实战口语情景对话 第811期:City Costs 城市生活成本

Tom: Jess, I love hearing you talk about the different cities, you've been working in. Were they all very expensive places to live?
汤姆：杰西，我喜欢听你说你工作过的不同城市的情况。那些城市的生活成本都很高吗？

Jess: No, they weren't all expensive. The first city I lived in when I moved away from Britain was Budapest in Hungary, and when I lived there it was before Hungary had joined the Euro, so the currency was still the Hungarian forint and most things were really cheap compared to Britain.
杰西：不是，生活成本不是都高。我离开英国以后，第一个生活的城市是匈牙利布达佩斯，我在那里生活时匈牙利还没有加入欧盟，所以当时使用的货币还是匈牙利福林，与英国相比，大部分东西的价格都很便宜。

There were things that were expensive there, I think especially for tourists or for people who the taxi drivers perceived as being tourists. After I had lived there for awhile kind of knew how much certain journeys should cost and I was very surprised at how often the taxi drivers would double that as soon as they realized I wasn't Hungarian, but overall Budapest was a cheap city. I'm not sure if that's the case now. It uses the Euro, but then it was cheap and very good fun. After Budapest, I went to Madrid, and that was a bit more expensive than Budapest, definitely. Rent was certainly more expensive and a large proportion on my monthly salary went on rent but other things like eating out, supermarket shopping, clothes shopping, they were still quite a lot of choices that wasn't too expensive. The high street shops were about the same price as in Britain, but eating out there was cheap. Again, beauty services in Madrid — haircuts — I think they must be expensive all over the world cause they were really expensive in Madrid as well.
布达佩斯也有非常贵的东西，尤其是对游客或者说对被出租车司机看成游客的人来说。我在布达佩斯生活了一段时间以后，我就了解了来这里旅行所需要的费用，而且我非常吃惊的是，一旦出租车司机发现乘客不是匈牙利人，那他们收取的费用就会翻倍，不过总的来说，布达佩斯的物价很便宜。我不知道现在那里的情况是不是还是这样。现在布达佩斯使用欧元，不过以前那里的物价很便宜，而且很好玩。离开布达佩斯以后，我去了马德里，那里的物价比布达佩斯稍微贵一些。租金更贵，我每个月大部分的工资都去交租金了，不过像去外面吃饭、在超市买东西和买衣服等有很多选择，而且不是很贵。商业街上商店的价格和英国的一样，不过餐厅的价格很便宜。另外，在马德里剪发等美容服务的价格很贵，我想这种服务在全世界的价格都很贵。So, you've told me about Tokyo and Bangkok, where else have you lived Tom?汤姆，你说过东京和曼谷的情况，你还在其他地方生活过吗？

Tom: I had a short contract working in North Africa in Tripoli in Libya and rent was taken care of and I almost paid nothing while I was there and I was able to send seventy or eighty percent of my salary home to England to my savings account. Travel around Tripoli by these little minivans was a quarter of a dinar and food was a little bit more expensive but I could live on a very small amount of money each month and of course tripoli is right on the Mediterranean so on my days off I could go to the beach very easily. The weather was always fantastic. It was an interesting place to live and the currency in Libya are these beautiful huge bank notes that you have to fold several times to put into your wallet. It was a really satisfying to have a fist full of those in your pocket.
汤姆：我在北非做过短合同工，在利比亚首都黎波里工作过一段时间，那份工作提供住宿，我在那里时几乎没买过东西，我将工资的70%至80%寄到英国的储蓄帐户。乘坐小型面包车在黎波里游览的费用大概是0.25第纳尔，那里的食物要贵一些，不过我每个月只花一小部分钱，黎波里在地中海地区，休息的时候去海滩玩很方便。那里的天气一直都很棒。在黎波里生活很有意思，利比亚货币很漂亮，但是纸币很大，要对折好几次才能放进钱包里。钱包里装得满满的让人感觉很开心。

Jess: Oh, it sounds fantastic. I'd love to go there.
杰西：哦，听起来不错。我想去那里看看。