• banks
• repair and maintenance
• emergency services (ambulance, police, Automobile Association)
There are several services in the world, such as restaurants, banks, hairdressers, dry-cleaners, patrol services and so on.
People are usually in a hurry and they don’t have time to wait for meals in restaurants. They go to self-service restaurants, which don’t offer many kinds of dishes, but the service is quick and the food is acceptable. There are cheaper and some more expensive ones. You can buy your food at takeaway restaurants if you don’t have time to cook but would like to eat at home. Fast food restaurants are very popular but not so healthy. I like these foods but I eat there rarely.
Many students complain about the canteen food, saying that it is tasteless and full of fat. I think the situation is not that bad. The kitchen provides food for several hundred students a day and can’t afford to use the best ingredients. There are some dishes that they cook really well.
In Hungary the number of foreign restaurants is growing. There are more and more Chinese, Greek, Italian, Turkish and Arabic restaurants. You can also find other international restaurants, mainly in big towns.
I go to the hairdresser’s to have my hair cut two- or three times a year because I grow my hair and I dye it at home.
It’s much cheaper to do all the work yourself and with the help of your family and friends, but you might not be so satisfied with the result. Employing professionals is quite expensive but they work faster and better.
I take suits, overcoats, leather jackets, fur coats and other clothes made of materials that can’t be washed to the dry-cleaner’s.
At the post office you can buy stamps, envelopes, cards, scratchcards and so on. You can post letters and parcels, pay your bills, transfer money, etc. I transfer money by internet.
Banks offer a wide choice of services. They deal with savings, payment services, lending, insurance, foreign currency exchanges, leasing, giving advice on investments, and so on. Nowadays more and more banks provide telebanking services. It means that people use their phones or the internet to give orders to the banks to carry out different kinds of business transactions for them.
Patrol services are ambulance, police, fire service and auto club. Ambulance callable in 104, police in 105 and fire service in 107 in emergencies. In Hungary these services are not so quick and modern. Auto club helps the motorists in default. It’s available in 188, and it has 80 modern “yellow angels’.