travel-language problem

Funnily enough it was Slovakia that I had most problems with language wise. I am a native English speaker. I took a bus and it didn't go where I had thought it was going to. I got another bus back to the bus station to try again. I asked in a loud voice if any of the people spoke English. A fifteen year old Polish boy stepped forward. I am so pleased that he spoke English. He told me which bus to get over the border into Poland. I got that bus and then by change I met him at a lake in Poland. He was with his dad. He and I exchanged addresses and began friends. A few years later he visited me in my home country. In Montenegro I couldn't read the script. For example the bus timetable was impossible to work out. I had a similar problem with the script in Bulgaria. Looking at a map it didn't match the way streets were marked. There I had difficulty and confusion buying a train ticket. The lady said bed and I wanted a seat. In the end I worked out it was the sleeper train from Istanbul to Bucharest via the small station in Bulgaria I went from. I had much better luck in Romania and the language there was lovely plus I could understand it. I had trouble finding the accommodation I booked in Estonia because many of the suburban streets didn't have names. Good luck. My suggestion is a Polish tourist might be able to speak English.

Yes, I've been to Italy and of all places, Venice, where you should think that they spoke some other language. We tried English, French, German and Norwegian but ended up using sign language. We didn't try anything complicated either, as we only wanted to buy two tickets for the boats. After that we just pointed and it worked fine, Italians are quite good at talking with their hands. (actually, I don't think they can talk without using them ;-) ) I've also been to Japan, and both in Nara and in Kyoto it was difficult to find someone who talked English. I was there with a friend that spoke some Japanese, so we were fine most of the time, but we were never sure what we were eating. And in northern Finnland, but then they're not really talkative in any language so I'm not sure I'd notice ;-) However, I have decided that I won't see it as a problem. Tourist informations, hotels, etc, yes, there I expect that someone talks more than one language. However, why English? It's not as you'd go to the UK or US and meet lot of bilingual people. Quite the opposite usually, the only thing that beat talking English to my former French kitchenmate was hearing my former Scottish kitchenmate talk French. And they both had in school for 8 years! If you don't know any other language you can try (Russian probably? Or German?), then pretend you are an alien and enjoy your time with the sign language. It's frustrating, I know, but smile and make the best of it and you might suddenly bumped into someone who talks English. I was in Budapest two years ago, and Hungarian is about as difficult as it gets. I couldn't understand one word, not like Finnish where I understand hamburger and icecream :-) Most older people there don't speak English, but many speak German, French or Russian, so ended I spoke German most of the time.