"Cum doresti"

Corruption. It's everywhere, and every Moldovan knows it. But that doesn't mean that you should ever, ever, even subtly begin to imply to a person that what they're doing is corrupt. Especially when they work with buses.

I've had two experiences with transportation workers where my innocent questioning of a price has thrown people into fits. The first happened several months ago, when I wanted to buy a bus ticket from Chisinau back to my village of Mereseni. Normally, the ticket costs 10 lei. The woman in the booth told me it cost 12.

"Did the price go up?" I asked, pulling out an extra two lei.

"I'm just saying the prices!" she yelled at me through the plastic divider. She turned her computer's LCD screen so I could read it. "See! The prices changed! You think I'm pocketing this money?!"

"My God!" I responded. "Can't you see I'm already giving you the money? Here, take the money!" I bought my ticket and walked away. The woman continued, I'm sure, to have a rotten day.

The second time happened just this week. I had gotten taken a bus from Hincesti to Chisinau, a ticket that used to cost seven lei but had recently started costing nine. When we arrived in Chisinau, I gave the driver a 10 lei bill and waited for my change.

An awkward silence followed for five seconds.

"What are you still waiting for, boy?" the driver asked, already sounding agitated.

"Well, it costs nine lei from Hincesti," I said, "so I'm waiting for at least one leu."

"It's nine lei to the bus station," he said. "I took you to the center of the city. That's another leu. 10 lei."

There is something about the Romanian language in general, and in particular with bus drivers' usage of it, that eschews all semblance of politeness or understanding within the first two seconds of a confrontational situation. The tone of a Moldovan bus driver explaining how he has concocted his price is impossible to translate into English. The emotions behind it are a mix of "I can't believe you don't know how much things cost and I have to explain it to you, you idiot," "How dare you come on my bus and tell me how much every other bus ride you've taken on this route has cost you," "I make the rules on this bus and f--- you if you don't like 'em," and "Why do you have to be the one guy who has a problem with my price? You're making my life so difficult just by existing." Now, re-read the driver's previous line with your newfound Moldovan driver voice. Not fun to hear, is it?

In the face of these attitudes, it is often best to simply step down. So I left the one leu on the bus and shrugged.

"Cum doresti," I said as I turned and walked off the bus. In English, this means, "Whatever you want." Because this translation is quite innocuous, the bus driver's final words surprised me:

"SDOIIJEWLKEFWJDSCMLKKJWEEOIFJLKSMJSLKSJFOIWIEURLLSDLKFJSDFKLJ!!!!!!!!" he barked. "SI SWOKJZCLKMJCLKJOWWJFOIJFLKSJSLKFFLK!!!!!!" he added for good measure. This is not a direct transcription, since angry drivers tend to swear in Russian, and although the majority of Russian words that I know are curses, I don't know nearly enough of them to understand all of the curses that a Moldovan driver can fit inside five seconds of yelling. I was already outside of the bus by then, so to show how little I cared about the whole situation and how much he was overreacting, I raised my hands high above my head and made an "I'm not listening" noise.

"Bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh!" I called as I continued to walk away. Then, for good measure, I wanted to swear at him in Russian. Before I could think of the best word, though, I realized that I had already sworn at him seven times in a row; the standard American "I'm not listening" noise is best translated in Russian as "bitch".

So who won this argument? The driver who got an extra leu and screamed at the top of his lungs in order to maintain his authority on his bus, or the American who lost a leu, equivalent to eight American cents, unintentionally cursed loudly in the middle of a crowded street seven times and got to laugh afterward? I claim victory, because it was by far the best entertainment I'd ever had for just seven cents.