Lesson of the day: Fünf und dreißig in English is 35. Not 3.50.
So when you are buying a massive bunch of vintage-pink roses, and the lady in the shop tells you they are fünf und dreißig euro, that means that they will cost you €35, not €3.50. And when you hand her €5, thinking “by golly Berlin really is stupidly cheap, I can’t believe that 10 stunning roses are going to cost me only €3.50″, she will look at you funny and say some things in German that you don’t understand. You’ll then enter into a long and involved game of charades, the result of which is that you realise you are going to have to pay the lady your very last €35 and that Berlin is not as very very cheap as you thought and your German is, well, definitely in need of some work.
Here are the culprits, I thought I should get my money’s worth out of the bloomin things by at least getting a post out of them.
Ha! Ich habe fünf und dreißig yahre alt (or something like that). Very useful blog post.