Ce se Intimpla pe Drum la Sat

Every day on my way home from school, I walk past an elderly lady's house. She knows who I am, but evidently another old lady who was visiting at the front gate the other day had no idea. After I said, "Buna ziua," and passed the two old ladies (you don't pass anyone by in a village of 2,500 without greeting them, even if you have no idea who they are), I heard the following conversation snippets being spoken rather loudly behind me:

Baba 1: Who's that?
Baba 2: That's the foreign boy from America. He teaches at the school.
Baba 1: Where's he staying?
Baba 2: At Miter's house, over there.

It wasn't a long walk the rest of the way home, but I laughed the whole way there. In a village, everyone knows the entire family tree of everyone else, and if they don't know who you are, they won't blush about asking you. Sometimes elderly folks ask me upfront on the road, "Who are you?" with a sense that they had every right to cut the nonsense and find out who the hell this new person was. I gladly tell them.

A Moldovan village is a lot like Cheers; everybody knows your name, and if they don't, they'll ask you for it and then serve you a drink on the house.

Speaking of drinks, my simplest and most astounding cross-cultural experience happened last weekend as I was waiting on the side of the road in Mereseni for a rutiera. Two middle-aged women came walking down the road toward me with wine in a plastic water bottle (this used to be strange), a small glass and a bag of candy. They approached me and asked me if I'd like a glass of wine. I accepted, since I could afford to spend a leu on wine. They poured me a glass, I downed it in one swallow (this also used to be strange), thanked them, and told them that it was good wine. The lady with the bag grabbed three pieces of candy and a cookie and put them in my hand. Then they left. No money exchanged. They were just giving out shots of wine on the side of the road.

I bit off part of the cookie and thought to myself, "I like this country."