Tourists Mistake Munich for Monaco

Reuters reported yesterday that two women who originally hailed from the Dominican Republic and who now live in Italy had arranged to meet a niece of theirs in Monaco. The trouble is that in Italian, “Monaco” can refer to either Munich, Germany, or the principality of Princess Grace on the Mediterranean. Sure enough, they went to Germany while their niece was on the Riviera.

The matter got a bit more complicated after they had crossed the Alps from their home in Trento, Italy, to meet the 14-year-old at the train station. The Paris-Munich train arrived at Hauptbahnhof train station, but no niece appeared. They were quite naturally concerned and went to the police for help.

One of the odd things about the police in Germany is their tendency to speak German, which of course, neither woman spoke. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the 14-year-old is the only teenager in Europe who doesn’t seem to have a mobile phone. Reuters says that after about an hour and a half things were sorted out.

“The problem was they thought Munich was Monaco,” said a spokesman for the police in Muenchen as it is known in High German (or Minga in Bavarian German). Undaunted, the two women piled into their car, filled the gas tank up, and began the 500 mile drive to the Riviera.

It’s easy to laugh at, or at least in the direction of, these two, but it really isn’t all that hard to make this kind of mistake. Consider the confusion about Stratford. The one upon-Avon is where Shakespeare came from, and the other Stratford is a rather bleak part of east London that will host the Olympics in 2012. Or for that matter, the countless towns called Springfield in America. Lots of mail sent to Ontario, California, is returned to the sender because there isn’t enough postage to get it to Ontario, Canada. And New York refers to a county (just Manhattan Island), a city (Manhattan plus four other counties) and the state.

So after the smile from this story passed, one is just grateful that one isn’t meeting anyone in Moscow, Paris, or Cairo today. It would be hard to know whether one was going to Russia or Idaho, France or Texas, Egypt or Illinois. Yet another argument for getting the kid a cell phone.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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