How often does this happen to you????

[PaulB2005]

http://xkcd.com/783/

Why don't people understand...?

[AliOnHols]

I know exactly what you mean. Pre SatNav days I used to have a London A-Z street atlas. There was a man in our office who used to know the directions from anywhere to everywhere and if he caught you looking at the A-Z, Boy were you in for about half an hour of his directions on how to get there, all meaningless because he used street names for every turning on a 12 mile trip. I always insisted that I could have got to the destination using the A-Z way before had finished giving me his directions, but to no avail!
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[DennisN]

In 1969 I drove the family to Greece and back (via Yugoslavia) on a camping holiday. All was pretty basic back then and one item we took was a waterproof cool box which we half filled with block ice every chance we got.

I used to ask directions to the ice factory, by stopping and saying (in my limited Greek) "Excuse me, I want ice." They'd give me directions - I'd not understand a single word, but they invariably pointed and indicated what was probably a left or right turn, so I'd thank them effusively in fluent Greek and drive off in the direction first pointed then take a likely looking left or right and stop and repeat the process. It worked great.

Until the town of Patras in the Peloponnese. There, the three men sitting on a doorstep didn't give a single pointing gesture. In my limited Greek, I said "Sorry, I didn't understand". So they repeated it, again without any recogniseable gestures. A few repeats later and the biggest man cursed, stood up, came across to me, grabbed me under the armpits from behind, lifted and carried me to the end of the street where he stood me down, pushed me in the back whilst pointing at the factory and bellowed "Ice". He also added something which I didn't understand - maybe "Have a cool one on me" or something else.

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