretty similar to British guys (socks under sandals, terrible haircuts and so on).
Caution should be exercised when using vocabulary acquired in this manner in a professional context.

3/ Crime. Have something stolen. As yet (touch wood) this method remains untested in Poland, but was experienced in a bizarre way involving a rented bike in Italy (bizarre because said bike was returned three days later when the end-of-term party season finished. Northerners are Weird). Following the theft you are compelled to go down to the local nick and attempt to communicate. You then have to pretend not to hear the Entire Station giggling like big girls because your driving licence ID gives your first name as 'Miss'- which, everywhere in Europe except the UK, designates a beauty pageant entrant.
You will never, ever forget the Italian word for a bike lock.

4/ Babcia. Rent a sofa from someone's grandmother in Nowa Huta. This may also be a direct consequence of quarter-life-crisis financial angst. There is No Chance that she'll be speaking any English to you, and you'll have to pick up one or two Polish words otherwise you won't get any dinner. As an interesting side effect, you will learn how to interpret the babcia growl, commonly uttered in queues if you complain that they may have pushed in front of you. Equally common on the tram: if accompanied by brandished umbrella, relinquish your seat Immediately.

5/ Sport. Go jogging in shorts. Very quickly pick up rude things to shout at lorry drivers.
Again, this is generally one for the girls, although you'd be surprised.
And see cautionary note to no. 2.
Interestingly, if you want to steal something on the Bvd de Clichy, this is probably a good way to get away with it.

To be continued...

*At all costs, avoid pidgin German e.g. 'Ich habe weile zutrinken und ich bin auf mein face gesmaschd. Ist hier in die nahe eine taksihaltestelle?'
**Although she will spend the next fifty years metamorphosing into a fierce babcia with a vicious umbrella- see point 4/. Is there any section of the Polish demographic I haven't managed to offend yet?

Interpreting, part II

'Ladles and Gelatin,

I am extremely grapefruit for the warm red-setter I always receive here and I hope as the days collapse we will have the misfortune to make one another's aquarium, but first I would like to begin with an amusing antelope...'

This is what I hope is not coming out of my mouth on the rare occasions on which I have volunteered as an interpreter since graduation.

The reason for my foray into the world of departure lounges, German and the international Financial Times was to spend a week volunteering in a gigantic fairy-tale castle perched on top of a mountain overlooking Lake Geneva. The building is a former hotel, unchanged since F. Scott Fitzgerald, where you feel you ought really to spend your evenings flitting aesthetically between the arches of the stone balconies in a wispy dress, sipping a gin fizz, or tripping a waltz underneath the chandelier in the great hall, whilst waiting for the 1930s to come crashing in. I half expected to have to dress for dinner.
Or to find a body in a remote linen closet at the far end of the east wing on the fifth floor. I am sure I spotted M'sieur Poirot at breakfast on Sunday morning, examining the relative thickness of brioche slices ('Eh bien, Mademoiselle, your command of ze French it is Most Excellent').

This last comment sadly betrayed by my liaison performance:
- 'Une minute! Une!'
hissed my colleague, demonstrating narrow-minded French conformity to gender stereotypes. Clearly the Academie Francaise is in need of a few sessions with Tinky Winky et al.

German tactfully has a neuter gender, as I was reminded in a German workshop run by a tiny yet terrifying intern who turned out to be achtzehn jahre alt. Most importantly, I learnt 'Wie geht es dir?'- 'how's it going, dear?'.

On the final night there was a talent show, which I got to watch since it was all in either English or Russian (neither of which I understand).
Out of all the acts, the hits were:
- A dignitary from a local NGO being a thoroughly Good Sport and miming the Theory and Practice of sewing on a button (incidentally, somebody miming the action of sewing their trouserleg to their sleeve is not at all dissimilar to someone trying to re-enact the action of banging their kneecap on the bathroom sink using the office radiator...)
- A part boy-band - part folk group improvising on the Titanic theme tune, complete with nerdy Japanese boy on the piano, dishy South American boy on the recorder and re-enactment of the 'I'm flying!' scene on the dais under the chandelier.
- Ukrainian 'Miss Universe' in drag: three strapping Slav chaps with cheekbones you could spread butter on, wearing their girlfriends' sarongs over their jeans. Extracts from the relay from the Russian booth: 'No, Kostya, you went first... in... the sauna this morning...' and: 'There is no swimsuit round. This is an intellectual competition.'

Near misses were any songs that were reminiscent of the karaoke on ul. Grodzka...

N.B. the author of this blog would like it to be known that she is Thoroughly Professional in all her linguistic undertakings and is well aware of the difference between male and female. Except in that club in Leicester once: that was really confusing. And occasionally when reading Jeanette Winterson.

Leibe Gott! Was machen wir jetzt...

Naturally, the morning I was to spend five and a half hours jetsetting and looking chic in departure departure lounges dahling (at least that had been the plan), I woke up shivering and aching, having developed something akin to the bubonic plague from tonsils outwards. To top it all off I managed to bang my kneecap sideways on the edge of the bathroom sink whilst reeling my way unsteadily through my morning ablutions.
[author's note- I wrote this a week ago in the redundant 'addresses' section of my diary, when sitting in said airport lounge, and my mind is boggling at the logistics of the kneecap episode. How kneecap and sink managed to be in such close proximity with the force required to produce a bang is a mystery to me. I have been trying to re-enact the scene using the radiator at work, but to no avail.].

Of course, it started to rain almost as I stepped out of the front door. What's more, I managed to buy the pastry from the very bottom of the pile at the bakery stand: the one where the creme patissiere (or Polish approximation of it) had started to look translucent and slightly crusted at the edges. Clearly this pastry had been out late last night, had a couple of beers and tottered home from a sweaty session at Prozak via ul. Starowislna, singing football songs through a mouthful of kebab.

Today, even after three months of walking to work, I was about to send my carbon footprint into the red.
Perversely, I was more excited than anything about trying out my pre-GCSE German during the two hour changeover at Munich airport. Although 'Ich bin der Grosse Muzzy' turned out not to be the greatest success at passport control. And 'Die Prinzessin leibt der Gartner?!' did very little for my departure lounge chic.

I have always been cynical about national stereotyping. I've met happy Russians, disorganised Germans, punctual Italians, and even one or two friendly French people, and I like to keep an open mind (and a stiff upper lip) about such things. However, where airports are concerned it's another story. Compared to Krakow Balice, Munich was spacious, cool, efficient [author's note: any similarity to a car brochure is entirely work-induced and not her fault]. And this to extremes: automatically retracting hand towels anyone?
Not seeing my flight displayed, I went to the next gate to find out what was going on.
-'Sorry, I have to close the flight. I can't talk to you'
I was really too sick to behave badly and feeling desperately in need of my duvet, otherwise words would have been had. I moved on to the next gate:
-'Sorry, I can't answer your question. You have to go to the service desk. (All this was in impeccable English, of course)
The service desk was upstairs. I had visions of my flight taking off with one seat painfully empty, and my unclaimed suitcase circling around and around the baggage carousel in Geneva like the coconut Quality Street on Boxing Day.

Around forty minutes later I was roused from my daydream by 'Final and urgent boarding call for flight LH6439 to Geneva, Gate 83'. I leapt up and sprinted for the bus, scattering the free international edition Financial Times in a salmon-pink paper trail behind me.

In spite of my new-found enthusiasm for the wunders of the Deutsche language, it simply hadn't occurred to me that 'Genf' and 'Geneva' were one and the same...

Circles and Triangles

Recent events (a vicious lurgy, a parental visit, lack of internet last weekend) have kept me quiet for a while. Huge sighs of relief all round. No longer! I am back, and speaking out for peace, democracy and the freedom to make an ass of myself in four different languages.

In my absence, I have managed to be responsible for destroying several acres of rainforest in the form of tissues (not to mention a lingering tang of Vick's vaporub wafting through the streets of Kazimierz), ruining the parental weight-loss diet and (almost) causing frozen turkeys to be fired into French jet engines- as opposed to defrosted seagulls. Clearly I've spent too long in Tesco, thinking of Christmas.

But you don't want to hear about any of that.

In Poland, there is a popular television programme for small children where four adults, dressed in babygros, with large false bottoms and mysterious television screens on their bellies, romp around a giant golf course. I'm sure you know the one. They live on toast and custard, speak slightly better Polish than I do, and play with oversized accessories: one has a ball, one a spotty hat, one... a handbag.
This display of sartorial elegance has caused a flurry of gender confusion across the somewhat conservative Polish government, as the handbag-wielding character in question happens to pronounce its gurgles in a rich baritone.

I would like to protest. A certain amount of gender-confusion is inevitable once you cross the language barrier and find yourself faced with the inevitable two doors on the other side of the service station forecourt. France and Italy are not too much of a problem: France is M and F and Italy (signori/signore) usually just has one door anyway, or a nice picture. German-speaking countries are slightly more problematic: H versus D. I know enough German to order ice-cream, tell people the name of my favourite pop group, and ask for the bahnhof. But not enough to prevent me from blundering through what is very quickly very obviously the wrong door, from time to time.
(Incidentally, my party-piece is: 'Leibe Gott! Ich habe mein portmonnaie im bus vergessen! Was machen wir jetzt?!' I am hoping that, exclaimed in the right tone of voice during a four-hour stop-over in Munich airport, this phrase will cause strapping young Teutonic types to rush over and buy me coffee.)

Only in Poland, however, have I stood in the corridor, totally stumped, listening helplessly to the opening credits of the film whilst trying to decide whether my feminine mystique was best identified by a circle or a triangle.

And finally:
Sticker seen on the the inside of a (unisex) cubicle door in a bar in Kazimierz:
'Ta toaleta promuje homoseksualism' - illustrated by a merrily dancing Tinky Winky.
Rather too much information, but entertaining nonetheless.