Nothing makes you feel like you are better at adapting than your own family.
My mom is the closest thing to the real Peggy Hill from "King of the Hill" that exsists. She's a teacher, she has big feet, and she speaks a broken Spanish that she assumes all others can understand. The big joke of our trip was that she would go around Europe speaking Spanish to everybody. In German you want 1 of something you say, "Eine". Please is, "Bitte". Mother would walk up to strangers and say, "Uno, memento pourfafour..."
"Mom, they speak German here. Spanish is of little help."
"Well, it sounds close to French."
"Then ask for it in French, but they'd speak English before French in Germany."
We had that conversation many, many times. She would eventually give up. I took two years of German in high school and know some very basic phrases. When she wanted something and didn't want to start a conversation in Spanish she'd turn to me. "Can you ask her for 3 of those danishes?"
"Sure." (To the worker) "Ya, I'd like three danishes, please."
She forgets that every single person in Germany took English in school and they can atleast understand our number system...
Gotta love her.
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