Out with the old and in with the new-to-you
A mostly-grown teenage boy wearing a too-small hot dog costume and tables heaped high with treasures and trinkets can only mean one thing – ICSB’s annual rummage sale! There is no better visual reminder of the ebb and flow of the expatriate life. Identical storage trunks used for international shipping stacked up around the parking garage and outdoor area of the ICSB campus this past Saturday as our tribe of global nomads and the local community came together to purge and stock up for the coming year.
There were newer transplant families, like ours, only selling outgrown kids’ clothes and there were veteran families selling entire households of carefully collected necessities from decades of life overseas before returning to their passport countries for good.
Any type of garage sale is a novelty in the Hungarian community. Properties are fortified with high walls and iron fences. By law, each home must be enclosed with a fence. Strangers inside your gate looking through you things are a reason to call to the police, not to haggle prices. Additionally, second-hand sales are only recently making a main-stream appearance. The ever increasing appearance of second-hand stores may be due to the younger generations’ materialistic quest to exchange what they have for the newer, bigger version or simply because for the first time in generations some people actually have more than they need.
Whatever the reason, Hungarians and expatriates alike turned out en masse last Saturday. Each one seeking bargains at one of the only used-goods sale around. The freshman class added to the flea market atmosphere by selling baked goods and, you guessed it, hot dogs. What has been your best garage sale find? We'd love to hear about your second-hand successes on our facebook page!
