My Spanish is Not So Good

Chanukah is rapidly approaching and this year I am making an effort to get my gift-buying act together. Unfortunately, we have family that lives far away in Eastern Europe in a country with a very unreliable mail system. It has taken months for packages to get through, if they get through at all.

This kind of stinks, because we love our two nieces to pieces and always regret not being able to send them Chanukah and birthday presents. To make matters worse, my brother-in-law is so good that he sends us presents from a variety of online sources. None of which appears to ship to Hungary. The guilt at not being able to reciprocate kills me. We do buy presents for the girls when they visit us here in the U.S., but a lot of times those gifts don't fit into their luggage and are left to languish stateside.

This year, my brother-in-law sent us a list of places that actually deliver to Hungary. This was very nice of him and I am thrilled to be able to send the girls gifts. Unfortunately, while they ship to Hungary, the websites aren't exactly friendly to English speakers. I ended up buying presents from Amazon Germany. It took me quite a while to navigate the site, which is essentially all in German, and the only way I got it to work was by using Babel Fish and having the Amazon US website open in the hopes that the sites would mirror each other.

When I sent the Hoos the url asking him how to figure out what the Shipping and Handling charges would be, he referred me to the tab that said "Schuhe & Handtaschen". To him it looked like "Shipping and Handling". When he clicked on it and saw shoes and handbags, he quickly determined that this was not as easy as it looked.

After finally (I think) figuring it out, I was emailed a receipt, which I forwarded to the Hoos. His response: "Great, I'll print it if ever ever need to dispute it." Good lord, I hope their presents are delivered in a reasonable amount of time without costing my thousands of dollars.