Not exactly a tourist
When I was doing my A-levels we had an absolute twunt of a teacher from Bavaria. This guy looked like Gollum, wore sandals all year round and had no formal German teaching qualifications. His answer to everything was to touch his index finger to his bottom lip and say "Ah ja." Anyway, his grasp of English slang was nonexistent, and like I said the guy was an arrogant, unprofessional twunt (he used to make personal comments about students to other students, talk about his sex life in class in far too much detail, and stuff like that).

One day in lower sixth we went to London for a conference thing, and because his geography was as crap as his teaching skills, ran from Russell Square to St Pancras just in time to see our train leaving. Realising it'd take even longer to get home now, we were not happy.

A short while into a conversation with him about nothing in particular, he asked the question "What is the English word for music like Andy Williams from the 60s and 70s, for older people?" To his eternal credit the guy I did German with pondered this for a moment, and then with all sincerity informed him the word he was looking for was "shite".

"Ah ja."

By all accounts he went up to our headmaster the next day, and informed him that "in Germany, we listen to a lot of shite".

We got bollocked, but it was so very worth it.
( Maladicta, Thu 7 Jul 2005, 23:03, Reply)