I thought I'd keep Jeff company yesterday as he ran an errand yesterday. One of the administrative details he has to take care of for the semester program is ensuring that all the students (and our family as well) get residency permits from the Hungarian immigration and naturalization office. Hungary does not require a visa to visit, but if you're going to be staying here longer than ninety days, you have to get a residency permit once you're here. To each residency permit application you must attach Hungarian stamps worth about $90. So Jeff was off to the post office to buy these stamps. In joining him, I thought maybe I'd be helpful, but at least I would be companionship. Can you feel the ironic tension building?
Jeff asked me to carry the envelope with the money for the stamps in my bag. I put the envelope in my bag, and we set off. I was being helpful already! Much better to have $2000 worth of Hungarian forints in my bag than shoved into his pants' pocket. Now you can see where this is going, right?
We arrived at the post, feeling proud of ourselves because Jeff had asked someone in Hungarian where the Post Office was. Though we had understood little of her reply, we had indeed found the post office! Now to get the stamps. Jeff approached one of the tellers, and with a little Hungarian mixed with a lot of English, tried to explain what he needed. We experienced again what we've already discovered before: when you clearly don't speak the language, and you ask for large amounts of something, people are very reluctant to believe that you actually want as much of something as you seem to be saying you want, whether that thing is transportation passes or peaches. And of course, we don't have the language skills to be able to say, "I'm buying these for a large group of people. Yes, I really do want twenty of them!"
After the calling over of a manager and drawing the attention of every other customer in the place, however, Jeff and the manager stumbled their way to an understanding of what each needed. When asked if he would be paying in cash, I began to look in my bag for the envelope. My bag is one of these in which everything falls to the bottom, and it often takes me a while to find what I need. As I resorted to taking everything out that wasn't the envelope, though, it became clear that I did not have the envelope. After all the work of finding the post office and solving the riddle of explaining what we were asking for, frustration again.
And fear. Where was all that money? I was sure I had put it in my bag. I remembered doing it. Either I was wrong, or it had fallen out at some point, or I'd been pickpocketed...? All of these seemed unlikely to me. We headed home to see if I'd left the money there. An unpleasant journey. Not only had I not helped, if that money was lost, I had harmed. And I don't think either one of us was feeling much companionship at that moment, either.
As soon as we walked into our apartment, we could see the envelope lying on the kitchen table. Relief, irritation, thanksgiving, perspective, a headache. All pretty much par for the course when you're a stranger in a strange land.
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