Communication skills

Since travelling to Russia, I've increased my travelling communication skills.

Scandinavia was too easy. It was easiest to just speak English and most people there could understand you well - their english being far superior to my Norweigian, Swedish or Finnish. In Russia and the Baltics, English is not so well understood so I've learned.

So I've progressed to stage three...

Stage one is:
Speaking English. Looking for English people. Doing charades with the locals.

Stage two is:
More games. Don't just stop at Charades, play Pictionary and do Fill in the blanks!

For example, at the train station in Riga I said "Engleski?" and the clerk said no, then as she went to read her book ... I pulled out my notebook which I had carefully built up a game of fill in the blank mixed with pictionary!

The fill in the blank was stuff I could get from my Europe on a shoe string guide:

e.g. Atiesanas laiks vilciens Riga->Vilinus sodien? ____________
(What time is the train from here to Villenus today?)

And the pictionary part was a two part sketch of a stick man sitting down, then sleeping - used so I could ask for a sleeping bunk or perhaps to proposition someone.

In this case, the lady told me that that train didn't run anymore. While I didn't get what I wanted, it was interesting in two ways. One I got my message across and second... she answered in English.

Stage three:
I don't know if this is stage three or not, as I arrived at this scheme at around the same time as stage two... Anyway, I now have common words written on my left hand. Mostly I use the word thank you alot. "Paldies" in Latvian and "Aciu" in Lithuanian. It works pretty well and some find it funny that I've got it written on my hand.

Alot of the time I think I should be saying sorry, but that isn't in my book. I guess it was not written by a Canadian.