If you’ve had high school age kids in recent years, you might remember their foreign language teacher’s warning about using Google Translate to complete assignments. One afternoon we were greeted by the hotel’s new fire warning system:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, the technic defect was cared here. You shall must leave the building in peace, please. Your state of mind to service personnel instructions. The personal will erode thee off the building."
The "personal" in the office probably heard our peals of laughter from our 4th floor room. We had images of reluctant guests being scraped off the side of the building. Being helpful little knitters (as pictured on the left), we very respectfully offered a more effective interpretation.
Google translate was probably used for the room service menu as well, which offered "sandwich with chicken noodles, peanut butter and sweet chili sauce." "Cheese Mouse (mousse)" was offered in the dining room one night.
This part of Slovakia receives very few English speaking visitors and the general population is so appreciative of tourists and try really hard to communicate. It turns out the hotel had a fluent English speaking staff in their guest relations department, but they must have been off the day they implemented the fire evacuation system.
Now my lack of language ability causes its own set of issues. I ended up in the men’s section, awaiting my skinny dip in the mud pool. I wondered why the three gentlemen all had nervous coughs in my presence. When the time came to parade to the pool I was promptly ushered to the women’s side by an anxious attendant.
E, L and I spoke English at our assigned dining table. We asked the maitre’d to let us know if we were being too loud in our enthusiastic conversation. There was a Danish man seated just out of earshot from our table. Having been informed that L was from Denmark, observing our exuberance, he asked her in Danish "Just what language are you three speaking so much in?"
But my favourite language situation happened when E went for a neck and upper back massage and was greeted by the command " Take off top of your body, please."
Life's a Stitch 
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