Categories: phd
Tags: Romania, phone, phobia, language
Date: 18 May 2006 12:09:29
There's a thread on the Ship at the moment where one or two people have confessed that they're scared of using the phone, and wherever possible they put it off or try to get other people to do it. I'm exactly the same, although living on my own means that I've had to get over it to an extent as there isn't anyone else I can palm the phoning off onto (that's terrible grammar, isn't it!). This morning I've been gradually working my way up to picking up the phone to book some of my accommodation in Romania, and that was really something that nobody else could do. Armed only with phone numbers from the Rough Guide, as Google showed that several of the places I wanted to stay at didn't have a website or email address, and fortified with tea, I finally plucked up the courage to ignore the scared feeling in the pit of my stomach and actually pick up the phone. The other week when I booked my flights I had to phone a call centre in Romania (I'm flying with a little tinpot local airline), and was encouraged that my "Buna ziua, limba engleza vorbiti?" ("Hello, do you speak English?") was understandable enough that the operator seamlessly switched to English and cut several minutes off the phone call (not to mention shedloads of money off my phone bill) by dealing with things efficiently and understandably rather than waiting for me to scrabble around cocking up his language trying to make myself understood.
No such luck this morning. At the first place, my optimistic "Buna ziua, lima engleza vorbiti?" was met with "Nu. Franceza?" As it happens I do speak french, but it's so rusty that I always end up lapsing into Romanian anyway, so I bit the bullet and carried on in Romanian. And it worked. She understood! I was so chuffed with myself, and newly emboldened and confident in my utter fluency I called the next place. As soon as I said "Buna ziua" the reply was "hello", so clearly I still have a bit of work to do in the accent department, but that was sorted too. And the next place replied "Nu. Deutsch?", and as my german is limited to please, thankyou, hello and counting to (I think) 7, on I had to go in Romanian again. This one was a bit harder work, but ended with a very nice receptionist replying to my plea to speak a bit more slowly with a really smily "it doesn't matter, it's all good, see you on the 9th". I'm so proud of myself!
Now to try to make sense of the "Mersul Trenurilor", the timetable system for Romanian railways. I'd forgotten how incomprehensible their timetable system is until I looked this morning, though I must say the thought of buying a timetable and tracing my route across the entire book (because of course the entire route on just one page would be far too simple) brings back all sorts of nostalgic memories.
I'm starting to get excited about this now! Woo hoo!