John, didn't you live in Germany?
 

Seems I recall that you did, so maybe you can splain somethin.
You see, I'm the purchasing guy at a brass mill, a manly industry for sure. We got about 100 big surly guys, melting metal, working on big machines and all.
So I buy some copper from a company in Germany, and at this time of year they send a little holiday gift over.So a package gets delivered by DHL to the maintenance dept of all places.Label says attn Bill S, contents "LEATHER PURSE" :smash:

Well, needless to say - the boys had a great time with this :mad:

Really it was just a little business card, wallet thing.
No Really it was.
Really.

Geez.

thats what they call a wallet . they all carry little change purses that open up square for their coins and the paper goes into a wider purse .

its an American thing .


Big surley guys with purses in the metal fabrication field almost as funny as steel workers in tights . got to wonder how many of the surely guys dress as woman after work . LOL

Hehehehe.....the company I used to work for was bought out by a German Company, and so I had the pleasure of spending a few short days in a small town in Bavaria......almost no one spoke English.....(though many guys at the plant I visited did, however poorly)

So, me, being in Europe for the first and only time in my life, spent the whole time with my English/German dictionary trying to communicate with the locals at the various Inns/stores/restaurants....and even though I knew some German from taking it in High School, it was quite an experience, especially trying to explain our various English idioms, and in turn, trying to understand theirs.

One of the funniest things was, since, again, I'd never been in Germany before, I was leary of drinking the water, and so went to the local grocery and bought some bottled water, which, of course was warm. (They don't believe nor have refridgerated beverages in Bavaria).

So, not wanting to drink warm water, I tried to find some ice......not a chance......went into a number of stores, and tried to ask for ice cubes, using my dictionary the best I could......I got a lot of strange stares, and a lot of "You want Ice Cream?"

Finally, I just gave up, and fortunately, since it was mid April and still pretty cold there, I just put the bottle of water outside the window of my room at the Inn, and it got cold enough for my needs.

The next day, I told my "host" about my quest to try and find ice cubes, and he was stumped. I told him that in America, we can walk into most any store and buy a 5 lb bag of ice for about $1.50.

His response? "You silly Americans pay for frozen water?!"



:smash:

Steve - thats funny.
We are owned by a German Co. now too, and they have a couple managers here that they transplanted for a while. It gets pretty funny with our idioms, in fact I use them any chance I get.

"Well it's too late now, the horse is outta the barn"
"What horse, do you have a horse, do you live on a farm,how did it get out of the barn...."

"Ah that guy just has a chip on his shoulder"
"A chip?, like a microproccesor?, a potato chip...."

Funny.

BB....what's worse, the President of the local company was (is) Isreali, and he had trouble with them as well....

"Oh, that's a piece of pie" (piece of cake)

or

"Oh that's a pie walk" (cake walk)

or, worst of all

"That's a cake in the sky".....(need I explain that one....;))