Moving in + Foreign living

I have moved into my flat! There's some work to do to get it up to snuff, but I am very happy to be here. It's truly a Hungarian apartment - I'm certainly one of the few (maybe the only) expats in the building. Multiple people (hockey friend, real estate agent) went out of their way to help me lug all my stuff from my temporary flat over to this one, which was incredibly nice of them. Finally, I threw together a short video tour (2min) of the new flat; email me and I'm happy to send you a copy. (Thought it'd be a little stalkerish to put on a publicly available website.)

Picturesque aside: On Thursday, I took the funicular railway up to Buda castle with one new friend - here's a shot of Parliament from the Buda side.

Ok, time to recap a couple recent expat moments. These items truly haven't been a hassle, I just thought they'd be interesting to point out. Because after all, I came here to get a different experience!

• Given that a lot of my money is going to be tied up in wire transfers (and taxes! 50%!), I did a fair amount of research to pick the best option. While opening an account at the branch, I duly handed the agent my documents. She then printed out a form with that information on it and asked me to sign it. She seemed a little annoyed when I insisted on looking it over before signing, and fairly exasperated when I refused to sign that particular form given that it listed me as a Hungarian citizen, misspelled my middle name and also botched my Mom's maiden name. (Every important form in Hungary requests the individual's mother's maiden name.) Now, I don't want to jump to conclusions about customer service levels - I could also have been cutting into the agent's lunch break. Just figured my bank info should match my passport!
• After moving in this afternoon, I headed to the 24-hr supermarket (two blocks away, woo hoo!) to stock up. My Hungarian lessons have been progressing, so I went to the deli and said, "I would like some cheese" and was in the midst of pointing when the deli worker scoffed and muttered, "of course, but what kind." Agh, point more quickly next time!
• So, I was getting ready to leave my flat tonight to go meet up with someone. However, the oven I'd just used for cooking was blinking "H" at me about the burner I'd just used. I figured it meant the surface was still hot, but wanted to check just to make sure. Unfortunately, the 3 instruction manuals I have covering ~10 languages do not cover English or any Romance language. So, I typed in Danish (fewer accents) instructions from the instruction manual online to translate them. :)

But here I am! New flat by Oktogon in Pest! Hurrah!