Market

I love my neighbourhood's market. Stalls and stalls of fresh fruits, veggies and some weird pickled things that might be turnips or beets. Old women in black clothing, headscarves and striped socks preside over their harvests.

I wanted to find some onions, so I searched and searched. It was dark when I arrived and most of the vendors were cleaning up. I found a little old lady selling prebagged vegetables and I was able to buy a kilogram of onions for 20,000 lei. She tried to get me to buy a bunch of carrots too but I politely declined. She recognised my accent and asked where I was from. When I said "Canada", she her face broke into a wide grin and she started asking me all sorts of questions. The only one I could figure out was whether I lived on the east or west coast.

I swear, every Romanian has a relative or knows someone who has moved to Canada. And the whole world thinks that all Canadians know each other. I often have to tell people that "no, I don't know their nephew's friend in Winnipeg".

I went to the main city market on Saturday. It was about four times as big as my neighbourhood market and had individual rooms for meats, fish, flowers and cheeses.

I love cheese so I thought I'd see what I could find there. Imagine a room filled with twenty women all selling the exact same white feta cheese. They started screaming something at me. I don't know what. One woman grabbed my arm and pleaded with me to...I have no idea. Taste her cheese? Buy her cheese? Brush my hair?

I was scared. Not in the sense of impending doom scared, but very uncomfortable and uneasy nonetheless. It's one thing to be screamed at, it's another to not know what they're saying. I quickly walked up one aisle and left as fast as I could. The women reminded me of too many cats in a small cage, trying to claw their way out.

I wish Romanian markets were like the city markets back home. You can get all sorts of delicious baked goods, crafts and trinkets at our markets. Romanian markets are just vegetables, preserves, dried beams and stew fixings. It's actually quite a neat idea. You buy a bag filled with cut up parsnips, carrots, turnips and whatever else Romanians make stews with. Actually, I'm just bitter because I still can't find burec anywhere.

I have a Serbian friend here who offered to take me to a Serbian restaurant, or have her mother make me burec. Too bad she's in Bucharest until Friday.