Ich bien ein oven

I have an inherent suspicion of ovens. In my dealings with them in the past I've always found them to have entirely too many knobs and buttons, invariably marked with obscure icons as the only indication of what their mysterious purposes may be. In general I've managed to get by by pressing as few buttons and using as few dials as possible (a strategy I also use whenever I have contact with washing machines). My misgivings came into play when it came time for me to choose an oven of my own, and in the end my decision was swayed largely by the fact that I found an oven with a start button and stop button. There were other buttons yes, but even the images next to these seemed to make a degree of sense. And a start and stop button, I mused, that's exactly how an oven should work in my world. It just seemed friendlier than most other ovens I've encountered. All it was missing was the words "Don't Panic" in large green letters on the front.

However, as I discovered when my oven was installed and finally switched on, there was a small problem: I pressed a button at random and on a small, hitherto invisible lcd appeared a couple of lines of bright red text. In German. Suffice it to say for the purpose of this anecdote I am somewhat less than fluent in... well, virtually all languages save English.

The ever-so-friendly start and stop buttons proved exceptionally useless here, and given my wariness with ovens I was slightly reluctant to press buttons at random (an image of my unfinished flat vanishing in fire and flame was forming in my mind). Naturally the thing to do would be to turn to the manual which I'd placed... somewhere. Despite the diminutive dimensions of my abode I've successfully managed to lose a significant number of items in there already and it seems I've misplaced the oven for the manual too. I'm sure it will turn up sooner or later, and for the moment I don't actually need to use the oven. And if worst comes to worst, I'm not that far away from a book store - I'm sure I can find an English/German dictionary...