Lost in Translation- Sorry Steve

He he he he he he.

I had to share this story, as I've been walking around chuckling to myself since it happened yesterday afternoon. 

I went into Zug town to meet Steve for lunch and to do some shopping yesterday. I hopped on the bus to come home and was standing casually with my shopping bags. At one of the stops a random youngish guy got on the bus and came and stood near me. I smiled politely at him and continued to look out the window. He assumed my smile meant, "let's have a lovely long German conversation", so he sparked up a lovely, long, German conversation. He asked about where I am staying, and then when he heard my less than fluent German he wanted to know (in German) where I come from and what I am doing here and do I like it here. I explained, in my best German, that I'm living here with my husband who is working in Zug and we are from South Africa. Up to this point I was quite proud of my basic German conversational skills. 

The conversation then took an unexpected turn when he decided to ask me, in German, if my husband and I were happy together. My brain, perhaps in an effort to protect me from this awkward question, decided at this point to confuse the German words for 'happy' and 'colleagues'. I'm really not sure why as they don't sound anything alike, but I blame it on his poor pronunciation. So what I thought he had asked was "are you and your husband colleagues?"

To which I replied Nein nein...meaning no no. 

He then got this big grin on his face, as one does when they find out the girl on the bus isn't happy in her marriage, and asked me if maybe I'd like to meet him for drinks sometime. It was only then that I realized that I had just accidentally told this guy that I was not happily married, and not, that Steve and I weren't colleagues. He saw the opportunity and took it. 

I then had to awkwardly try to explain in my broken German that actually I had changed my mind and my husband and I were very happy together and therefore I was not going to be able to meet him for drinks. I told him how lovely it was to meet him and proceeded to leap off the bus at the next stop and walk the remainder of the trip home.