I went to a funeral last year, outside the church we were discussing geting to the wake. I said that I was going to follow the man in the box. Apparently I was getting some very funny looks undeed. I was talking about following what the man in my sat nav was going to tell me. It never occured to me that it could have been anything else.

Me and MrsDrJ were out having dinner in Berlin with an Irish pal of mine who had moved there and about half a dozen of his German pals. It was a fun, laid back night until MrsDrJ rather innocuously used the word "Nazi". At this point our pal started to over-react In a mock way "she said it! She said Nazi!", all the local Berliners affected mock shock before exploding with laughter and my wife just went bright red.

Berlin is a cool place.

... would you have made the same comment? Seems like a strange analogy to me.

...staying with us in the summer from Berlin. Wondered about taking them to London for a show but was aware that many of the big musicals would be the same as in Berlin. Anyway we asked if they would like to go but it seems they had come across the previous summer with their class of 30. Unfortunately whoever booked the tickets took them to see Blood Brothers - which being about 1950's Liverpool had a lot of references to Hitler bommbing our house/our chippy/our everything.

… doesn't have the same, immediate, socio-cultural associations im Germany that it has in the UK. So I think his lack of reaction may well have been simple incomprehension. Without the TV series, Colditz presumably wouldn't have become a household name in the UK either.

The young Germans I work with don't seem embarrassed or fazed by mentions of the war. It's not a faux pas to call someone a soup/cleaning/cooking 'nazi' ... they seem as removed from it as I am. And I think the British hark back to that era more often and have more WW2 cultural reference points than younger Germans do. If you mentioned the Blitz/Colditz/Dunkirk spirit etc they probably wouldn't know what you were on about and just give yo a bemused look.

I'm a tactless oaf too, and have been all my life ("no shit?" I hear you cry). It's my inheritance from dad.

I'm in the back bar at my regular pub for the Vinyl Night. Off duty barmaid sitting in the front bar. Her ex recently hung himself.

A mate gives me Siousie and the Banshees' best-of and invites me to choose a song to play. So I do. It's "Playground Twist", in which Siouxsie's first words are:
"Hanging... Hanging..."

Said mate niftily lifts the stylus at lightning speed and puts on "Hong Kong Garden" instead. I look at the floor and wait for it to swallow me...

At a friend's wedding reception in the 80s, the DJ asked me if the happy couple had a special song he could play.

I racked my brains a bit. There was one current huge hit that I knew they both really liked and so I said it. I was only thinking of the tune and only as the words passed mt lips did I realise that the words, and certainly the title, were a tad inappropriate for a wedding... Tainted Love.

I went off looking for a hole in the ground to open up and swallow me.

from an incident. Working on an event for a Swiss/German company, the client was absolutely foul to us. After an argument between the sound engineer and the client he asked the producer why they were so unpleasant. She looked at her shoes and mumbled a bit before confessing that she had provided some power adaptors for them and when she said, could she have them back as she needed them for a job next week the client had said, "Of course, we are Swiss, we do not steal things." to which she replied, "I'm not sure the Jews would agree with that."
I never saw her again.

I like to explain what little I know about the Scottish Country dances I teach in my weekly classes, and there's a nice wee story about how the Reel of the 51st Division was devised in a WWII POW camp. Every time I mention it, I always seem to have a couple of Germans amongst the group, thus prompting an internal manifestation of the fetal position in the pit of my stomach.

...(now married himself) was at a wedding of a previous long-term girlfriend. After a few drinks he (a pianist) and his brother (guitar/vocalist) are persuaded to 'do a turn' with the band. the brother starts playing some chords, my friend vaguely recognises them and busks along, only realising too late that they're playing 'I Want You Back For Good'... at which point he cringes, winces, waits for ground to swallow him up but has to keep playing.

Several months later - the next time he bumps into ex girlfriend - her opening words were 'What the !*?* were you playing at?'

It took him ages to get over the excruciation of it all.