Sie haben die falsche Zahl. Die Hauptzahl ist Drei Zeiben Null Drei Null.

That’s my German phrase for the week.

For the past few days, I’ve been receiving calls at work from people who are looking for someone else. While my German is good enough to understand them and tell them to call the main number, it’s not really up to snuff in terms of having full-fledged telephone conversations, hence the memorized stock phrase. (And why, by the by, is talking in another language on the telephone so much harder than doing it in person? People who speak German much better than I do have confirmed this. It’s not like I’m lip reading or anything usually.)

Telling them to call the switchboard usually works, though, and if it doesn’t — if, say, my pronounciation is off (not that that ever happens …) — I’ll ask if they speak English and try to carry on from there.

Today’s call, though … well, today’s was weird. The conversation started off the way it usually does: The caller says she looking for somebody else; I told her to call the main number. She repeated her request for the other person; I asked if she spoke English. She said no; I repeated my “call someone else” response in German.

This little routine, for some reason, prompted her to begin speaking very fast, very loud German at me, saying, to the best of my understanding, that it was very important that she speak to the woman she was looking for. My repeated mutterings of “ja, ja — nein, nein” did nothing to stem the tide. When she wore down, I tried again to tell her to call the main number, a task I was somewhat stymied at by the fact that I couldn’t recall if the noun “call” (Aufruf) is the same as the verb “call,” but decided to use it anyway.

I figure I ended up sounding like an illiterate dog. “Aufruf! Aufruf!”

We went back and forth a bit, a conversation that mainly consisted of me saying something in German, her going “uhhh…” and me trying again. After a few minutes — like four! or five! whole minutes! — of multilingual mutterings mixed with periods of silence, the woman suddenly said in English “I think I have the wrong number” and hung up.

Now I know why Germans serve beer in the cafeteria …