How Not Speaking German Has Helped Me In Austria

After a few days rain Vienna has run into another stretch of beautiful days. After class on Saturday we had a nice lunch in the park on the grass. And in keeping with that motif we went to MuseumsQuartier that night and had a few drinks on the steps of the MuMoK (but not before going to see the new Indiana Jones!). It was quite nice and the fact that it was cheap didn't hurt either. What did hurt was when I hit a security guard in the face with a frisbee.
ya.
We were tossing the disc around while walking out of MQ. As we were passing under the main archway we stopped and waited for someone to come back from the bathroom. I'd say its about 20 feet wide but the catch is there are columns that break up the space. Here we must pause to make clear a crucial fact. When a group of people who like to play frisbee are in possession of a disc, there is no restriction, physical cultural or otherwise, that will stop them from throwing said disc around.
So there we were throwing around in a confined space. It was great. Weaving in and out of columns. Dodging passer-bys, some of whom even got in on the action. There was one passer-by who was not so keen on the game though. Some security guard-esque man had grumbled something at us but not really done much before he just walked away so we continued on. At one point Josh cut behind a pillar so I stepped to the left and threw the disc where he should have been had his path and speed remained consistent. But where he should have been was not where he was. It was where the guard was.
The guard had cut infront of Josh presumably to tell him to stop running around, but I didn't see that. So when I threw the disc to "josh" i really threw it to the security guard, more precisely, to his nose. square in the nose. BAM.
Needless to say he was not thrilled and stormed towards me demanding my Identification. I got that much. Its not hard to understand someone yelling NAME NAME NAME NAME NAME at you, or rather, its german equivalent. But then he went on talking very quickly and very angerly. Matt says he heard something about having to pay, but i missed that. All I could say was excuse me repeatedly and then I finally had to bust out the old standard, I don't speak German. Perhaps my most used German phrase after, a coffee please. He seemed doubtful but eventually the dumb founded look on my face convinced him I was telling the truth. In the end, he just told us to leave. And we did, with haste.
Having learned our lesson we then proceeded to play catch over the Ringstrasse, central Vienna's main traffic artery, on the walk back to the UBahn. I mean we were outside so I don't see how that could have been a problem. I also want to clarify that I was not in the slightest bit drunk.
I'm still a little shocked.