One of the things I said I'd do during my trip in Eastern Europe is to learn a few words from the local language. Not only will it make it easier to communicate with others but it also facilitates the immersion intova foreign culture. I picked the basics: 'Hello', 'good day', 'thank you', 'please', 'I don't speak Lithuanina', 'do you speak English?', 'toilets', 'coffee', 'wine', 'beer' and so on. So far it's been working well - people seem to be happy that I've actually made an effort to learn a few words from their language.
Confident with my grasp of what few Lithuanian words I know (it's only my second day in Vilnius) and armed with my Thomas Cook book on Eastern European languages I walked into a grocery to buy food. On my list is bread, sausage and cheese. Inside the grocery store there are two counters: one to my right and one to my left. I first approached the one on the right. Prashow (please) I say and pointed to sausage and cheese. The kind old lady put the food in a bag, rang me up at the till then handed the bag to me. Success! I now turned to the counter on my left. Prashow (please) I say. The old woman looked at me with cold eyes like I've insulted her mother. Roughly in her 60's I'd say and probably one of those nostalgic for the good-old Soviet years. She'd fit perfectly well back in the soviet days when stores were almost empty and the people working there had the power to help you, or not. There probably is a picture of Stalin in her bedroom, hung on the wall opposite her bed so he'd be the first thing she sees every morning. But her eyes spoke to me. They spoke in English. Well, not quite... They spoke in an accent so thick in Russian that there was no English left. But I made out the sentence - the only English sentence she ever learned. It was thrown at my face in disgust: Mother F***. But it sounded more like: "Mo-Ther-F***!". I swallowed my saliva and timidly pointed at the black bread. She grabbed the wrong one. Ne (no), I said, and pointed to the on her left. She got all pissed off, grabbed it and rang me up at the till: 3.30 Lita. I took out all the coins in my pocket and counted them. It took a few seconds - there were a lot of coins (there are coins for 1,2 and 5 Lita. In addition to that, each Lita is divided into 100 Centai!). The total came out to less than 3 Lita. She kept on staring at me with that cold and impatient look. I put the coins back in my pocket and pulled out my wallet. All those coins in my pocket suddenly came back out again and fell to the ground, their chime echoing throughout the store. I remained as calm as possible and bent over to picked up the coins one by one. A kind lady even went out of her way to stoop down and point out a coin that fell behind someone's shoe, her finger nearly touching the coin. Trying to brush off this embarrassing situation I shrugged and smiled at the lady behind the counter. "Mo-Ther-F***!" her eyes said to me before taking the note in my hand and handing me my change and bread.
Slavic witch, I should have beaten you with my sausage...
No comments:
Post a Comment