Adventures in German

We've all fallen prey to situations of unintentional but unavoidable social awkwardness. My grandparents, for example, used to have what they referred to as "Adventures in Hearing," where an innocent question like “would you like some tea?” was morphed into a whopper like “would you like to pee?” Good times.

Naturally, living in a foreign-speaking land results in a fair amount of similar experiences for Beth and me given our limited German proficiencies. In honor of my grandparents, I have dubbed these moments “Adventures in German.” Here's a quick example:

Back in the Spring I entered a 3-on-3 outdoor basketball tournament with some of the VCS high school guys. With great glee, I submitted our team name at the registration table and awaited our first game. My joy quickly soured, however, when our team name was posted and announced before the start of our game. Instead of the cleverly quipped “Hoosier Daddy,” our team was to be known as “Whose Is Your Daddy?” for the duration of the tournament (and yes, the registration table actually added a question mark to the end of our team's name--I'm not sure if that was to indicate that they were confused or because they thought our team's name was a literal question). I guess U.S. college basketball isn’t so popular here, eh? Lesson learned, I suppose. Maybe next time I'll go with something more culturally identifiable like "Falco" or "The Hasselhoffs." Surely nothing can be as bad as "Whose Is Your Daddy?"