Wow

My fiance received a letter from my old health insurance in Germany recently, stating that they owed me money and asking for the information of a bank account, so that they could give it to me back. He told me to call a certain phone number during German business hours to get my money back, and to make it simple we decided to have them transfer the money to his bank account in Germany.

This morning at about 10 to 5 german time (9:50 am our time) I remembered that I need to call them, and grabbed my phone. I was a bit nervous, as I haven't spoken German out loud for quite a while and haven't conversed with any German in even longer but I sucked it up and listened to the phone ring. When the woman picked up I was able to talk to her and understand her just fine, though was a bit annoyed at how bad my accent has gotten.

Everything went great until the end. Which something like this:

Me: (reading off numbers 814) "Acht...eins...fünf- err vier" (8-1-5-err-4)
Her: (repeating the numbers back) "Acht...eins...fünf...vier" (8-1-5-4-)
Me: "Nein..es ist nul-nur vier" (null, the word i started to say means zero. i meant to say, no it is only four at the end)
Her: "8-1-4. Okay, wir werden Sie das Geld überweisen." (814, okay, we'll transfer your money)
Me: "Alright...errr..okay... vielen Dank."

So basically, I am so used to English that instead of saying Okay or something in german the first thing that came out was alright. I was super embarassed. You could tell during the conversation that she could understand me, but that she noticed how bad my German sucked. Okay, not that it sucked, just that she had to concentrate more than usual to understand me, compared to the people she normally deals with.

And do you want to know how much money they're sending me? 5 euros and 50 cents. Woo. Hoo. :>)