Once more a story of my early months of living in Germany with very little grasp of the language and, incidentally, the only anecdote that involves me being forcibly ejected from a DIY store by two well-built gentlemen and told that if I didn’t leave the car park immediately they would call the police.
I was more than a little confused, firstly because an employee had approached me and asked if we wanted any help, and I was already beginning to be Germanised enough to realise that such levels of customer service are disturbingly unnatural, and secondly because all I thought I’d done was to suggest that we wanted to buy some paint.
ROFgirl and I had acquired an apartment and it was great, absolutely perfect. God knows why they let us have it - it just needed a lick of paint. To quote ROFgirl’s father when looking at the dirty walls, all we needed to do was “etwas Farbe draufwichsen” – which I took as meaning something along the lines of “slap some colour on”, ROFgirl took it as meaning that she could get to test every single shade of yellow before (3 weeks later) deciding upon one called “Isabella”. I remember my final words (my opinion obviously being worthless) when being asked to chose between “Isabella” and “insignificant and worthless candidate No. 2, don’t even think about it” involved the words “For the 119th time (I may have been underestimating) I don’t care, they’re both yellow, woman. Don’t you actually prefer the effect we have at the moment - 30 squares of slightly different shades of yellow?” I did!
But I digress, and so it was that the next day we set off to buy 30 litres of Isabella and some general painting and decorating paraphernalia. Of course the paints weren’t sorted, we needed two big buckets of paint and I could only find one. It was whilst searching through the huge pile that the helpful shopping assistant appeared. He had to approach me, of course, the male - never the female; it was a DIY store for Heaven’s sake. Despite the fact that she could speak - was - German and knew all the stupid names that Europe’s chemical industry gives to its multitude of pastel shades of liquid wall colourings, he came to me. And because we were in the temple of masculinity that is a DIY store I couldn’t wither and point to her and say “ask her, she’s the lunatic who wants to paint the front room yellow!” I had to master this conversation by myself. I remembered the words of her father and in reply to his “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” replied: “Ich will, erm (makes up and down motion with hand meant to simulate paintbrush strokes) draufwichsen?”.
After the embarassment she felt at being thrown out of a DIY store, ROFgirl took a much more “hands-on” approach to teaching me German.
German Phrase For Today: “draufwichsen ” – to wank onto or over someone/thing
Song playing as this was published: Cowboy Mouth “Everybody Loves Jill”
You ARE a bonobo. They’re VERY publicly sexual. ROF? Standing for?
N, are you for real?! hahaha
anyway, it’s the effin’ language with confusing words. another example would be the german word for tail and p*nis. haha
My high school German teacher always told the story of his first visit to Germany, during which he caught a bad cold and went to the Apotheke in search of Vicks Vapo-Rub.
Except he referred to it as “Wichsensalbe.”
Nice one!…. the language in Germany is ripe for confusion……and besides its sounds such a romantic language
ha ha ha
The thing about “draufwichsen” is, that there is actually a non-sexual meaning of the word. and it means nothing else than to aplly / smear …. s.th. E.g. old word for Schuhcreme is Schuhwichse; Wichse is just a gooey (spelling?) substance. But I doubt that many younger people actually know that.
So I am not surprised that you heard the expression from somebody a bit older 
Joolez, I know that now - maybe I should have added that it just isn’t used that way very often - and certainly the younger staff at Bauhaus weren’t impressed - especially not when combined with my hand actions…..
Easyjetsetter: As the name of the 3rd commentator probably gives it away, ROF stands for “Susie”. And you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been learning about bonobos over the weekend - very interesting….
I can imagine that
I would have probably dropped everything and dissolved in hysterical laughter if somebody said that and accompanied it with that “hand action” In that case they would have dragged me out, not you.
It’s actually very sad that most younger germans don’t know much about their language.
P.S. I don’t mean to play “teacher”, I only remarked that because so few people know the other meaning of the word.
Joolez: Age related language differences - actually a tricky one for someone learning a foreign language “by ear” - you visit your girlfriend in her studenten-WG and if you use the word “geil” you have to make sure that everyone knows you’re being really ironic - add “affen”, “arsch” or “mega” - or a combination is probably best. Go and have dinner with her 86 year old grandmother and use the same word though, and it’ll do you no good explaining that “but in the car on the way here I was listening to a tape of obscure 80s music and Bruce and Bongo said…….” you’ll be marked down as a bad, bad man.
The other way around, her 65 year old father can use the verb “draufwichsen” at will, but say it to a spotty teenager in a DIY store who then goes to fetch his female supervisor and you’ll be in trouble - especially when one uses the up and down imaginary paintbrush action to really get the point across to her….
Fantastico, I badly needed to laugh today! Thank you so much
)
YAYYYYY!!! you were listening to cowboy mouth!!!!!! yayyyyy!!
This is hilarious, keep’em coming! (erm… the stories, I mean)
Wow. *adding to list of verboten words*
I am German. And I think I fell in love with you while reading this. Not only because of the “draufwichsen”-slip, which is one of those words, which in my opinion prove that German is the perfect language to swear in, but also because of the pure defeat that shone through your description of women taking three month picking out a color for the front room and then ending up with one which is called “Isabella”. Let me just say: It took me two weeks to pick out a red toilet-seat. It’s called “Harmonie”.
Tionne: Welcome. I’m glad you liked the post - and I swear that if I’d swapped the contents of the tester pots and put something else in the “Isabella” tub, she would not have noticed. They were ALL yellow.
And a harmonie toilet seat? Nice!