Not a Guten Tag for someone

Many moons ago, that means so many moons ago, that means somewhere in the early 80s, which means before I even came into existence, my dad got a post doctoral scholarship in RWTH Aachen. Well, without knowing even the ABCD of German, he lands in Aachen and his professor arranges a temporary accommodation in a hotel. So he spends some time in the hotel and by evening decides to go for a walk around the city. Before he left the street where the hotel was, he carefully jotted down the name of the street, in case he got lost in the city.

So our protagonist enjoys the sightings and fountains and boulevards and cathedrals; oblivious as to how far he's away from the hotel; and keeps on walking admiring all the middle age style architecture.......until.....until it suddenly dawns on him that he has no idea where he is and absolutely no clue how to trace the way back. But our protagonist is a very cautious and proactive man; he had anticipated this predicament before he started out – he‘d written the name of the street, remember?? 

So he takes out the paper, goes to the man standing nearby and shows him the name of the street. The paper reads ‘Einbahnstraβe’. Dad tries to enunciate the name,

“Eyen – ban – straaabbe”

It’s actually pronounced ‘eyen-ban-strasse’. The man laughs. Some problem with the pronunciation, thought dad. So he next goes to a lady in the near vicinity, shows her the paper and gestures for directions (this time careful not to enunciate). Despite all that, the lady blinks and stares. Puzzled he is too, yes. He approaches several other people but the upshot is the same; people just give a perplexed stare, and some might blurt out a mild laugh. And finally one kind man explains to him what the real problem is. Turns out Einbahnstrasse is the German for ‘one-way road’. 

Epilogue

Fortunately, dad remembered that the hotel is near to the metro station and found out the route to reach the place. He never trusted street signs again.

P.S. I know you twisted bird brains might have expected some very embarrassing meaning for the word; maybe except for Belt Mathai, who the Germans are trying very hard to chuck out of their country right now; the govt. considers him to be a threat to the food security of the country, his neighbors think he's a source of noise pollution (read Mathai's singing in the shower) and the German chicks seem to be fed up of his constant ogling. God save the country.  ;)