Alex Rawlings: Where to live and expat problems

This is the Actual Fluency Podcast, helping you become a better language learner by providing motivating weekly inspiration, as well as top tips and tricks from expert guests. And now, your host, Kris Broholm.

And it's time for another Actual Fluency Podcast and on the show today I'm joined by fan favorite Alex Rawlings, the most multilingual student of Britain in the year 2012. How many years do you think we can use that, Alex? Welcome to the show.

100 years it will still be used.

On your tombstone it will say most multilingual student of Britain. It's actually funny how

2012.

it's so funny how often you're introduced like that even in, you know, now, 2015, 2016. But yeah, what can you do is a great honor I suppose. So.

You'll be amazed how many people think I'm still a student. Like they're like you're 20, right? I'm like no. Time moves on and I move with it unfortunately, but thank you very much for the compliment. I mean.

Oh yeah. Fantastic. So you're in Spain right now. You left Budapest and Hungary, you left me behind, thank you. And so how's life in Spain?

Life in Spain is good. What can I say? It's nice weather. The cost of living is pretty good. There's a lot of things I like about it. With every place, you know yourself now that you've started to live abroad, there is a long period I think before you really start to settle and feel like it's home. So, you know, gradually warming up to things.

Nice. So what do you, how long do you think that period was for you, for Budapest?

God, you know, I think it just creeps up on you. You feel kind of very alienated for a very long time and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, hang on a minute, I just did all this stuff and it feels totally normal.

It is, definitely. I'm about six months in now and we're just started winter, which was a bit of a surprise.

I warned you about winter in Budapest.

No, no, you didn't. You said winter is miserable and everyone is depressed. And I said, okay, well, that sounds like every northern country, you know, that happens. And then when I came home from a nice week-long vacation in December, it was minus 15 when I came back. My flat was so cold, it was hotter to go outside.

Yeah, well, I mean, I forgot that you've never been to Eastern Europe before. And when I say miserable and and depressed, that's what I mean. Last year it didn't last for long, that cold weather. It was a couple of weeks and then it went back to being nondescript. But um, yeah.

So thanks for not mentioning the incredible cold. When uh, I remember my real estate guy, he said, when I moved in here, he was like, yeah, the flat is nice. It's going to get a little cold in winter, but otherwise it's fine. And I was like, yeah, that sounds fine. You know, I didn't think of it. And then now it's winter and it's yeah, it's working hard to uh, to keep it hot.

Well, yeah. I mean, the winter is not a lot of fun in Budapest. It's just what I can say. Um, there's things to do. I think this is the the key. You have to distract yourself. And that's what Hungarians do. They you know, they book loads of tickets to concerts, they leave, they they just fill their time with other stuff.

Right.

In December and that was a little bit difficult.

Yeah, I totally feeling the same. I guess people also cope with like going to the bar and just having some pálinka or drinking.

Alcohol, of course, alcohol is always a solution to these problems.

It really is, it really is. I was out in minus 12 or something the other night and after two beers it felt fine.

Yeah.

So you'll see that because the one really nice thing about Hungarian winter is the Hungarian spring and that suddenly comes with all this euphoria and it goes back to being that amazing place that you really liked when you came to the polyglot workshops in. So don't worry, you'll you'll stay in there and I guess by late March, April, it'll already be warming up again.

Right.

Oh, that's fantastic. I guess in a way, I I don't know if we talked about this, but I guess that it's a nice feeling to I mean, you appreciate the nice things more when you experience bad things, right? So it seems like the spring and summer and autumn are more appreciated because the winter is so tough.

Yeah, I guess an optimist would see it that way. I'm not sure that I'm 100% an optimistic person. So I took a while for me to process, but yeah, no, you're right.

Sign me up.

Well, this is the thing, so I mean, it's it's quite an unpleasant climate to be in. And but what really struck me is because I was living in Budapest at the time where you had these insane seasonal shifts is the people that I met there said, God, you know, I've been in Singapore now for 9, 10 years and the time has gone by so quickly because there's been absolutely nothing to measure my year by. There's been no winter, there's been no spring, nothing. It's just every day it's hot, every day it's raining and, you know, I don't know where the time has gone. And that kind of made me think like, wow, maybe the seasons do have a point. Maybe the seasons are something that are there for us to kind of measure our time with them.

Right. And but what do you prefer? I mean, obviously minus 15 and plus 45 is probably a bit extreme, but I mean, is there a perfect country where they do have seasons, but it's not that extreme?

I don't know. I don't think there is a perfect country. I think that's part of this world that we live in. There's nowhere where you're going to live, which is perfect. Or at least if you do find that place, it's not going to be because of the place itself, it's going to be because of the people you know and the life you have there. I don't know. I I always want a bit of everything. So.

Live in different in multiple places. Have a summer home in in.

No, I mean, I mean that's an obvious solution, but the problem with that is it's just the upheaval. And also rent.

Sorry? Also double rent.

Yeah, exactly, or quadruple rent if you're moving every season. I mean you can't pay for that kind of thing. I don't know. I mean.

rent it out, I don't know. rent it out.

Yeah, but do you really feel settled in a place like where someone else is staying? There's a lot of things to think about, I think.

No, but it's better than this. I can tell you that. Which is surprising to many people actually, but Denmark is a very mild country, like we rarely have negative degrees even during winter and snow, of course you got a lot of rain, but it's the same with England, right? So it's not that bad, but yeah, it's not great either.

But I mean, but if I think back to when I was living in England, like I never liked the winter either, but it was never kind of at the forefront of my mind in the same way that it was when I was living in Budapest. And I think it's just because I didn't have as much to think about.

Yeah, well, I'm not I'm not really too bothered by it. I'm just I was just surprised that it was this cold. But it's it doesn't bother me, you know, I I just layer up and get some long johns or whatever. You know, get get going. I do I do stay inside more obviously and we don't go to cafes every day like we did in summer. And um, yeah, so all those things were affected of course and shorter days like you say, but apart from that, you know, it's okay, as long as the heating can keep up and it doesn't break then it it's okay. So.

You know, I don't even have heating in this place in Spain. We don't need it.

Air conditioning probably.

We have that, but no heating. They're like no one has heating here.

God. It's the opposite here. It's like nobody has air conditioning because.

Yeah, that's a serious problem.

35 degrees, you know, nothing.

I met some really interesting people when I was living in Hungary and I think that was what made that whole time very, very special for me. But I met this taxi driver, an Uber driver. Um, who had been to almost every single country in the world, which was really bizarre. I was like, oh, what's your favorite country? And he said, hmm, not Hungary. I was like.

Why? Why not Hungary?

He said, ah, the people are never happy here, you know, all winter they're like, oh, I'm cold, I'm cold, I'm cold. All summer they're like, oh, I'm hot, I'm hot, I'm hot. You can just never get them to just enjoy what they have. And I guess, you know, something about that rang true with me when I think about what it was like to be in Budapest for that year.

Ah, I I I guess you're right because it's just so hot. I remember the summer, which also surprised me. You remember the workshop. I was like, ah, it's Eastern Europe. It's probably cold, and it was like 30, 40 degrees every day. And I was like in sweaters and stuff. I was like, what is this? I'm not used to this kind of weather.

Yeah.

So it was it was really painful on on several levels, but um, yeah, that's the thing with weather. It's so hard to find a place that has mild winters and and mild summers. It it just doesn't happen. Like where you are presumably is somewhere that gets crazy hot.

Um, no, we kind of have mild winters and mild summers here. But um, but the point is that you have very high humidity here as well. So although the temperature seems quite low, you actually feel it much more than um, you would in Hungary, for example.

Ah, okay. And you know, you've been traveling or living in different places for a few years now. Do you think you will settle in a place or do you think that you'll just keep going from place to place every now and again?

It's a good question. Um, every time I move to a new place, I go to it with the attitude of, right, this is it now. This is going to be me for a very long time. And I think it's important to do that because otherwise you don't fully settle in, you don't fully adjust and that kind of thing.

Cool. And totally agree that the world is open, but it's also a big hassle to move, I find. So I and I don't know, because the problem is you can't live in a place and then just take a month or two somewhere or even three months somewhere for the tourist visa. You don't really get enough of a picture of what the country or the culture is really like in three months, do you?

Not at all. No, you need to do the full cycle.

Yeah.

I think you need to see the the country go through all those emotions because I mean, look, if you went to Budapest in in July and stayed for three months, you'd think Budapest was like the Middle East.

Right, yeah, that's true.

We completely the wrong impression about what the country's like. You.

Everyone's happy and people are so relaxed.

So.

Great country and.

Yeah, and then bang the winter comes and you think that Budapest is like Siberia. I mean, the truth is somewhere in between, you know, but it it does take these perspectives to really see that.

Right. So you think one year was perhaps not enough at the end of the day.

Well, I mean, I don't know how much enough would be. There's there's always stuff to find out and the places change as well, and you have to keep up with them. But um, I think a year is a good amount of time if you're not um, if you're not settled on on staying in one place and you want to really see it. I think a year is a good thing. You then run into all these problems of kind of registering and deregistering for taxation and bank accounts and that kind of thing. That is a headache.

Yeah. And moving 30 kilos of books or something.

250 kilos, but um.

250 kilos. I I haven't grown my collection that much.

Yeah. Well, no, that is also a hassle. Um, but it depends what you want, you know, I mean, the world's a big place.

Yeah, I think right now my plan just to uh, to contrast that a little bit was probably to set up a base here, because I think that it's in the middle of Europe and I don't like to deal with all those taxes and moving everything every year and doing all that stuff. So I was thinking about just setting up a base and then if I want to take a month or two traveling, I can do that. I mean, it's up to me.

You mean with the taxation system and that kind of thing?

Yeah, like if it was just centralized or whether or just allow people to be registered somewhere in Europe and just not live there. I don't know any country that has that, you know, you need to have a physical uh presence in some country.

Yeah, I mean, obviously there's reasons why that happens. I think I think the point is that these kinds of laws haven't really caught up with um, the kinds of work and the kinds of lifestyles that people like you and I are doing right now, but the good news is that we're growing as a group of people. So hopefully as more and more people become self-employed and more and more people start working through the internet, things will come along that will cater for us.

Yeah. Yeah, otherwise we just have to move and deal with the hassle every time. But then one year does seem a little bit uh not enough time because you have to deal with all the bureaucracy for just one year, you know, you you'd want to maximize that pain and maybe do uh 18 months or something at least.

Well, this is the argument ironically for maybe just doing shorter stints because if you just do three months in each place or even less than six months actually, I'm pretty sure I'm not a legal advisor, so I don't take this advice for, you know, literally, but I believe that if you're less than six months in a place then you are not considered to be a fiscal resident.

Right.

So in that case you can retain your um, tax liability in your home country.

Uh, yeah, I know for Denmark, it's it's something like that. If you're outside Denmark more than six months a year, you are you're not considered taxable in Denmark anymore. So the opposite must also be true. If you are in Denmark six months of the year, then you'll be fine. I don't know why you'd be registered in Denmark, though. They have crazy taxes. So be registered somewhere else.

So Chris, I wanted to ask you a question because I know you you ask a lot of questions on this show, but I I wanted to to turn the tables on you a little bit. So when I was living in Budapest, um, I'd get this question again and again and again, and it became increasingly difficult to answer. And it was basically, why did you come here? Why did you come to our country to live?

Right. Well, the fun answer I always give because I also get asked this all the time. The fun answer I always give is like, I was on my way to Berlin and I had a heavy suitcase that had extra to get on the plane and I didn't want to do that. So I just stayed. And that was kind of the and it always leads to the follow-up story. It's pretty funny, but I did actually have a ticket for Berlin. I was going to go to Berlin to live, and then I saw Budapest and I was like, if I can have all this where I am now, why do I want to travel to a new country to know what I'm getting, you know, this was like the adventure.

You didn't know anything about the climate.

No. Not really. Uh, I had looked at Budapest and Prague and Berlin as possible expat locations because it was very popular. But I discounted both Hungary and the Czech Republic because of the languages ironically. Uh, because I thought that I was not in a place of my life where I could learn yet another complicated language. And I I never knew anything about Hungary. I never knew anything about the Czech Republic. So I didn't have any sort of things attracting me to either language.

Which are the boys' toilets, which are the girls' toilets. I mean, it's also, you know.

It shook me up because I and then I realized I'd never traveled to a non-English speaking country. Like, yeah, I was in Germany. They all speak English. I was in like, um, Turkey in the tourist areas, they all speak English and I don't speak any Turkish anyway. And it was just like, I realized that I'd never fully been in in a completely foreign environment that where I was like completely screwed actually. I was just, you know, I couldn't do anything.

Yeah.

But does that kind of, do you still see that as the adventure? That's still what draws you to being there or have you started to see that a bit more as an inconvenience? Because I that was my experience as well, and when I'd say it to people, there would be this split in reaction. Some people would be like, wow, that's so exciting. Other people would be like, oh my God, I could never live in a place like that.

Yeah, I I think that's exactly what happened like you described. I when I came here, it was the adventure and then a few months in, it was just becoming convenient and I realized that Hungary is extremely convenient for people who work online.

Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely. I think one person told me, you know, like once you become once you do break through and kind of become friends with a Hungarian, that person's your friend for life. And that's been my experience certainly since leaving Hungary. I'm still very much in contact with my friends and I kind of wish I was a little bit closer so I could come back and visit, but you know, from going from the center of Europe to being a little bit out on a limb here, it's meant that traveling is not as easy as it once was.

Right.

Well, you should live closer to uh a better airport, I suppose. I don't know about Valencia airport. It seems a little bit small.

No, yeah, it's a small airport. It's a small airport. The problem within Spain is that um, from my point of view, Madrid and Barcelona are prohibitively expensive cities to live in. Um, there's no point in me living in a city like that. I might as well go back to London in terms of rental prices. So yeah, there's there's a lot of things to balance out.

Yeah, we haven't covered that actually prices as well. That was something that also drew me to to come here because well not come here, but stay here actually. Because it's incredible how much you get for your money here. And a lot of people are a little bit, oh, so you just there to, you know, get cheap beers and and and live live a the cheap life, which you can do here.

Yeah.

If you make English money in Hungary and people here make like, you know, a few hundred pounds a month, then there's a it's tough to socialize sometimes. It's very awkward.

It's tough to socialize, but there's also kind of bigger issues going on in Hungary right now as a result of people like you and I going there. Um, so rent prices since when I moved into my flat in Hungary, I've gone up 75% in Budapest. I mean, that's enormous.

That's true. It's true. I think what will happen and I think this already happened to a large extent is that the center will be dominated by expats and Airbnb. And then the Hungarian.

That is enormous thing for the tourism.

Yeah, and it's some it's a quite annoying actually in in a way, but it's also it's driving the Hungarian working people out of the center. They're living in the suburban areas now. Or even if.

Yeah, that's pushing the prices up. Because I mean, you you're talking in pounds, saying, oh, I can do this for a few pounds or that. That's fine. But if we start converting Hungarian prices into euros, it's actually not as cheap as it first seems. You can be able to get in the rest of Europe, you know, and that's a trend which I see, you know, continuing, um, from the time that I was in there and suddenly now, of course, it's it's even more expensive.

You definitely have to look for it now. I feel like uh just it's just my experience. You you know, you have your little kind of futi papa mama and pop restaurants around the corner that still do that deal. But then most of the cafes and restaurants have kind of adapted to tourism and they increased all their prices, so a main course is like two and a half thousand now on on average.

Hmm.

What I've heard from Hungarians, though, is they they they have a a nice family tradition of like passing on flats through throughout down the family. So they don't have to pay for a rent actually, many of them. That's what I understand. So that's a slight save that they have this uh tradition where each family just has several flats. Uh, but you know, for those who don't, it's it's tough, you know, how how can you live on, you know, 400 euros a month or 600 maybe?

Hmm.

So do you think that there's a sustainable way to move to a country like Hungary?

Yeah.

What sustainable for who, you know?

Sustainable for the local environment.

Right.

We come in with our pounds and euros or whatever. We can buy more than the local people, we price the local people out and you you get Berlin, because that's exactly what happened there.

Well, I think the first is not to uh support tourist traps or all the various tourist traps. So something like, you know, when you see flats posted, don't just jump at it because it sounds cheap in your London prices. You know, I live in a flat now that's probably 100 euros overpriced, but I was.

This is you're talking from experience here.

Yeah, definitely, because I was just I was just so desperate and you know, people who know who read the blog about my experience moving to Hungary and staying in Airbnb for like a month and a half will know that it was not because I had great choice. I just had to do something because otherwise I wouldn't have enough money to cover the deposit because Airbnb was significantly more expensive.

Yeah.

I I can't.

So do you so do you think it's it's because I'm wondering, do you think it's like ethically or morally questionable for people like us who come from rich countries in Europe to move to poorer countries like Hungary?

I I I I think it's a great question and it's a really difficult one because you have your own interests to protect as well, you know, if there's nothing with all the Schengen and stuff, there's nothing preventing you from doing it. And there's nothing, you know, just to to even discourage people from doing it.

This is this is the cheap place I introduced you around the corner from your flat where you can eat for a euro 50.

Yeah, and uh three courses lunch meal with a drink is like three euros. So.

Yeah.

Um, it's it's really great. But the point is just that I hope I don't understand macroeconomics in any way, but I hope that the fact that people discover Hungary will mean that there are more investments made, there are more companies getting more business abroad. There are more, you know, because it also helps local Hungarian business that expats come here because they can be hired as, you know, advisors and stuff like that. So they will start new business opportunities. They start new trade opportunities and in general just spend more money and I hope also tax, you know, there's just a basic thing, but I mean, 16% tax doesn't sound like much, but if you make English pounds, then 16 is a lot of money at the end of the day, you know, Uh, you know, you're probably paying more tax than most people get in salaries. So you're helping the economy, but the question is by everyone coming here, is that help enough or will it just drive everyone out?

Yeah.

And one of the things that I kind of had this strong sense of when I was living in Hungary was that we're swapping places, because I mean, I know you have a lot of listeners here in the UK, right? But um, in the UK when I was growing up, the talk all the time was about Polish people coming to the UK. Polish and Hungarians and Slovakians and everything, but especially Polish people, you know, and we're like all these Polish people coming here, it's taking jobs away from local people. It's it's the same argument, you know, just the other way around and for the other reasons.

Yeah.

It's funny, you know, it's funny you should say that because I've I've talked to some Hungarians about it and apparently London is the second biggest Hungarian city in the world.

It is. I mean, my downstairs neighbor in where I live in London was from Hungary. And.

So when I would go home the first thing I would hear was like him on the phone in in like the street talking in Hungarian. It was like really really weird. I'd like bump into people in in boots like in shops, just speaking Hungarian. I'd be like, oh, button. And stuff like that. It was it's totally like weird.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think my theory is the same as yours that Budapest is is going to be like Berlin and probably eventually London. They're all on this trajectory. Um, and you're just going to move further and further away from the center to afford the rent.

Hmm.

Maybe not even.

Well you'll have to have at at least that again to pay all the taxes and and stuff the Hungarian government would put on top of you. But yeah, I mean I think Yeah.

I think it's I think it's really cool. And it's I think it's really cool to be able to have this discussion and make these choices.

I guess the main attraction of capital cities is usually that they have great connectivity, like airports are extremely well connected. If you live in.

They just want to get out of them. That's the best thing about living in them. Believe.

Yeah.

That's another quote I I would very much have to write down because that's.

That was my experience in London.

But it's very true, isn't it? It's true. It's true. But it it's just the I mean, it's a it's a luxury thing as well, isn't it? Because in Budapest, just as an example, when I'd fly anywhere, I fly with like the cheapest airline in the world, um, Wizz Air. And they have except for extremely pretty uh stewardesses, they don't offer much in terms of service. Let's just put it that way.

Hmm.

Yeah, I well, I still miss you and Sam and Solely. Miss all of you. I can't believe you just left me without saying, no, I'm just kidding. You did get.

You mean like Sam is leaving you now behind you and still coming over to me. I can.

So what is happening is weird. Yeah, like I said, I'm in a cave and you're in like the high heavens, you're like, I mean, I've never seen such contrast between two countries before that are supposedly in the same time zone, right?

Yeah, no, we're in the same time zone. Spain's not supposed to be in this time zone though. It was moved, um, in the 30s. It's supposed to be in the same time zone as the UK. And it's actually a problem because it means the sun doesn't rise until half past 8 in the morning, and that's something that I hate.

Yeah.

That is something that I really can't get involved with because I need to get up when the sun's there. And, you know, getting up at 7:00 and it's the middle of the night is is not fun. So that's my gripe.

Yeah, so we've been talking a lot about languages, uh, sorry, uh, countries and and places. We've talked to you all about languages. No, languages. Probably we should probably talk just a little bit about language languages just to uh say that we've done it.

Yeah.

No. But um, so what's changed actually, I I wanted to talk to you about that. If there's anything in recent times, let's say the last year, last two years that have you had any sort of Eureka moments about language learning? Has anything changed for you recently?

Well, since I left Hungary, I feel like the pressure's been off. And I think this is a big thing. In Hungary, I was constantly looking my failure in the face because I was constantly being reminded about how many things I couldn't do and still can't do if I went back to Hungary. You know, there's still horrendous vocab gaps in my Hungarian that I should fill. Even though I'm pretty functional now in the language.

Oh, really, yeah.

But I guess what I learned from that whole experience is is the way that I got things done in Hungarian was just by knuckling down and getting on with it and, you know, just aiming for an a good outcome, not caring about details, not caring about, you know, necessarily having 100% grammatical correctness or even 1% grammatical correctness in some points. The point was just the transaction. The point was just getting what I knew done.

Cool. And um, just speaking of your Hungarian challenge or whatever word to use.

I I called it a project.

Oh, a project, Hungarian project. Um, so people were really, really, really impressed and I was as well by your uh end of project level. And um, actually if you Google or YouTube search for Hungarian, you come up really really near the top, which is uh pretty cool.

We need more details.

What's the secret?

It's just a couple of key concepts, I think, which will make it happen. And I think the main one is regularity.

Every day.

I think every, well, yeah, every day at least something. Um, and regular lessons, regular kind of study time. You just have to keep doing it. And even though it can feel like there's no end in sight, you are getting better and you just kind of you aim for those Eureka moments along that journey. It's kind of like if you're doing laps of the pool, you aim for the point where you kind of get to one end and just kind of breathe for a bit.

Right. And I think that the studying a little bit every day is also it was the it's the biggest change I've done as well. But one thing I wanted to note about studying every day, even if it's just a little bit, that is also very difficult, I find. It's it's it's challenging to do something every day. So.

It is, and I think it's it's it's challenging because it requires a change of perspective for you to realize that even just looking at a piece of paper with 15 words on it is more useful than not looking at it.

Exactly.

You know, because you have this voice going saying, there's no point, there's no point unless I sit down and do an hour. And there is a point, there really is a point in just keeping your brain refreshed and staying in the habit of making it happen.

Right. Well, that's that's really cool. And I'm also seeing it myself, the small wins where I start to understand stuff and, you know, when I came here the first month and I tried to order food on the phone and I couldn't, I mean, there was a girl of about 17 or something on the phone, and she didn't understand a word of English, even though I was like, pizza, menu, uh, you know, it's not, it's not hard, but she just refused to understand, which happens sometimes.

It's beautiful.

It's fantastic.

No, I can't believe this. No, this this is a beautiful language, definitely. I think it's it's one of my favorites and it's probably one of the things I miss most about Hungary was speaking this bizarre, crazy language all the time.

Yeah. I It's it's so fantastic. And uh people keep saying it's difficult. I I don't know. I think Russian is more difficult, but that's just a personal point of view. Obviously, I don't speak Hungarian that well yet, but uh it's just seems that Hungarian is much more logical, it's much more much more regular, and if it's not regular then it's pretty easy to be understood anyway.

I think I think it's what I was going to say. I think as you as you go further up the scale or as you get more and more advanced, you start to see where Hungarian really does get difficult. And it is more than just a kind of just the vocabulary and the the the words. It's because you're learning a non-Indo-European language, which means that this language has a completely different way of thinking to the language that you're coming from.

That sounds like the ad for like the audio courses like Pimsleur or something. It's like, you can get to the level where you can start speaking with the local people. Yeah. But I mean it's fun, right? I mean, I have holiday languages. I have languages I pick up a little bit just to use because it's it's fun. Yeah. Oh my God. Hungarian is hilarious. I mean, it really is.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I think the response is overwhelming from local people when you learn Hungarian. People are really, really appreciative that you've done it and and in all that you learned what they considered to be the hardest language in the world. I mean everyone thinks their own language is difficult, but it's nice as a learner that people react like that. You have a couple of bad eggs, people who the moment they hear kind of a remote accent will just start speaking English and speak it very well. But, you know, I mean, that's not something which is unique to Hungary by any means.

I think Hungary is one of the, I don't know if this is true or not, but my feeling is that most people will reply in Hungarian if you speak to them in Hungarian, even if your accent is off. I mean, I assume my accent is off, but when I go to every single shop and I say something in Hungarian, even if it's like the touristy places, they'll still instantly reply to me in Hungarian. And I usually don't understand the follow-up because it's long and fast. But um, they'll still do it in Hungarian until I say like uh English. Uh, or maybe I'm just amazing in Hungarian pronunciation. English pronunciation, not so much. But uh I don't know.

Yeah.

So I guess we can recommend people learning this wonderful language of Hungarian.

Definitely and visit this wonderful place. It's Oh yeah. You know, I mean, two things happened when I was living in Hungary, maybe this is just useful to end with. But two things happened which kind of still make me think about Hungary a lot.

We'll see. I don't know. Maybe there's a part of me that's still in Budapest and I'm going to go back one day, but we'll see. It's a very, very special place.

Well you want to be uh, I mean, it's hard to move back when you're such a uh, you know, you're looking to travel and experience other cultures, isn't it? You know, thirsty for culture. It's hard to move back to where you've already been. It's kind of like going back to an ex-girlfriend, you know, you kind of know what you're getting.

Yeah, I know. I mean, I think I'm just interested. I'm interested in the number of people who have been like, no, you you can't leave Budapest. You can leave for a bit, but you'll always come back. So we'll see. We'll see whether the same thing happens with me.

Yeah.

Fantastic. And um, of course, uh we'll see you at um, the polyglot gathering, the polyglot workshops everywhere. You you're doing an online thing.

We're doing an online thing now. It's going to be kind of like a month course where you get time with me and Richard in webinars, also in smaller group chats. And you also get access to an exclusive forum where we'll be on hand to help you with everything to help you to learn languages better and to implement basically the advice that we give on the day in uh in the workshops over the course of a month. So you can make more sustainable learning patterns.

Awesome. And that will be very helpful for people, uh particularly, I guess in America or other far away places where they can't just go to uh the next one is in Valencia.

Yeah. Absolutely. Valencia at the end of January.

Fantastic. And any reason you feel so lazy.

I cannot think it for why we would choose it to be in Valencia.

So crazy. I've never seen anything so lazy before. You live right across the building too, right?

Well, I live very, very close.

Right. That's crazy. Anyway, uh no, that's a big part of reason and luckily for me, what that allowed me to do was to be introduced by a large group of people living here to start out with. And through them, I've sort of extended that network. And I went to a few of the language meetups. I always recommend language meetups as a way of meeting new people because they'll be sort of like-minded.

Yeah, that's cool.