I enjoy this too. At first you do weird things like

vector<string> s;

for(var itr = s.begin(); itr != s.end(); ++itr)

But eventually you learn to avoid the got'ch'yas.

I also find myself implementing cool features from one language in another. Like split and combine from PHP in C++.

vector<string> explode(char seperator, const string &s);
string implode(char seperator, const vector<string> &ary);

That alone makes parsing directory stuff a breeze.

v = explode('.', dir);

if(v.size() > 1 && v.back() == "txt")
  // the file ends in .txt!