Posts from Fun

A joke about how Hungary declared war on the USA (during World War II). There's the old joke about the Hungarian ambassador handing a declaration of war to the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull: Hull: "Why would the Republic of Hungary declare war against us?" Ambassador: "We are a kingdom, not a republic." Hull: "Did your king approve this?" Ambassador: "We have no king; we are ruled by a regent, Admiral Horthy." Hull: "You are ruled by your navy? How big is it?" Ambassador: "We have no navy; we are a landlocked country." Hull: "So why do you want to fight us? Do you have a territorial claim against the USA?" Ambassador: "We have no claim against you, only against Romania." Hull: "Are you also declaring war on Romania?" Ambassador: "No, Romania is our ally."

Every day.

Unrestrained.

A Russian guy after visiting Ukraine tells to his friends:

• They are very strange there, they have there a lot of places for smoking and in Kyiv, on main street Khreshchatyk they have very big Japanese-Italian shop. :-)

What does that mean? Ukrainian word “perukarnya" (barber shop) in Russian is assosiated with smoking, so the guy thought barbershop was place for smoking. And years ago there was on Khreshchatyk big shop “hudziki-tkanini”. First word sounds “Japanese” for Russians, though it means just buttons for cloth, and second word sounds “Italian" for them, though it means just materials for making cloth.

Ахах)

I understood the second part of the joke, but a barbershop with smoking? Why?

They probably created a joke for English speakers and didn't realize that Russian speakers might read it too.

I once saw a more interesting version: apparently, there’s a Lisyonka street in Kyiv (Lisyonka = Lysenko), a store selling Italian tailoring fabrics called Tkanini, and a tribute to Freud – the Libidskaya metro station.