Comments on: Epiphanies Happen Even When Speaking German http://www.ethnography.com/2008/05/epiphanies-happen-even-when-speaking-german/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=epiphanies-happen-even-when-speaking-german A group blog on a wide variety of topics realted to anthropology Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:50:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: HP http://www.ethnography.com/2008/05/epiphanies-happen-even-when-speaking-german/comment-page-1/#comment-342 HP Wed, 28 May 2008 20:34:16 +0000 http://www.ethnography.com/?p=216#comment-342 Comment: I took a trip to Montreal a few years ago, not knowing a lick of French. But because it's a bilingual city, I got along fairly well, and as long as I was polite, people would generally repeat whatever I needed to hear in English. At the end of one week, we went to a big concert in the Place des Arts, and I showed my tickets to the usher, who gave me a long list of instructions in Quebecois French. Without thinking, I turned to my companions and said, "We need to go up these stairs, past the smoking area, turn to the left, go in the entrance on the right, and our seats are midway along the third row on the second balcony." To this day, I've no idea what the usher said, but there were our seats, sure enough. Comment:
I took a trip to Montreal a few years ago, not knowing a lick of French. But because it’s a bilingual city, I got along fairly well, and as long as I was polite, people would generally repeat whatever I needed to hear in English.

At the end of one week, we went to a big concert in the Place des Arts, and I showed my tickets to the usher, who gave me a long list of instructions in Quebecois French. Without thinking, I turned to my companions and said, “We need to go up these stairs, past the smoking area, turn to the left, go in the entrance on the right, and our seats are midway along the third row on the second balcony.”

To this day, I’ve no idea what the usher said, but there were our seats, sure enough.

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