first post

I have been in Heidelberg for a little over 4 months now, and I'm not sure if those 4 months have gone to waste, language-wise. 

Today, I wanted to cook Tom Kha Gai (Thai coconut chicken soup) and the recipe called for mushrooms.  I went to my local Kaufland to buy the chicken, mushrooms and lemon juice.  In my mind, I asked, what are "lemons" auf Deutsch?  Zitron!!!  I remembered.  Menus and ingredients are pretty easy for me now - knoblauch, zwiebeln, kartoffeln, karotten, blumenkohl, bohnen, hahnchen, rind, etc etc.  I didn't want to use fresh lemons since I saw that one of the Thai restaurants I frequented used bottled lemon juice, so I tried to find those.

"Haben Sie eine Zitronnen in flasche?" I asked the girl.

Translated literally, I was asking politely, "Have you lemons in bottles?"

She looked at me funny, smiled, and led me to the correct aisle.

On hindsight, I could have asked for Zitronnensaft or lemon juice and not Zitronnen which is lemons.

I still felt damn proud.

Natürlich!