Our next stop after Paris on our Interrail Trip was the Black Forest. One of the group had done a school exchange trip with a school in Freiburg while studying German in high school.
We found a youth hostel outside of Freiburg in a tiny place called Seebrugg – it was right on the end of the trainline. I think the Paris-Seebrugg train journey had something like 5 train changes…it might have been more.
Basically all that was in Seebrugg was a tiny kiosk restaurant, the youth hostel, a watersports/cycle hire place and a loch (lake to all you non-Scots!!). It was a beautiful peaceful place. And probably the nicest youth hostel I remember staying in.
But by far the funniest moment of our stay was meeting this guy – who worked in the kiosk restaurant. We were trying order our food, and being that we were on a budget, we were trying to ask for tap water.
In German.
2 of us spoke German fairly well, but he really wasn’t getting what we were asking for as we tried to mime turning on taps and the like. So basically one of us looked up the word for free in a pocket English/German dictionary we had on us. He started rolling about laughing.
We were bemused. And a little worried.
After managed to compost himself a little he explained what we had asked for.
Free-range water.
The word for ‘free’ we used was the one to describe eggs.
Oops. We were suitably embarrassed, laughed too, and he then got what we were trying to communicate.
It is also in the Black Forest where I learned all the German I know…the words for
one, two, scoop, ice cream, chocolate, apple juice, apple strudel, please, thank you, hello.
Oh, and Die Bahn !
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