After a week or two of sunshine, the weather in Hamburg has turned nasty again (surprise, surprise), allowing me once again play my favorite game. The game doesn't actually require the sky to open up and dump a load of crap on my head -- it just makes it more fun.
Here's how to play: Find a street with plenty of people on it. Make a note of the street name and then -- preferably standing within sight of the street sign -- ask people how to find that very street. To make the game more fair, actually write the street name down; that way you know it's not your own excretable accent that's making things difficult. Then, keep track of the number of people you have to ask before somebody tells you where you are. The highest number wins -- or loses, or something ...
OK, I've never actually done that. Several times, though, I have been looking for a street -- say, Bundes Straße -- without realizing that I was already on it. When I ask people how to find the place, nobody knows.
Now, it's not like I look down upon these poor people for not knowing where the heck they are. I mean, I certainly have no clue, so why should they be expected to? And I've had my fair share of people asking me for directions, which is always amusing: some advice for people seeking directions: When you're trying to find your way somewhere, and the person you've asked for help a) doesn't speak the local language that well and b) has to pull out a map simply to find out where he is, never mind where your destination is, you probably want to flee in horror. Since people have persisted in having me help them find their destination, though, there are probably some poor tourists who are either still wandering the city or, more likely, are now lost in Poland or Denmark.
Even when I am given lines of collimation, things invariable end badly. Part of that is my own lack of directional sense; there have been days when I wake up especially groggy, get up on the wrong side of the bed and end up trying to shower in my closet. Combine that with the fact that exiting subways leaves me totally disorientated -- I've managed to get turned around upon walking out of New York City subways, and the city's laid out in a freakin' grid -- and it's amazing that I can get myself home in the evenings.
Here, tossing in the language thing makes the situation even more fun. My comprehension of German is actually good enough that I can understand and follow basic directions provided in that language. But either I look or sound American enough that most Germans resort to trying to help me in English. I'm convinced that one of the reasons I get lost even after getting directions is that Germans end up mistranslating themselves and tell me right when they really mean left. All I know is that I feel a lot more comfortable, bizarrely, when my guides start spouting rechts oder links; at least then I know that they know what they're trying to say.
On the other hand (ha! a pun) (kinda), it's possible that they can't tell their right from their left. I know people who still have to do that "L" thing -- holding up their thumb and forefinger -- before saying the Pledge of Allegiance. When I was driving around Ireland last year, I ended up doing that myself every time I pulled into traffic, which did garner me some strange looks from other motorists. It would fit in with the major themes of my life that I somehow keep finding dyslexic people to ask for directions.
Or, of course, there's the chance that people are just screwing with me. My grandfather used to tell the story of people in New York who would ask somebody for directions and then, just to make sure, go and ask somebody else. This was in the days before New Yorkers became nice and, you know, if you have to ask for directions, you're just setting yourself up to have people play head games with you.
Even if that's not true, and it's entirely my own fault when I get lost, blaming someone else is more fun. If nothing else, cursing my erstwhile pathfinders gives me something to do while trudging through the streets.