I am not one to argue that you should only visit countries of which you speak the language. If I was, I wouldn’t have made it to 65 countries or so myself.
But speaking the language does increase the experience.
If I hadn’t known some Spanish, I would have been completely dumbfounded by this English translation at the bus terminal in Baza, Andalusia, for example.
Even the Spanish original has a typo.
Still, it was a lovely old-fashioned bus terminal, where the answer to everything from “Is there a bus to Orce today?”, “Can I buy a ticket here?” to “Is this the right bus to Orce?” is an optimistic, yet non-committal “I think so.”
Links:
- More about Andalusia, all helpfully translated into a language that you understand.
- More about languages.
- ALSA actually runs a pretty good bus system in Spain. You may need it, because hitchhiking in Spain is notoriously hard. (Although I am eager to prove that it’s possible.)
The Happy Hermit 
Did you complain about the terrible translation?😂😂
Haha! How could I not think of this, either back then or now, in writing this little post?
I guess I am not much of a complaining person.
And I really wonder what is done with those complaints books. Probably nothing, like in Chekhov’s “The Complaints Book”, which demonstrates that this kind of “customer service” already existed in Tsarist Russia.
Why I think that the book of leaf lament claim demand actually makes more sense than a complaint register. So much more evocative I would say ha ha ha
You are right. The more often I say “book of leaf lament claim demand”, the more poetic it sounds!