Chapter Six: Bathroom Word Confusion or a Willingness to Look Foolish

At about the same time we relocated to the Stuttgart, Germany area, so did another American family who we would soon meet. We had children of similar ages and we both ended up in the same beginner’s German language class at a local International Baptist Church. Jessica, the Mom, pictured above, related this humorous experience to me during the course of the class.

When Jessica’s family arrived in Germany they quickly familiarized themselves with German words relating to house, apartment, room, etc. in the process of looking for a rental house. They learned the German word for bathroom, bad, in looking at advertisements for five room (Zimmer) and two bath (bad) houses and duplexes. The following week, their family was out to dinner and one of their daughters needed to use the bathroom. Applying their new found German vocabulary, they asked for the “bad, bitte?” (bathroom, please?), and received a perplexed expression from the waiter in response.

The waiter quizzically replied, “bad?”

And they again answered, “Ja, bad, for kinder, bitte.”

Somehow, the baffled waiter perceived that they were asking for the W/C or water closet and showed them to it. Later someone finally explained the waiter’s confusion to them. To Germans, the word bad does mean bathroom but a more accurate translation would be bath or shower. Bad is like asking for the bathtub or bathing room. Or even, as we found out later, the public swimming pool! My friend, Jessica, had been asking the waiter for a bathtub for their child!!! Of course, there was no such public washing room at the restaurant. Instead, they should have asked for the “toilette, bitte?”

Everyone in the German class received a good chuckle out of their experience because we too had made similar mistakes in trying to learn a new language. And we knew what it is to look silly and ignorant. This is part of the experience of living in another culture and trying to learn another language by trial and error. And also we could just picture the poor bewildered German waiter, walking away and shaking his head at those foolish, eccentric Americans!