Today we got to see a lot more of the city. I had been wondering ever since we got here, why things didn’t seem quite as bad as they had let on in prep class. We found today though, that outside the few blocks radius from where we have been, the conditions are dramatically different. Where I am living, there are tons of apartment buildings, small businesses, a few restaurants, and two malls- the Moldova Mall and the Hola Centrala. Just a couple blocks further behind the Hala, is where things change. We walked over there to go try Gogosi. It’s like a giant scone filled with chocolate, cheese, jelly, or some other filling. They are even better than they told us they would be.
Behind the Hala, people live in shack-like homes rather than apartments. Many of their homes are falling apart. There have laundry hanging everywhere and laid out across fences. In one yard, I saw two very expensive looking winter coats hung on a chain link fence. This is where most of the gypsies are seen. They hang out in groups on the streets during the day. They don’t do anything but look as we walk past. For the first time, a young street boy approached us to beg for money. I had already decided before I came that I wouldn’t hand out money to street children since it usually does more harm than good. It was still really hard not to though.
We also saw a boy sitting and playing a recorder for change. We noticed he had a very dead look in his eyes. When we walked up to listen, he didn’t even seem to acknowledge that we were there. He had a little cardboard mat next to him with a miniature black dog sitting on it. The dog was so adorable and dressed in a tiny pink bonnet, and smiling with it’s little white teeth. It just sat there with a frozen look on its face while the little boy played his flute inches from the dog’s ears. We all agreed that it looked as if the dog was thinking, “This is the eighth time you’ve played this song and why do I have to wear this gay little pink bonnet?”
Later in front of the Hala, a small gypsy girl about six years old, begged us for money too. She was very dirty and her sandals were on the wrong feet. She started pretending to cry so we would have sympathy for her. We told her we didn’t have any money, then tried to make conversation by telling her that her shoes needed to be switched, but she didn’t seem to care.
This afternoon, we finally got to go to the Piata (pronounced pee-aht-zuh). This is by far my favorite place in Iasi! It’s an open market where people bring fresh produce to sell that day. There are tables and tables full of fruits and vegetables picked that morning. There are also tables of fresh flowers. The majority of the vendors are gypsy, but if you go inside some doors right next to the open market outside, there are Romanians selling produce and cheese on tables as well. They let us taste some of the cheeses. There aren’t any yellow cheeses or parmesan, but there are dozens of soft, white cheeses to chose from. Most of them look like giant blocks of cream cheese and they all look the same, but they taste very different. Most taste either salty or bitter.
Today we bought oranges, bananas, apples, pears, onions, a pepper, a few potatoes, and a bundle of flowers. They weighed everything on a little scale, and we had to watch carefully so they couldn’t try and rip us off. Annie got ripped off buying the pears and apples. Whitney and I thought we were getting ripped off with our oranges, until we realized that when the scale says 34. lei, it really means 3.4 lei. That took us a while to figure out. We were embarrassed, because we had been telling the lady that she was charging us too much. The thing that stinks is that we cannot buy any of the produce that we can’t bleach or peel, which eliminates things like strawberries and lettuce. They would absorb the bleach.
When we left the Piata, we were sitting with our bags, waiting for the other group of girls to meet up with us. Another small gypsy girl walked up to us, holding her baby brother, and asked politely if she could have one banana. I had bought the bananas and had a whole bundle, so I decided to give her one. She smiled and told me thank you. She walked only a few steps before she peeled it and started sharing it with her brother. As I sat and watched them devour this banana, my heart went out to these children.
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