Preparing for an adventure, learning useful phrases in foreign languages

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Planning an adventure outside the borders of your country of origin?
Eventually you will end up in situations that force you to communicate with locals and they may not always know English, or chose to not know English if you don't open up in their native tongue. (Happened to me in France)
I speak Swedish, Finnish and English fluently but my plan to travel through Germany, Austria and Italy makes me feel like I need to learn at least some phrases in German and Italian to get me by as my previous dealings with Germans and Italians have left me in peculiar situations where for example hand gestures were needed to communicate easy things like how to open a gas-station pump at a gas station at 4 AM on the autobahn.

Of course you can always use Google translate on your phone, but some of the simple conversation starter phrases should probably be learned, and only use Google Translate as a backup.

So what phrases could we need for our trip? Let's dream up some examples and translate them to both Italian and German.

English	German	Italian
Excuse me	Entschuldigung	Scusami
Thank you	Danke	Grazie
Do you speak english?	Sprechen sie Englisch?	Lei parla inglese?
Closest bike shop	Nächster Fahrradladen	Il negozio di biciclette più vicino
Any good and cheap restaurant you could recommend	Jedes gute und günstige Restaurant kann empfohlen werden	Qualsiasi ristorante buono ed economico che potresti raccomandare
Could we buy an used cardboard box for bike transport	Könnten wir einen gebrauchten Karton für den Fahrradtransport kaufen?	Potremmo comprare una scatola di cartone usata per il trasporto di biciclette
Could we camp on your land for one night?	Könnten wir für eine Nacht auf Ihrem Land zelten?	Potremmo accamparci sulla tua terra per una notte?
Are there any campsites close by	Gibt es Campingplätze in der Nähe?	Ci sono dei campeggi nelle vicinanze
Do you know anyone that can weld my bike frame	Kennst du jemanden, der meinen Fahrradrahmen schweißen kann?	Conosci qualcuno che può saldare il telaio della mia bici

Any other phrases that you think are useful when on the road touring or back-packing that should be included? Or did you spot any misstake? Please leave a comment!


Another thing that I'm going to do this time is to prepare a card describing what we are doing and why in both Italian and German so that we can let people read it instead of us trying to explain in broken tongue.


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