"Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

> "Richard Smith" wrote in message news:lyy1e780t2.fsf@void.com...
>
> The perils of mistranslation - you benefit from experience and travel...
>
> ----------------------
>
> The applicable phrase is good judgment comes from experience, and
> experience comes from bad judgment. I hope I didn't accidentally
> insult anyone too badly. A few German beers increased the quantity of
> my foreign speech but did nothing for its quality. That applies in
> English too.

:-)

The good stuff. When you sign-out of the day and go to a parallel
universe.

I have also lived in "ciderland" - places where they make cider
(in Britain "cider" is fermented juice of cider apples).
That is very "parallel reality". As I explained to a local who is/was
a prodigeous cider-drinker, it's like a train ticket. You buy a train
ticket in Crewkerne to go to Axminster, get on the train and next time
the doors open you are in Axminster. Likewise "loopy-juice" - you
arrive in ciderland - good place to be back to.
I worked in a foundry, and within minutes of leaving work you were
mixing with holidaymakers who had come from all over Europe to be
there. Calling in at the pub (public house) and drinking "Thatcher's
Dry" - a "real" natural cider - after a day in the foundry.

By the way - 80% of the burners in all the world for powerstations
running on residual oil (it's got all the impurities concentrated in
it) came from that foundry. I speculated that if the apple harvest
failed the world's oil-fired powerstations would come to a stop.

"Richard Smith" wrote in message news:ly4jgq8swp.fsf@void.com...

I worked in a foundry, and within minutes of leaving work you were
mixing with holidaymakers who had come from all over Europe to be
there. Calling in at the pub (public house) and drinking "Thatcher's
Dry" - a "real" natural cider - after a day in the foundry.

------------------------

In Germany the occupants of the room I was assigned to in Heidelberg were
accomplished pub crawlers, in a university town that stayed open to party
until 3AM. The rest of the country closed at 6PM. If I had any good stories
I've forgotten them.

One year I was assigned to take three deserving men on a trivial routine
mission to Munich and be sure they visit the Oktoberfest. I found four girls
across from empty seats and joined them. The only one who spoke some English
insisted on practicing it on me and the rest sat glumly and silently staring
at each other, unable to communicate. Some days you can't win no matter
what.

She wondered what an American might think of the highly organized way they
celebrated. When the music began they all linked arms and swayed in perfect
unison to it, as regimented as soldiers. They also synchronize clapping in
applause, though I heard more randomness on the last broadcast of a Vienna
concert. They clearly have a sense of tribal unity that we Americans lack,
or superficially apply to the Old Country of ancestors. Mine can only be
described as assorted Northern European. We think the first Wilkins who
arrived in Jamestown VA in 1619 was Welsh.