»In which my hovercraft is full of eels

I sometimes feel this way when travelling (link provided in case the embedded widget, above, does not render, play, or otherwise float yr boat). Often, I feel confined, threatened, handicapped, hampered, and hemmed in by a phrase book, but also know that the small collection of vocabulary and sentence fragments is the only toolkit I have to participate in the culture while abroad.
Having said that, I left the following otherwise useful phrasebooks in San Francisco: Gaelic; Catalan; Spanish. I am flying by the seat of my pants.