Mistaken Identity

Whenever I have traveled to another country, I have encountered funny experiences. One such experience happened in Germany. I couldn’t speak German, but I tried to learn helpful words like “please” and “thank you” from a German-English dictionary. I also tried to learn German words from my experiences. One time I went to a McDonalds and I wanted to order an ice cream cone. The cashier told me I couldn’t have one because the machine was “kaput.” Now, I had heard that word in English, but I hadn’t realized that it was a German word that meant “broken.” Later that day, I was at a train station and needed to make a phone call. One of the public phones was broken. After I figured that out, I saw another woman try to use the phone. I tried to be helpful and told her, “Kaput.” She looked at me and started talking to me in German. After a little while, I finally had to tell her that I couldn’t speak German; I only spoke English. She stopped and said, “Oh, I am from California!” It turned out she was a bilingual American and she had thought I could speak German.