Germans are easier.

A refreshing discovery while reading The One That Got Away. In other escape or war books I have read it is from the American or British point of view. Which despite being written in English I still have to do a fair deal of translation. Translation of Imperial units to Metric units. All the measurements they use is in inches, feet or miles which means every second page has me doing some maths or estimations. This is easy enough once you remember that a mile is 1.6k, three feet are a meter and an two inches is 5cm. Measurements of volume still throw me out because I cannot for the life of me remember what an ounce or a gallon is (one gallon is four litres?).

However! This book is from the German point of view and uses metric, glorious metric! Which means everything they say makes sense and I only get confused when the British writers try and confuse me by throwing in miles every now and then. But when Von Werra says 10 meters, I damn well know it's 10 meters and now 30 feet.
The same goes for ordinance when you read about tanks and such. The British measure their weapons in pounds, a 6 pounder being a small anti tank gun. The Germans use metric for their guns like the famous Flak 88, named 88 after its gun size being 88mm.

I can cause a lot of confusion and if I remember rightly there was a problem with the international space station when parts made in a metric country were sent to fit NASA's imperial pieces. The measurement was lost in translation and the parts didn't fit. Probably expensive parts. So I wonder which is the best measurement for the world to use? Or the best currency system? or which is the best side of the road to drive on? Actually the side of the road driven on is a spin off of which hand you held a sword in back in the old days before uzi's and drive by's. The old fashioned ride by armed with sword or lance. I bet I would get arrested for hitting passing traffic with a sword... What a sad world we live in.