How ignorance of a language helped me walk off a chocolate addiction

I’m on my fifth trip to Germany, and I feel guilty that I’ve only just learnt the word for ‘please’. Nowadays, I usually travel to countries where I speak the language, but Germany is an exception because I know lovely people here and have a good time.

I found today, when shopping, that I wasn’t buying things over the counter because that would involve having to speak, and sound like I hadn’t learnt their language. There is, of course, a solution to this, and that is to learn their language.  So I took baby steps in that direction.  I asked for champagne, which was behind a locked cupboard, and I managed to point to the bottle I wanted, and, thanks to my phrasebook, strung together the words eins and bitte.

Unfortunately, the phrasebook didn’t include the German for I’m so stupid, I left my wallet at home, let me go fetch it, or I didn’t bring any bags, do you have any?

But even that was OK, because it meant walking (or running) to and from the supermarket three times, which meant that I walked off a little bit of my US chocolate addiction … though my clothes tell me that I have some way to go. Maybe I shouldn’t learn German after all …