Wunderbar!

Yesterday at lunch I stopped at a pastry shop to pick up an apfelstrudel (apple strudel...slowly working on my Basel 15). As I was paying, the older lady standing next to me asked "blah blah blah...incomprehensible Swiss German...blah blah blah...Apfel?" Under normal circumstances I get terrified at the prospect of someone trying to engage me in any sort of conversation in German and promptly freeze up and say my number one German phrase: "Ich spreche kein Deutsch" (I speak no German). But in this case I used my powers of deduction: I'm standing at the counter of a pastry shop and she just asked me a question with the word "apple"...maybe, just maybe, she's asking if what I ordered had apple in it (either that or she was telling me I was the apple of her eye, or that she was going to the Big Apple, but I concluded that was less likely). So I summoned up my best introductory German and loudly proclaimed "Ja, ist mit Apfel!" ("Yes, is with apple!") and walked away while I was still ahead. It was satisfying to know that not only was I able to help someone (at least I think I did), but I only looked like a partial idiot instead of a complete idiot. And that has to count for something.