A true story: Several years ago our family was traveling through Hamburg on vacation. As tourists, we naturally got lost and wandered into a less-savory part of town -- namely the red-light district surrounding the Reeperbahn. When we stopped to look at a map, our teenage daughter glanced down a narrow alley, where she spotted a man peeing on a wall.

She exclaimed -- as any teenage girl would -- "Ewwww, gross!" Now of course, to an English speaker, this is hardly a compliment. But to a German? "Gross," of course, means "big."