Making a name for myself in the neighborhood

Mentioned in my last post how great all of our neighbors have been. They're very friendly and are incredibly patient with my rudimentary German. Very few of them speak any English-- really, like no English whatsoever! Which is fantastic, because we're forced to speak German and with M gone I'm getting a total immersion crash-course that money couldn't buy!

Have had a couple of hilarious mishaps so far, and wonder what people must think of me. Like the time I wanted to tell the neighbors that when we moved we didn't bring any of our wardrobes (schranken) with us, but instead I said "kranken". It took me a second to realize that I'd said we hadn't brought any diseases with us from Belgium. That raised a few eyebrows.

And then there was a neighbor who was very proud of her custom-made cabinet in the kitchen. Normally if I don't know a word I can just use the Dutch one and say it with a semi-German accent and I'm fine. So I wanted to tell her I thought it was a clever solution. The Dutch word for 'clever' is slim, but in German schlimm is apparently bad / nasty, which I didn't realize until I looked it up after I got home... oopsssssssss.

Oh, and I can't remember anymore what my dictionary said the word for "petting" is, as in "Do you want to pet my dog?" but it turns out that it actually means "to grope" which has caused all kinds of consternation... :-)