Cultural Mishaps & General Tomfoolery . . .

Hello :-)

I know, I know, I haven’t updated this in forever! Partially because I don’t have internet in my flat, partially because I am busy teaching and things, and partially because I am lazy . . . sorry!

 Anyway, I wanted to share some interesting stories with you. . .

1.      I will call this story "The Yellow house"

This house has gotten me into A LOT of trouble recently!  I live in a flat inside of this house. I might be scared to put a picture of my house on the internet, but I don’t even know the address myself, so if some creepy person figures it out maybe they can let me know what it is! 

Anyway, so yellow house in Hungarian is “Sarga Haz” Sarga meaning “yellow” and “Haz” meaning house. All I know about my address is that I live in the Sarga haz next to a school. Sooo, on Friday my friend and I wanted to order a pizza. Problem being I don’t know my address.  It’s a small town though, and the pizza guy probably would recognize the place if we described it. I tell my friend, who speaks Hungarian, that we will tell the pizza guy that we don’t know the address, but we live in the sarga haz next to the school. He would totally know where that is. . .  She starts laughing really hard, and I am sitting their clueless as to why this statement is worth any more than a little chuckle.

She explains that sarga haz has two meanings in Hungarian . . . Yes, it does mean yellow house, BUT it also means mental institution. From what I understand, mental institutions used to all be painted yellow, so this is still the name given to them.  Therefore, we were about to tell the pizza guy that we lived in a mental institution, which he would probably believe since we don’t even know our own address. . .Picture this conversation:  Pizza guy: “Okay, what is your address?”  Me: “Uhhhh… I have no idea, but I live in the mental institution.”   I really needed a pizza, so we ordered one even though we didn't figure out the address.

Here’s the real embarrassing part. . . People in other towns in Hungary have asked me where I live before this eye opening conversation on Friday. I give the same answer, “ I don’t know, it’s the big sarga haz.”  They laugh, but NO ONE has ever explained it to me. . . .  

Sooo, I didn’t expect this story to take up an entire page, so I won't share my other stories right now. . . DON’T worry there will be more embarrassing stories to come in the near future!

LOTS OF LOVE <3

Anna