Piece of Cake

on the farm with Sarah

Sunday afternoon I left to go with Sarah and Marion to Marion's parents house in the small town of Grosskrausnik, 100km north of Dresden. I stayed there with Sarah for four days and we did tons of fun stuff like biking through the woods on really old bikes, raking a field to get it ready for planting, baking cakes, and driving a tractor. Sarah was really nervous about driving the tractor at first, and after a 10 minute "how-to" talk from Opa she hesitantly agreed. I sat beside her in the "passenger" seat and after we had made it about halfway down the field I said, "See, it's a piece of cake!" Without hesistation she asked, "Where?!"

Man! I keep forgetting that cliches are cliches, and don't make sense to non-native English speakers. But it really did make for a good laugh-! ("Where?!")

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(April 5, 05) "Disclaimer"
After talking more with Sarah, it turns out this incident wasn't purely a linguistic misunderstanding. She asked that I clarify for all you readers out there, so here goes.

The day before we drove/rode the tractor we enjoyed a nice bike ride on which we rode over many different types of terrain. Dirt roads, sandy paths, fields, etc. On one of these country trails Sarah was riding a bit ahead of me and warned me not to ride into the the cow dung that she had just passed. I explained that in English we call them "cow pies" and we exchanged a few sentences about how weird that actually was. So, Sarah defends that on the next day when she was driving the tractor and I casually mentioned a "piece of cake" she thought I was referring to a pile of manure on the field or something. I can see how she'd get confused, I mean, both are pastries not usually associated in any way with a tractor, cow, dung, or a field. So there you go Sarah, you have been "disclaimed." :)