Phone cards

I needed a phone card. Romania has two types: the kind with a microchip and the kind with a code. I desperately needed to call my mother and the code cards don't work with public phones. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a phone card, I guess.

The woman showed me two cards: a 100,000 lei card and a 150,000 lei card. I decided on the 100,000 lei card and gave her a 100,000 lei bill. She looks at it and then calls her husband over for some reason. I start thinking that maybe the card was 1,000,000 and not 100,000 (which is impossible). Then I realise that I should really buy the 150,000 lei card instead.

So I pull out a 50,000 lei bill (I told you I'm rich in Romania!) and indicate that I want the other card instead. A customer came over and tried to explain the Romanian money system.

I wanted to scream. I'm not stupid. I've lived here for over a month. I gave the correct amount the first fricken time around. I did not need some teenager counting out zeros for me. "Look: one zero zero, zero zero zero". I told them I hated Romanian money (I do. I have four country currencies in my wallet right now and I can't keep track of anything), grabbed my card and left.

Incidentally, I was able to call my mom and everything is set. I'm going to La Cita Eterna on November 5th (flying into Ancona and 3 hour train ride). We have 10 glorious days together to see Pompeii and Florence, I get to visit a dear friend in Rome and then I come back to Romania.