You can tell a lot about a country by it’s postal system. For instance, in the United States, you go to the post office to mail parcels, mail registered letters and see whether any of your neighbours’ pictures adorn the FBI’s “Most Wanted’ posters. While you are there, you can also buy postage stamps although you don’t need to because you can buy them almost anywhere. The same is true in Canada. Today in North America, it’s quite possible to avoid going to the post office altogether. People rarely use registered mail any more because if the regular mail won’t do, you’ll probably be served papers by someone wearing a bad suit. And as for mailing parcels, why go to the trouble when FedEx or UPS will come to your door and pick them up?In Hungary, you have to buy your postage stamps at the post office. And there is a good chance you’ll have to stand in line to get them because postage stamps aren’t the only thing they’re selling. People also stand in line to buy lottery tickets and pay their bills. I have never understood why banks here don’t offer chequing accounts. I can only assume that most Hungarians don’t trust the mail to deliver payments. So if you can’t trust the post office with a cheque, how on earth can you trust them with cash? But Hungarians do. And I can show you the line-ups to prove it.
But bless their hearts, the good folks running the post office are doing everything they can to turn it into a positive shopping experience. There you can find large plasma TV screens running commercials for…the post office. (Call me guys, I think you’re missing out on a major revenue stream). But that’s not all you can find. Here’s a list of what I found for sale at the post office by Nyugati: Fridge magnets, an assortment of stuffed animals, some of which I recognized but not the one holding a banana, bead necklaces, appointment books, Disney character keychains (hopefully licensed…Disney has more lawyers than animators), one novel…yes…just one…by a ‘P. Howard”, to my knowledge not a Hungarian name, a cookbook, a few children’s books and what looked like a box of seeds for planting vegetables, perhaps being the most entertaining offering because you could watch them grow while you stand in line.
The US postal system is one of the few services yet to be privatized and one can only assume that’s because no one has figured out how to make money. To learn how to do that they need only come to Hungary and mail a package back to North America like the Christmas present I mailed to my daughter in Toronto. For that service, I parted with twenty thousand plus forints ($100US). At that price, you’d think I was sending my daughter a seasonal concrete block. But no, the box contained the Christmas stocking she’s had since she was two filled with lightweight trinkets and topped with a stuffed creature vaguely resembling a snowman. To weigh any less, I would have had to have shipped a box filled with air.
Two days later, horror struck. We realized we had a dyslexia moment and had inverted two numbers on my daughter’s street address. But we had filled out the part on the form for an alternate address if the package was undeliverable. There was only one problem with that. While Hungarian postal workers don’t speak English, Canadian postal workers don’t read.
Google Earth showed us that the address where we had mailed our package was in the middle of a Toronto ravine. We phoned our former next door neighbour (the alternate address) to have them watch for the package. Christmas came and went with no sign of it. By the end of January, I gave up.
I look forward to going to the post office with the same enthusiasm I have for going to the dentist. At least he has nitrous oxide. Two days ago I received a notice for registered mail. When I went to the post office and signed for my registered mail what I received was a notice from the post office telling me to go to yet another post office to pick up a parcel. That second post office is the large bunker-like complex on Orczy.
When I finally got there and to the right floor and to the correct wicket and signed a stack of papers, I was given a package wrapped in plain brown paper. It was my daughter’s package, no longer boxed and clearly inspected by someone. I assume it was unwrapped and rewrapped by the Canadian post office. I assume this for two reasons. One, in today’s world, any package addressed to a ravine is bound to raise suspicions and be inspected. Two, if it had been rewrapped by the Hungarians, it would have been wrapped and bound with a string and bow which packages mailed in Hungary must have. What’s up with that?
My daughter will be over here for Easter but with her stocking rescued, it’s going to feel more like Christmas.
The postal system here is nuts. What’s terrifying is that it seems to work.
