If my travels have taught me one thing, it's that asking for directions is a sport. If I help a stranger in need of directions in an American city, I will give them the way with a number of blocks, and right and/or left turns. The first time I asked for directions to the post office in the French town I had landed in, I was told to "Go up the main street a few meters--it's on the left." Never mind that I was a bit unsure of exactly how far "a few" meters was, I wasn't clear which way was "up." Was it north, like a map? We got back in the car and drove one way--and then the other. It wasn't until later, when I was on foot when I realized which way was up--turns out there was a slight incline uphill to the post office.
In Ireland, we were flummoxed by maps that seemed at times to be purely fictional, and directions garnered from publicans and their customers: there were too many twists and turns, which led us to believe that those Celtic scroll designs were early maps. Signage was no help: one kind soul suggested that the wind had been blowing hard and moving the signs; another woman simply told us to ignore them, as, "the lads had been up there last Saturday evening."
But in Germany, maps and signs were accurate, so we rarely needed to ask the way. Except in the little town of Betra. The marriages in and between places are a clear indication that a few kilometers between villages was nothing to these folks used to walking. What is hard for the "foreigner" to grasp, however, are the directions. Someone was kind enough to draw a map, with the correct prepositions between the villages.
I'd love to provide a glossary, but most of them are Swabian dialectical variations on "up" "down" "to" and "over."
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