Ich möchte ein kirschwasser
Under-cover in Germany.
They say the English are terrible at languages. However, our two children, Rohan and Tayrne, entered Spanish school at seven and eight years old. After three months the teacher said she couldn’t pick them out as foreigners. The problem is not being English, but rather going to school in England, children should start learning at five, not eleven when the brain is past its prime language-acquisition stage. English is the world’s lingua-franca, spoken by politicians, scientists, academics and millions of others; for the non-English, the choice is simple, learn English. The question for the British is: which of the world’s 23 most common languages to learn? That was the choice I faced when in 1975, at the age of 26, I became the technical manager for Scanray (Scandinavian X-Ray UK Ltd), whose head office was in Copenhagen. Denmark had a population of 5 million, so Danish wasn’t the optimum choice of a language to learn. As an engineer, I decided German would be a better option, and so I signed up to Kontakte, a BBC TV course for beginners in German. This led me to an understanding of another problem the British have with languages.
In December 1981, I had to attend a one-day meeting in Germany because Scanray had the contract to install the X-Ray inspection system for the Tornado jet fighter at Motoren-und-Turbinen-Union GmbH (MTU) in Munich. The plan was to fly to Germany in the morning and return home in the evening. At midday, it started to snow. The typical travel time between Munich’s old Airport and MTU was 20 minutes, my flight was at 19:00, but at 15:00 Dr Mullenburg, who I was meeting with, suggested that I leave for the airport. That day I discovered it wasn’t just the English who got caught out by the first snow of the winter. With Mercedes, BMWs, Audis and VWs stopped on the road with their bonnets up, the journey took three hours. By then all flights were cancelled. Transport was arranged to take the stranded into Munich, and I got dropped off outside a hotel on the Bahnhofstrasse.
The bus left, leaving me standing alone on the cold, empty street. With my coat collar pulled up against the chill wind and snowflakes settling in my hair, a strange thought came into my head. What if this situation was forty years ago and I was a British agent, the Lysander that was due to pick me up was smouldering where it crashed in occupied Holland. I was abandoned in a hostile Germany; would I ever see England‘s green and pleasant land again? With that in mind, I walked into the lobby of the hotel, at last, my training would pay off. In my best German I said.
“Entschuldigen Sie bitte, aber haben Sie ein zimmer frei?”.
The receptionist stopped reading the Abendzeitung, looked up and casually replied in perfect English.
“Yes, sir we do. How long would you like to stay”.
Bollocks! That didn’t go very well. The shadow of a bespectacled Gestapo officer fell across my shoulder and the night got a little colder. My apologies here for fertile imagination, it goes with the head I’m afraid. I was like Private Schultz from the TV series, giving himself away on his first mission, by merely asking for a cup of coffee in an English pub in 1944.
That incident was a bitter blow to me, the receptionist had not given me a chance to impress him with my impeccable BBC German, or had that been the problem? At that point, I may have abandoned my linguistic development, but instead, I became obsessed with the idea of one day passing myself off as a German. But how could that be done?
For the next year, I commuted to MTU almost every week. I was becoming accustomed to hearing German. I realised that, like England, Germany had many different dialects, in fact, some of the Hannover people in the factory, the hochdeutsch, couldn’t understand the locals from Munich. I started to hatch a plan. If I chose my words carefully, repeated things like a parrot, and didn’t say too much, I might just be able to pass as a German. Importantly, I should not be too polite, the overuse of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ was a sure sign that there was an Englishman in the room. I would go for a meal and take on the persona of a somewhat aloof German businessman from out of town. One evening I prepared myself, I chose a restaurant that had a menu outside that I had never visited before. I first carefully read the menu so that I knew, and could pronounce, what I wanted to order.
I entered, the waitress came over and welcomed me, I thanked her “Danke”.
She took my coat and hung it by the door. I took the initiative and pointed.
“Ich werde den tisch in die ecke nehmen”.
She took me to my table in the corner of the room, I sat down, and she asked.
“Möchten Sie etwas zu trinken?”.
“Ein kleines bier bitte” I replied.
She returned with a small beer then left. I made a pretence of reading the menu, although I already knew what I was going to order. After a suitable delay, I gestured for her to come over.
“Ich möchte das Rindersteak, Kartoffeln und Kohl”.
After I had eaten my beef steak, potatoes and cabbage, the waitress asked me
“Möchten sie eine nachspeise”.
“Ich möchte die Apfelkuchen und Sahne” I ordered apple tart and cream.
Not once did she question what I said or attempt to speak to me in English, everything was going splendidly. After dessert, she asked if I wanted anything else, and that‘s when things started to go wrong.
I replied “Ich möchte einen schwarzen kaffee und ein kirschwasser”.
“Entschuldigung” excuse me she said.
I knew she couldn’t be talking about the coffee so I repeated the last part of my order.
“Ein kirschwasser”
“Ich verstehe nicht,” I don’t understand.
I had been doing so well, now I started to panic.
“Ein kirschwasser” I repeated in a slightly raised voice.
Just then the manager came over to see what the problem was.
“Ich möchte ein kirschwasser” I told him.
He stared at the waitress in silence for a moment. Oh, bloody hell, I thought, he doesn’t understand me either; I will have to come clean and admit defeat. Then in a dismissive voice, he said to the girl.
“Ein Kirschschnaps” a cherry schnapps.
The girl hurried off for the coffee and schnapps. The manager looked apologetic and went off about his business leaving me to wonder how such a small thing could cause such a big misunderstanding.
After I had finished and paid my bill, and the waitress was helping me with my coat, she asked quizzically.
“Woher kommst du in Deutschland?”.
I replied “Ich bin nicht Deutscher, ich bin ein Engländer” and left it at that.
Outside I allowed myself a restrained, tennis player style, air-punch “YES”.
Basic as it had been, I had achieved my goal. The question was, had I enjoyed my meal? I would have preferred chips instead of boiled potatoes with my steak, but they weren’t on the menu, and with hindsight, I was extremely glad I hadn’t asked for them. Keep it simple!
These days I have no problems with speaking Anglodeutscha or Spanglish. After all, language is an evolving medium, the primary function of which is for people to communicate.
Fast forward to 2017 and Mallorca where I had been living since 1986: A German plated Mercedes stopped on the street in Felanitx where I was walking, the motorised window slid down silently and the passenger, inexplicably, asked me in German.
“Wo ist die strasse nach Palma?”
Without hesitation I replied “Fahren sie hier geradeaus bis zur ampel. Gehen sie nach links und folgen sie der beschilderung”.
The occupants were in awe. An Englishman, obviously, on a Spanish street answering in near flawless German. What they didn’t know was, I had been practising for such a car to stop and for someone to ask me that question for the last thirty years.