Things That Could Get Really Complicated To Accomplish In A Foreign Language (Part II)

Looking for a Toilet

It is usually pretty simple to find a toilet when you are abroad. For example, in South America the words hombre and mujer are pretty self explanatory even if there aren’t little pictures on the door. However, I was with a group walking to Machu Picchu when we came across a toilet which said varones on the door. None of us had a clue what it meant, which goes to show that learning a few synonyms can help you a great deal when you are on the road. For example, if you have no idea how many ways there are of describing toilets in Russia then the Russian courses London offers can help.

Taking Away Food

We need to travel to Rome for this next story. I was hungry in the evening and bought something when I didn’t even know what it was. It can best be described as a kind of sweet meat pastry but that wasn’t the weird part of the story. Anyway, I wanted to take away a few of them but they were given to me on a plate. I realised that I had no idea how to say take away in Italian. After a few rather feeble attempts I finally resorted to and making signs and the waitress said to me” ah, take away”, which seems to be more of a universal phrase than I had expected. Before you learn Italian London is a great place to speak to some Italian waiters and get comfortable with some of the words you will need to eat well in Italy.