Meeting the neighbors in the dark

I finally met most of the neighbors in our building last week when our power went out. As it was around 11:00PM, it was hard to tell if the outage was limited to our apartment or shared by the whole building. When the stairwell lights, which turn off automatically after a minute, repeatedly turned back on, it became obvious that others were out of their apartments, but also that some of the building still had power.

I went out and talked to the woman from the floor above ours, who as it turns out is the only other English speaker in the building (there are seven apartments). Standing there in her nightgown and a windbreaker, she recruited me to join her and another woman to go look at the main fuzebox on the outside of the building. We jiggled loose the screwdriver holding the latch shut, and as she reached in to flick the fuze, she hesitated and said, "No, you do it!", chuckling sheepishly. I flicked it... and nothing happened (but I fulfilled my duty as the sucker newcomer).

I tagged along for the next 45 minutes while the three of us went to other apartments to find out the extent of the outage and round up phone numbers for the building maintenance and try to arrange an electrician to come over. At least, that's what I think was happening, because all I had to go on were the tones of voices and body language. Otherwise I might as well have been deaf. The Hungarian language doesn't seem to have many changes in inflection. It all sounds like run-on sentences with moderate urgency.

Nevertheless, I finally got to introduce myself to several people I've passed in the stairwell a few times in the past only to mumble a fake greeting after they'd said "jonopot" to me. I now know I could've said jonopot back, but until now I'd just sort of fake it with a mumbled "hello". "Hallo" by the way, seems to be how Hungarians say good-bye.

Anyway, Eva from upstairs and I were able to chat a bit in the dark and reassure each other that no, we don't make too much noise for the other (her son used to dribble a ball on their floor, but she's since stopped him). The next morning when all of the power was restored except for our apartment, she made herself late for church to make arrangements for the building's electricians to come over for us. It turns out the wires in the wall fried, and they needed to chop a hole in the wall to replace them.