Signage of the Apocalypse #2

Einbahnstrasse

This one happened to my parents, not me, but I can certainly sympathize.

Both my parents come from England, and speak only English. But they were both Geography teachers, and really had the travel bug.

Before I was born, my folks had toured all over Europe, and even lived in Kenya for a couple of years after they got married. When my sister and were old enough to travel, our family would spend each summer living in a different part of the world, courtesy of house exchanges or traditional vacations.

Mom and dad got to be pretty good at navigating the planet. But once in a while the simplest thing would throw them off.

Case in point: One time, before I was born, they took a trip to Germany. They rented a car, and drove to a major city. Being good geography teachers, they had maps and had studied the landmarks, but they were still nervous about finding their way around the narrow streets.

After parking the car, they were careful to take note of where they left it. They looked around for the name of the street - they knew the German word for "street" was "straße" ... and saw a rectangular sign that looked about right: Einbahnstrasse.

They diligently wrote down Einbahnstrasse, and went sightseeing.

Of course, they had quite a time finding the car again. They found Einbahnstrasse, but no car. They they found a different Einbahnstrasse... then another, and another.

As you probably know (but they didn't): "Einbahnstrasse" = "One Way Street".

I'm still not sure how they managed to figure out "strasse", but not "ein" (they could count to ten in German) and "bahn" (they drove there on the Autobahn). But they learned to pick apart those damnable German compound words in a hurry.

[Signage of the Apocalypse #1 can be found here]

Tags: signs, signage, german, tourism, translation, gorbould