Cleaning up my computer, and I found these two stories from the first couple weeks of Hungary, when I didn't have internet.
Two grocery related stories:
Since my default lunch is always sandwiches, I decided to try getting salami at the supermarket on the way back from class. Unfortunately, we have only been taught integers in my language class so far, so I couldn't ask for a half pound. I was surprisingly unsuccessful in miming out a fraction. "Edy" *slash hand through air "ket." Like the idiot at charades I am, I did that maybe five times varying only the angle I which I moronically slashed my hand through the air. I think I tried one more time holding up my fingers as I said the number, but I quickly realized that it wasn't my pronunciation that was the problem. Eventually I just gave up and said "edy" (pronounced kind of like 'edge' but more like 'edj'). She inquired, pretty amusedly, "Egy kilo?" Oh yeah. Kilograms. I responded, crestfallen, "Igen," and received my 2.2 pounds of salami. My bet: she works on commission an intentionally misunderstood me.
I also bought yogurt from the supermarket for breakfast. I opened it up, started eating, and immediately something seemed off. It just... didn't taste right. At all. And the texture was all wrong. I looked at the expiration date. It was well into the future. I checked to make sure my refrigerator was working. It was. I checked the label again. It said "Yogúr" and underneath that "tejföl." I remembered my Spanish teacher telling the story of being "embarrassado" and warning of the danger of false cognates. "But," I thought, "I didn't like greek yogurt the first time I tried it. Now I love it." I bet this is just Hungarian, or more likely Turkish, style yogurt. Yeah, I bet 'tejföl' is just Hungarian for 'Turkish style." This whole time I'm sure I had a Hungarian dictionary within reach, since everything is within reach in this apartment. But, with flawless logic, I plowed on forcing myself to be open to new styles of yogurt.
Today we learned food words in Hungarian class. I turns out that the "Turkish style" yogurt I ate was just sour cream. I ate about a half-pint of pure sour cream. I feel kind of sick just thinking about it. Yogúr is actually a Hungarian dairy company (thus the capitalization), and 'tejföl' just means sour cream. I think having read so much Sherlock Holmes in so little time has really made me think I'm a lot more clever than I actually am.
I have not been able to eat yogurt since that day.
