threadwalker

I had a wonderful experience in Germany like that. I had studied a year of German in high school, but three years later I didn't remember all that much, but I knew a few key phrases, like "I don't understand", "I don't know", and "I don't speak German". So while on a bus a nice older lady asked me something that I didn't understand but apparently it was something I should have known the answer to, because when I said, in German, "I don't know" (all I could remember in the terror of the moment), I understood the gist of the torrent of German that followed, which was something along the lines of What do you mean you don't know? Of course you know! How could you not know... So I followed up with some approximation (in German) of "I don't speak German", and she promptly started speaking English to me and we had a lovely conversation. She had learned English before the War (II, that is).

I like to think that I said "I don't know" in good enough German that she thought I spoke German :-)