This isn’t about airports, but we had some friends who went to Paris for a holiday. They didn’t speak French, so before they went out for a trip into town, they wrote down the name of their brand new hotel, (which was on a large sign outside), on a piece of paper.
When they wanted to return, they showed the taxi driver the piece of paper. He just shrugged and smiled. They kept on asking him, and he just kept on laughing. In the end they got hold of someone who spoke English. He explained that they had written on their paper “Hotel under construction”!

I also knew a mad guy who went to Prague for a week with his drunken friends. They drank all their duty free before they’d even landed. This guy was so drunk he lost the others at the airport. So there he was in a strange city with no idea of the hotels’ name or location, and unable to speak the language. He slept rough on the streets for a few days, then befriended a hooker, who let him sleep at her place. He got back to the airport OK, where the others could tell him what a great trip they’d had. Apart from one of them, he didn’t even make the flight back. I never found out what happened to him!

john