Asking the right question

On the first day of our trip to Germany we signed up for a day trip called the “Royal Castle Tour” (which was wonderful by the way).

Before starting the tour, the host collected tickets from each one of us and asked only one question – “Where are you from?”. However, the answers were many. Here are some of them

1. United States
2. Germany
3. Le Meridian Hotel
4. US
5. New York

There were at least eight different answers and the host had to ask multiple follow-up questions to find out what she really wanted.

Later I figured out that the reason host wanted to find out “where people came from” was for her to mainly understand the mix of languages spoken by the people on the bus.

May be changing the question would have helped?