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Language Barriers

tigisfat said:
, but for the most part everyone's always cutting it up. I've never heard anyone say that the Army (or any US Service) doesn't have a sense of humor on duty.


I've also spent a little bit of time with the RAF, and I'll admit those guys are pretty funny.
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Individuals, agreed - but once one of those field officers arrives... !

On another note, have you ever tried kidding a US Customs and Immigration man? Don't. They tend to take it badly, I gather. Which means I can't resist...

I was coming back across the US-Mexico border with my (German) wife, so there you have 2 unusual passports to begin with.
The officer takes a look in mine and sees the visa waiver stub pushed negligently in-between two pages.
"Sir, you should staple this into your passport, sir" he says, rather flatly.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that," I answered.
"Why not, sir?"
"Well, it's Her Majesty's property. She wouldn't like it."
He just stared...

Harmless fun.
 
ndicki said:
On another note, have you ever tried kidding a US Customs and Immigration man? Don't. They tend to take it badly, I gather. Which means I can't resist...
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People taking stuff too seriously are just asking to be trolled.
If you end up in detention, just say "That was soooo worth it!" to youself over and over again. :icon_lol:
 
Fun at the border...

I once had a quite nice encounter with a GDR border guard, should have been back in 1987:
We were using the Transit-Autobahn across the GDR from West-Berlin to West-Germany. These East-German guards weren't known for their sense of humour but this guy took me by surprise.

When leaving West-Berlin and entering the GDR checkpoint, you had to claim which of the three routes available you were about to take. At the West-German/East-German border, the adjacent checkpoints had different designations: For the southern route, it was "Hirschberg" at the GDR side and "Rudolphstein" at the West-German (Bavarian) side. The GDR officials emphasized on naming the GDR designation of the checkpoint, otherwise a more-or-less annoying indoctrination was about to follow. We should have said "Hirschberg" then...

Our driver insisted on the Bavarian designation and stated:
"I want to leave your country via Rudolphstein!"

Instead of making a fuss out of it, the GDR guard said:
"Me too!"

Don't know how long this guard stayed in service then...

Cheers,
Markus.
 
tigisfat said:
:icon_lol: Because for some reason, a good portion of everyone on the planet does speak great English. Well, maybe except for the French..
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You forgot to mention the Spanish :icon_lol: (no offence intended either). Love the accent native speakers of English have when speaking French (and vice versa!)...sounds a bit like 'Allo 'Allo' to me.
tigisfat said:
I was just never exposed to other languages. He's right, America's just huge. I've travelled abroad quite a bit, and I gotta say that I'm embarassed at how well I DON'T speak the new languages I think I've tought myself.
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Taught :wavey:...I think :).

Language is something very fascinating but very difficult to understand. There are so many things that influence it. Economical/social background of someone, places, friends, politics, cultural differences,...(student of applied linguistics here).

I can't but agree with Bjoern...the mistakes I see on forums, (especially from native speakers), oh dear...
 
Wild Bill Kelso said:
I once had a quite nice encounter with a GDR border guard, should have been back in 1987:
We were using the Transit-Autobahn across the GDR from West-Berlin to West-Germany. These East-German guards weren't known for their sense of humour but this guy took me by surprise.

When leaving West-Berlin and entering the GDR checkpoint, you had to claim which of the three routes available you were about to take. At the West-German/East-German border, the adjacent checkpoints had different designations: For the southern route, it was "Hirschberg" at the GDR side and "Rudolphstein" at the West-German (Bavarian) side. The GDR officials emphasized on naming the GDR designation of the checkpoint, otherwise a more-or-less annoying indoctrination was about to follow. We should have said "Hirschberg" then...

Our driver insisted on the Bavarian designation and stated:
"I want to leave your country via Rudolphstein!"

Instead of making a fuss out of it, the GDR guard said:
"Me too!"

Don't know how long this guard stayed in service then...

Cheers,
Markus.
Click to expand...

I had a similar encounter with the GDR...

As an 11 year old kid, I bought an electric train set in Magdeburg with my pocket money! (1:5 exchange rate on the black market), and we had to declare everything at the border.
You were not allowed to export electrical goods to the West, so it got confiscated...until I started crying.
The border officer shut his eyes and let us pass with my train!
Children's crying is a universal language!
 
personally i have been to most countries in Europe
sometimes its helpful not to speak the language
especially when you deal with the police:monkies:
if you drive on the wrong side of the road in Spain
and 2 motorcycle police aim machine guns at you
it is wise that you put your hands in the air
and scream Englaise Enlaise and run around looking like an idiot
saved my life a time or two :wavey:
the worse place i have encounted is Paris
no one wants to help or speak anything but French
once you go outside of the city
great people
then again i speak English in Louisiana and they dont understand me either
LOL
H
 
my worst experience in europe was Frankfurt
the locals were wonderful
but the place where i was working was full of US GI's
and they were hill
thats the only time i ever Hated working in europe
H
 
Bjoern said:
Only? From what I've heard it was 1:20 or so and 1:10 on good days.
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Yes, it was my East German Uncle! He knew how to rip us off, otherwise you would be reported!
He was kind of a "Doppelagent", on the Stasi books, but also liked to gain from western currencies, TV, magazines and newspapers, well everything that was banned! (1988).
 
stuartcox said:
You were not allowed to export electrical goods to the West...
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Yep. Any high-class goods especially determined to the western market to gain western currencies (such as porcelain from Meissen, cameras or model trains) were banned from private export.

On the flipside, my museum railroad club was able to set some nice deals with the GDR Reichsbahn...

Cheers,
Markus.
 
stuartcox said:
Yes, it was my East German Uncle! He knew how to rip us off, otherwise you would be reported!
He was kind of a "Doppelagent", on the Stasi books, but also liked to gain from western currencies, TV, magazines and newspapers, well everything that was banned! (1988).
Click to expand...

Used every possibility. Heh. :d

1988? Might have been around the time that friends of ours went "rogue" :)d) and left us their fishtank *and* a whole set of model trains, the latter of which served me and my dad excellently till the early 2000s. Loved those TT scale models.
 
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