Financial impacts in Hungary

I have felt the American financial crisis in two recent instances:

1. I joined a hole-in-the-wall gym across the street. The equipment is ~10 years old, the carpet is worn and there are bodybuilder posters everywhere. (On the up and up, I've learned that Eurobeat music is easy to run to.) It's convenient and awesome. The man who owns it was checking his stocks on his laptop, and was lamenting the fact that (i) Congress didn't pass the bail-out bill, (ii) he had just lost hundreds of dollars, (iii) he had lost that money in Apple and Google, of all places.
2. I was scanning something at work today, when the partner in our office walked by and said something like, "So, your economy's pretty much down the tubes, eh? Glad you came to Hungary?"

At the invitation of someone in the hash, I went to the monthly meeting of a "curry club" tonight at a local Nepalese restaurant. The crowd was mainly British, which was quite evident when we wished a member happy birthday by singing, "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." I'd heard recently that the most troublesome cultural difference in the world is between Americans and the English, because we think we should be fairly similar. This was evident when the Americans had to make a quick switch to the appropriate British wording of the song: "For he's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us."

I'm pretty lucky: I was assigned an Executive Assistant at work to help me out with all of my silly foreigner questions. This has come in really handy recently, as the gas company, washing machine repair company and intercom repair man at my flat only deal in Hungarian. Phew!