The Market

Number 9 on my list of “What I Think Romania Will Be Like” reads “The supermarkets will be open-air, old, and you’ll dicker for things from numerous vendors.”

After two weeks, I figured I must be mistaken. No such phenomenon had been sighted. That was before last Saturday. We went shopping. Such sights and smells as I could only have imagined. We’d been shopping before, but that was at the stores. For the really fresh stuff, you go to the market. There is a small indoor market close to our house that we often walk to, but this one was a big one. Rows and rows of vendors selling mostly the same things—tomatoes, beans, peppers, peas, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, maybe garlic, raspberries, strawberries, apricots, apples, pears, peaches, cherries (oh! the cherries!), nectarines, cabbage, and eggplant. You walk up and down and up and down, comparing prices and quality, maybe dicker a bit, walk some more, try to stay out of people’s way (good luck!), and say “no” to the vendors accosting you on right and left. “Domnisoara, poftiti!” (Here you are, miss!)

You bring your own bags—and try to keep one hand free to guard your purse! Regardless of your skill in packing, it’s impossible to keep fruit from getting semi-squished. Raspberries and strawberries in particular don’t do so well in the plastic shopping bags the vendors give you. Math—including exchange from one currency to another—is all headwork, so you had better be on top of things and count your change.

Each booth has its own little umbrella erected to shade its occupants and its produce, but the umbrellas stick out into the walkway, and they’re erected at a grand height of about 5’9”. Not a problem for the rather diminutive Romanian people. Squished raspberries, strawberries, and other things *ahem* are on the ground—closed shoes are advisable, and watch your step.

Don’t buy watermelons, because you’ll have to carry them all the way back to your car, and even on a slow market day, it’s probably not what one might call “handy.”

Dacia, Romanian-made cars, are extremely reliable--as long as the horse is alive.

Some of the booths didn’t have any shelter from the brutal sun. Mr. Cabbage Vendor was one such unlucky man: shirtless, very tan, and wearing a cabbage leaf on his head. (Not the one in the picture, though such a sight--complete with cigarette--would not be out of place!) An old woman carrying several potatoes in her shirt yells angrily at a potato vendor—maybe he’d cheated her, or maybe she was just having a bad day. Two dudes relax in the back of a truck full of produce, waiting for an interested-looking person to approach their produce. A businessman with a cane walks rapidly down the row of produce, muttering the prices aloud to himself. A little wiener dog wriggles out from under a booth and trots across the road. People stare at us—we’re the only kids there. Kids don’t shop here, but it’s really handy to have them along. You can carry a lot more stuff. It’s really kind of fun, but stay away from the cherries. They have sweet cherries, sour cherries, and bitter cherries. All wormy.


And not little cute ones like this, neither! Well...some of them were little.

Last week, we got three or four kilos at a good price and spent an entire afternoon cutting each cherry in half, removing the pit and the worm—there were rarely two. The next day, we called on friends from the church and they brought out fresh cherries to serve us. I didn’t used to think that sort of thing would bother me, and it didn’t at first. I ate the first one, refusing to think about the fat white grub that was probably inside. But then Annie slit hers open with her fingernail. Three out of three were “inhabited.” It was tougher after that. :)

But now I’m much more thankful for protein-less cherries.