Phone Credit and Nuts

When you move to a foreign country, especially one in which you have no grasp on the language, doing simple, basic tasks can often make you feel like a complete idiot. Sometimes, this can be stressful, but most of the time, it ends up being something you can laugh about later on.

Take refilling your phone credit as an example. Here in Hungary, you can get a SIM card from one of a number of providers, and then you just buy phone credit and use it up as you go. Incidentally, this is how most of the world does phones, and to this day I do not understand why Americans make it so difficult on themselves with their phone plans and contracts...but I digress. It was my fourth day in Hungary, and I was trying to add credit to my new SIM card. I went to my nearest Metro stop, found the Lotto store (where I had heard you can do this) and went inside. I was greeted by an extremely grumpy Hungarian lady with a furrowed brow, whose response to my asking her if she spoke English was a grunt, which I took as a 'no'. So I pointed to my phone and held up a 5,000 Forint bill. She grunted again and shook her head, furrowing her brow even further. I thought to myself, maybe she needs my phone number? So I wrote it down on a post-it note, stuck it on my phone, then mimed putting the money into the phone. I thought my intention was pretty clear, but again, she just grunted and shrugged. At this point, I don't think her brow could furrow any further into her face without causing permanent facial damage, so I gave up. I went to the phone store instead, where a very kind young man was able to help me within minutes. However, to this day I make it a point to go and buy various things from the aforementioned lady to see if she ever gets friendlier. (She does not.)

But I have learned a lot since then, and feel much less lost these days, even if I still have trouble with communication. Last week, my friend Jasmine invited me to a cookie party she was hosting for a bunch of her colleagues and friends. (Let's gloss over the fact that I'm a little jealous of how many Hungarian friends Jasmine has.) I was supposed to make and bring cookies. I decided to make one of the cookie recipes that my mom and I always make for Christmas, a traditional German cookie called Nussecken. For this recipe, I needed ground almonds and hazelnuts, which I had never seen in the grocery stores. Nelly suggested I might find these items in the Grand Market Hall. She also (very helpfully) wrote down the words for "ground almonds" and "ground hazelnuts." 

Armed with my list, I hopped on the trolley to the market, and started to wander around. The market is one of those places where it is easy to get distracted, because there are just so many things to look at -- stalls with cheese, salami, fruit, handicrafts, paprika, etc. etc. etc. 

Central Market Hall...danger of losing track of time

 Not deterred from my mission, though, I went up to one stall, where I saw almonds, and I pointed at them and tried out my Hungarian. I was armed with the following vocabulary: I want, ground, hazelnuts, almonds, yes, and no.

"Almonds!" I said.

"Yes," said the salesperson.

"Ground almonds?"

"No."

"No? I want ground almonds."

"No ground almonds. Just these," she said, pointing.

"Hazelnuts?"

"No hazelnuts."

Well, whole almonds and no hazelnuts wouldn't do me much good, so I thanked her and kept looking. Almost all the stalls had dió, or walnut, which is a traditional winter food, but almonds and hazelnuts were scarce. Finally, after much wandering, I did find a store selling all kinds of nuts, including almonds AND hazelnuts!

Success! There was a whole nut section at this stall!

"Almonds!" I tried again.

"Yes," said the salesperson.

"Hazelnuts!"  I exclaimed happily.

"Yes," she repeated, probably wondering why this American was so excited about nuts.

"I want ground almonds and I want ground hazelnuts." I said carefully.

"Ground?"

"Yes, ground. Almonds. And hazelnuts. I want." Quickly running out of vocabulary, I tried to mime a grinding motion with my hands. I pointed at my piece of paper that said (in Hungarian) "100 grams ground hazelnuts. 100 grams ground almonds." 

She nodded and got to work measuring and grinding the nuts. She carefully put them into little baggies, and labeled them mandula (almonds) and mogyoró (hazelnut). She gave them to me and pointed at each one, saying "Ground almonds. Ground hazelnut." She seemed concerned that I would not remember which one was which, but I definitely did not have the vocab to tell her it didn't matter since I would mix them anyway. I thanked her and went on my merry way.

The rest of the ingredients were much easier to find, except that I don't have cell reception in my grocery store, so it's difficult to look up translations on the fly. There were two kinds of flour to choose from, and one said (I think) 'fine flour', and the other one said (from what I can gather) mother-in-law flour (pretty sure this is an incorrect translation). The mother-in-law flour had a picture of cakes and cookies on it, so I went with that one. Still not sure what the difference was. (Maybe mothers-in-law are known for making delicious baked goods?)

Ingredients for cookie making (the beer is for the baker)

The cookies turned out just fine! A little taller than usual, but that may be because I don't own a rolling pin, so I used a round bottle of olive oil ... not exactly the right tool for the job. They tasted good, though, and that was the most important thing! Plus, at the cookie party I got to try lots of different kinds of Hungarian cookies -- one of my favorites was this one called Cow Cake, which was (you guessed it) marbled chocolate cake with some kind of white creamy stuff. Delicious!

Success!

I often still feel like a dummy much of the time, but at least I did this thing more or less right!