I’ve been on the dating scene for a while, and my biggest problem wasn’t a lack of chemistry – it was my trust in online translators.
One of my favourite moments: someone texted me: “I’ll pick you up at 8.”
Simple enough, right? But just to be safe, I ran it through an online translator.
It came back as: “Ich werde dich um 8 auflesen.”
Now, here’s where it gets weird. In German, the verb “auflesen” literally means “to pick something up from the ground” – like collecting scattered items. Think: picking up coins… or, in my imagination, pieces of a person.
So instead of imagining a normal date, I suddenly had a very vivid mental image: me, somehow scattered across the floor, being carefully collected piece by piece. Maybe with gloves. Or a small broom.
In my head, a harmless date turned into a mix between a crime scene and a cleaning service.
Spoiler: she just meant she’d pick me up.
And that wasn’t a one-time thing. “Casual drink” turned into fine dining in my mind, and “Let’s keep in touch” became a deep emotional promise instead of the polite version of “goodbye forever.”
It wasn’t until I started taking language classes that I realised: the problem wasn’t the women – it was my… very creative interpretation of English.
Since then, my dating life has improved a lot. Not because I suddenly became irresistible, but because I finally understand what people actually mean.
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