No Choking...While Speaking To Strangers

On Sunday, I was riding the train back from Budapest by myself. Not gonna lie, I was kind of extremely nervous. Riding to Budapest is a piece of cake; the main station, Nyugati, is the last stop. There's no where for the train to go after it so you have to get off. Riding back to Debrecen though, is a little harder. My stop is called Nagyallomas. Every stop is called Nagyallomas. Nagyallomas means Big Train Station. Lucky for me though, Debrecen is a college town (actually really similar to Chambana! It's almost like I never left home, just everyone started speaking a different language) so when we hit my stop there's a massive exodus. So, all in all, the train is not so bad.

Anyway, this trip was special! Or, maybe more awkward but cool. Like everywhere else, there are ticket inspectors on the train in Hungary. They look at your student card and your ticket to make sure you are meant to have the student discount, make sure you got on the Inter-City instead of the plain train, etc. Also like everywhere else, there's mistakes and people who don't want to pay. It used to be you could get out of an inspector snafu by speaking English. Unfortunately for the sneaky people of the world, inspectors are getting smart and learning, or bringing translators with them. In cases where they don't bring English speaking buddies with them, they recruit from the pool of passengers.

Guess who finally got recruited.

I didn't have to sign up on a website or make a skill tape or anything!

The ticket inspector knew I spoke English because I have a weird student card and had to tell him I'm an exchange student. When he got to a college student that didn't speak Hungarian, he asked a couple people near him to help, then came up the aisle towards me. I tried in vain to pretend I was engrossed in Wuthering Heights instead of gawking at the pair like the rest of the train.

Of course I told him I'd try to help, but I don't speak the best Hungarian. It was a pretty easy translation to be honest:

"Ma'am you're on the wrong train. This one costs more."

"No I will not pay it is their mistake not mine."

"O nem akkar penz"

"Ez 800ft tobb"

"It's 800ft more. It's not so much. You should just pay."

"No! I am a student, money does not grow on the trees. I will not pay"

"O nem akkar penz"

etc.
etc.
etc.

Now, I'm noticing that I said she doesn't want money instead of she doesn't want to pay, which might explain the weird look on the guy's face. Mostly it was like, ten minutes of 'you must pay' 'I won't pay' "she won't pay' 'she has to' Even though I messed up most of it, I was super proud at the time, and I still am. After a long day, or if I've been switching between all day, it's difficult to get anything out. But, now I can say I was able to help translate between people, so ha! I'm making progress, even if it's taking kind of an oblong, crooked path.