lost in translation
Its funny when you travel and you read an English translation of something that simply does not make sense. And then it becomes adventurous when you are at a restaurant trying to decipher what is on the menu. That is the fun part of travelling and what makes travelling so special and memorable.
We had a craving for Chinese food. Yes, we know its Prague but what were our chances?! Surprisingly, we found a Chinese restaurant and started salivating at the thought of ordering sweet and sour pork or a stir-fry of some sort. As we scanned the menu though, the English translation weren’t helping us know what to expect.
Hmmm… we have never heard of “fish-smelled pork” or “strange-tasting duck” before and couldn’t quite picture what those dishes would taste like, so we opted to graciously leave the restaurant.
Onto another Chinese restaurant in the Jewish quarter where we enjoyed quite a banquet there. Upon payment of the bill, we were expecting change so we patiently waited and waited and waited but the wait staff chose to ignore us. We then approached the counter and asked for our change to which they thought we meant “money exchange” and tried to send us down the road!
The beauty of travelling – there is always an element of lost in translation when everyone is not speaking the same language but that’s what makes the experience so fun 🙂
View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.
wise monkeys abroad 
July 22, 2014 at 5:20 pm
my question is: why would you go to a chinese restaurant when travelling in Europe???? Sorry but Europe is not america, we have thousands years of tradition, culture and history, which include food specialties too.
July 23, 2014 at 12:06 am
HA! Yes that is a VERY fair question! The only way we can respond to that is that we enjoy having variety of cuisines in our diet (Mexican, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Spanish Vietnamese Indian etc etc etc). So being in Europe for 4 months, we just couldn’t eat only European cuisines the entire time. Sometimes we just crave rice or noodles with a stir-fry.
We always like to try local food of course! But we also like to change it up every now and then.
As Australians, we love both America and Europe very much so we were not suggesting in any way that Europe food was not good and therefore ate Chinese food instead.
July 23, 2014 at 9:59 pm
I didnt want to be rude. I was just trying to say that in Europe is not worthed to go to ‘chinese’ restaurants or what so ever, because: 1st you will get only fake and poor quality food 2nd local specialties are so many that you cant get to know them in your few days staying (unless you are an expact and I can understand) 3rd because of mass tourism wonderful old city centre are packed with international restaurant chain brands, fake chinese, italian, greek…restaurants that are sploiling the local environment. Do you think is nice to see a greek sign(or chinese, or italian – i am italian by the way…) in the downtown polish (czech, france, german…) city? Do you like this type of globalization, where you dont really understand where you are? I might be very old school, but I go only for local specialties. If I want a pizza I go to Napoli, if I want paella go to Spain, if I want moussaka I go to greece. It is also a valid reason to travel 🙂
June 29, 2014 at 7:34 pm
Same happened to me… Since I couldn’t eat pork and some meats, I was always ended at Kentucky Fried Chicken where the menu is very clear 😀
June 29, 2014 at 7:55 pm
Yes, it’s tricky when we travel slightly unprepared and not sure what to order off the menu! That happened to us just recently again in Brazil so we took a stab a few times! 😉 But with diet restrictions, you certainly don’t want to be caught out taking that gamble!
Thanks for stopping by!