During a class of calculus my lecturer suddenly checked himself and
stared intently at the table in front of him for a while. Then he
looked up at us and explained that he thought he had brought six piles
of papers with him, but "no matter how he counted" there was only five
on the table. Then he became silent for a while again and then told
the following story:

"When I was young in Poland I met the great mathematician Waclaw
Sierpinski. He was old already then and rather absent-minded. Once he
had to move to a new place for some reason. His wife wife didn't trust
him very much, so when they stood down on the street with all their
things, she said:
 - Now, you stand here and watch our ten trunks, while I go and get a
taxi.

She left and left him there, eyes somewhat glazed and humming
absently. Some minutes later she returned, presumably having called
for a taxi. Says Mr Sierpinski (possibly with a glint in his eye):
 - I thought you said there were ten trunks, but I've only counted to nine.
 - No, they're TEN!
 - No, count them: 0, 1, 2, ..."

________________________________

One of my favorite stupid tourist stories was way back when, I was running 
a tour bus in between Madrid and M�laga with a bunch of American tourists.
Of course, the bus broke down somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and we had
to stay in this little hamlet, populated mostly by yeggs, I swear. Anyway,
one of the ladies (remember tweetie-birds grandma? I swear it was her) 
decided that she absolutely had to get something to eat and, before I could
stop her, grabbed the nearest macho male and, in (almost passable) Spanish,
asked him "Sabes donde estan as grocer�as?" (Do you know where the dirty
jokes are?). The man double over in laughter, and I giggled a bit (I had 
heard it before), and explained the word was "verdadures" (greens). She 
immediately regretted her words, turned red and, when the man stopped
laughing, said "Me siento mucho." (I am sorry), and topped it off with 
"Estoy tanta embarazada!" (I am so pregnant), which set not only me and him
off, but most of the Spanish crowd that had gathered to see what the 
fuss was about.