This may sound completely at a tangent, but I’m trying to find some funny stories in regards to language and customs in regions people have traveled to (preferably conflict between your own and others). They can be your own stories, links to websites or comedians, one liners, etc…
Help!
So, After I graduated I traveled for about 7 weeks in Europe with my then-boyfriend. Our last destination was Prague, and we treated ourselves by renting a apartment for a week instead of doing the hostel/pension thing.
So, all excited about having a full kitchen we trot out to the grocery stre down the block. It wasn’t a huge supermarket, neither was it a tiny closet. Where I come from, we’d call it a “corner store.” It has anything you might possibly need on an everyday basis – toilet paper, milk, ballpoint pens, hamburger meat, candy bars, etc.
So, we want to pick up some food to make a nice breakfast. Coffee: check. Milk: check. Bread: check. Ham: check. Butter: check. But the eggs… where are the eggs? Now, every supermarket we had been through in 6 countries offered eggs in vaguely egg-carton shaped containers. I scoured the store, twice, with no luck. My SO suggested that perhaps they did not have eggs. Inconceivable! I declared. I’d just have to ask.
I got the attention of a clerk. “Excuse me,” I said in Russian. “I need eggs.” “I don’t speak Russian. German?” replied the clerk. Don’t speak Russian? What the heck kind of post-Soviet country is this, anyway!? Unfortunately, I know exactly 9 words of German and none of them are “egg.” English? French? Spanish? Italian? I exhausted my supply of languages in which I knew the word for “egg” without finding any means of mutually understandable communication.
I fell back on the universal language. No, not love, silly: pantomine. I shaped an egg with my hands. I mimed cracking one open. Finally, I flapped my wings and clucked like a chicken. (a small crowd was forming). I wanted my eggs, dammit. The clerk gave me a considering look. She lead me to a display of chicken parts. I shook my head and pointed to the chicken parts and mimed cracking an egg again. She grabbed my hand and lead me to a milk crate filled with small paper bags. She opened one. Each contained 5 eggs. I was beside myself with joy.
“Yes!” I managed in Czech. “Thank You!” She laughed and shook her head.
Hmmm…welp, when I was in London, me and my friends tried to find the Tube station. I asked for directions to the subway, and when we got there, we found out it means something different in England. An English subway is a pedestrian underpass. No trains.
When we did find the right place, I kept looking for the Soca Line on the map. That’s what I thought the lady told me. She actually said CIRCLE line. That accent thing, ya know.
A coworker who travelled to England told me she got some stares and raised eyebrows when she finished her dinner and said “Whew, I’m stuffed!” That’s why the Norman Bates line in Psycho where he said “My favorite hobby is stuffing birds” got so many laughs in England.
I was employing a guide around Lalibela, Ethiopia. I thought he might have asthma or some other lung ailment because every once in a while, he would do a sharp intake of breath, like he was having trouble getting enough air.
He agreed to guide me to a local monastery, carved out of the face of a mountain. The walk was a couple of miles from town. I imagined myself walking slowly with him, taking my time and making generous allowances for his breathing problems.
We hit the road. He clambered up the trail like he was walking downhill. I was huffing and puffing after half a mile, and I’m in good shape. (It was to become a common experience in Ethiopia, where most of the country is on a mountainous plateau 7000 feet above sea level and everyone has the hearts of marathon runners. I’ve never been so embarrassed to live on the coast.)
I was confused and a little chagrined - I was the one who ended up being waited on. I paid more attention to the breath intake move, especially when other people repeated it.
I eventually learned that a sharp intake of breath plus the raising of eyebrows is an alternative way of saying “yes” in the Ethiopian culture - kind of a nodding gesture. It was a great lesson in the massive vocabulary of body language.
Some classmates and I did a group tour of Europe just prior to the senior year of high school. Most of us being 16 or seventeen, we took full advantage of being able to drink in every coutry we went to (except England, they actually card!).
In this little country western bar in Zermatt, Switzerland (I kid you not, it was a country western bar at the base of the friggin’ Matterhorn, and all the patrons were wearing cowboy boots and stetsons!), we cocky youths sauntered up to the counter and started ordering. A tall, blond, lovely Swiss maiden was bartending. I asked for a screwdriver (vodka and orange juice) and this look of pure confusion crossed her face. I’m thinking - oh no! she’s not going to let me drink! - but then my entourage chimed in and started repeating a screwdriver, a screwdriver. She mimed for us to wait a moment and disappeared itno the back, presumably to grab someone who could translate. But when she came back, she was holding a screwdriver - the tool. Phillips head, IIRC.
We all burst out laughing as the poor woman just stood there embarrassed. Finally somebody spoke up and told her that I meant “vodka and OJ”, and she did the whole forehead smack thing (I guess it’s an internationally understood gesture). I tipped her nicely.
Not much of a story, but when I was in China in 2000, I was picked up at the airport by the local tour guides to be taken to my Yangtze River cruise boat but they told me the boat was late and they were taking me to the “Hard Bed Inn” where the cruise was meeting instead and we would board the next morning. I was tired enough, I didn’t care how hard the beds were, but thought it was a funny name for a Hotel. Immagine my surprise when we finally arrived at the “Holiday Inn”. I still call them that whenever I see the sign.