Cake for flowers

I was extremely chuffed by Frau Doktor's flowers on mothers day. They were such an unexpected, lovely gift, but trying to express my thanks in a language I don't know is a bit difficult. Especially when I consistently mispronounce the sound that ö makes. I spent time listening to a recording of a 'native speaker' pronouncing a word with an ö in it, and the closest I got to copying the recorded voice was an inelegant 'oh-ugh'. I will get there, but perhaps not this week.

On moving here we were given a hundred page internal publication from the relocation company entitled something helpful and sufficiently descriptive, like, 'Welcome to Berlin'. In it were some helpful tips on settling into Berlin, including etiquette tips. Naturally there wasn't a handy tip on 'what to do if your neighbour gives you flowers' or 'what to do if you stuff up the language when you try to say flowers are beautiful' (though there was a tip about giving flowers to your neighbours, oddly enough). We get along swimmingly with the other neighbours upstairs, and quite a few of the others in the neighbouring buildings, but my interactions with Herr and Frau Doktor are generally limited to smiles and 'hallo's in the halls, and one very confusing conversation in the wash room where I thought I'd see if she had any insights as to why there was a line on my German washing machine connecting wool and kalt/cold. It's the shortest cycle, and I wasn't sure if the setting was if you happened to want to wash your woollens in cold water or if I could use it for anything. This was complicated by me not knowing the German word for 'anything'. Her answer was even more confusing than my question; I fear I'm going to have to ask somebody from the relocation company for whitegoods assistance.

Given our demonstrated lack of ability to communicate anything but greetings, I quickly decided that inviting her for a cup of tea would a Bad Choice even if the children hadn't decided to put all their earthly belongings on the floor and traipse those from bedroom to playroom and all the way up the hallway. I certainly couldn't invite Frau Doktor to break her ankle slipping on marbles, at any rate.

I decided to bake her a cake instead, and delivered it on a plate last night. It's a mini apple cake, baked in a heart-shaped tin, and rehearsed my 'Thank you for the flowers' in German beforehand. (Flowers are die blumen, die die die. Oh, articles.) I think it went well. There was a very awkward moment where we ran out of common words, but fortunately it was saved when she turned her attention to the cake and appeared pleased about something that, twenty seconds, I figured out was the cinnamon sugar. I don't know the German word for cinnamon, but I do know the word for sugar, so that went well. I took the first opportunity possible to flee back to the relative safety of my apartment and congratulated myself for getting through another conversation without hopefully sounding too stupid. It was there that I realised I'd yet again mixed up the words 'kitchen' and 'cake'.