I follow this page on social media called “ Squatting Slavs in Tracksuits” and I crack up every time they post a photo that screams “Eastern Europe”. Only by being removed from that environment am I able to see the ridiculousness of it all shine through, and with that realization, I laugh even more at the times when I thought that was “normal”.
Eastern European people are so real, sometimes disgusting, but oh so interesting. My adult mind goes back to the childhood image of neighbors that had sexy posters in their garages, amateur car mechanics gathered around a car trying to fix it from dawn till midnight – or just finding an excuse to drink away from the wife – and others that were just plain ol’ alcoholics.
Cars were a luxury in communism. If you had a car, you were somebody. Don’t imagine big bosses rolling around in a Lamborghini… We’re talking our national pride, Romanian-made cars like Dacia, and if you were a nonconformist maybe a German Trabant, a car the size of a wheelbarrow, that would normally be comfortable only for babies, but since babies can’t drive…
Only a few people owned cars. Even fewer actually drove them around. First of all, gas was scarce, rationed, and only available in state owned gas stations. Secondly, there were times when car traffic was limited to certain plate numbers on certain days. I don’t know the details, since my family didn’t really own a car until quite later in life. Luckily my town was not that big so we got everywhere by walking. I don’t remember cabs being a thing, but I remember horse drawn carriages, which some people owned especially if they lived in houses. The very few active people rode bikes, which in hindsight, must have been amazing with such low car traffic, but a literal pain in the ass on cobblestone streets. Blame the communists.
A few neighbours from my building had functional cars, which were parked around the green space in the interior yard. For us kids, it was always fun to check out these cars, although all the same Dacia brand, we liked to check out their mirrors, or what they had inside. Not surprisingly, a few of these good-Christian neighbors had sexy photos displayed on their boards. I am still in awe remembering that – like, what-the-heck-was-that… Were we all a nation of sexually frustrated people? They had like a notepad holder in the middle of the front board – the equivalent today would be a phone holder maybe- but back in the days they would have notepads or just a little calendar. Well, some men thought to keep things more interesting while driving – so they added photos or calendars with naked girls. It was a curiosity for us kids to check out the, ahem, “anatomy” of an adult in those photos. One can only ask… whyyyyy did these grown-up men need those photos on their board display all the time? I mean, maybe drunk driving wasn’t our biggest problem, because jerk-driving was the bigger issue. And how do you not cover that off when you know the kids on the block are using your car as a hide-and-seek hideout? The 80s didn’t care for that.
There were a few cars on the block that I’ve never seen moving. I think if you ever owned a car that was now broken, it was still worth keeping it in sight just to boast with your prized possession. One such car was perpetually covered, a few were rusty and had flat tires. And yet you’d often see their owners work on these cars every week, building anticipation in our child brains that we would soon see the cars driving around. But no. Working on a car, bending over and showing off a hairy butt crack, getting unsolicited advice from all the men on the block, that was the default mode.
But men were not the only weirdos around. Women – as frustrated victims of a patriarchal, overly religious and communist society where they only mattered in the reproduction process – they were sure to indulge in other vices. There was this tiny babushka-style grannie coming around our block. One day, as a bunch of us were playing, she came over with a small empty bottle, asking us for some rubbing alcohol, because her grandson just got injured and she had none in the house. Since the rubbing alcohol was not a problem to procure and not too expensive, lots of us felt like helping the little old lady and parents often happily agreed. Usually some kid would run screaming at their window “Moooom, this lady needs some rubbing alcohol, do we have any to spare?” Never an issue… until she came back days later, with the same tearjerker story. Her grandson had injured himself and she needed some alcohol for his wounds. Now, she either had a very impaired grandson, or she was drinking that. Yeah, she was drinking that.
Romanians are notorious drunks. In clinical terms, alcoholics – but nobody likes this word. Back in the day alcohol being quite an expense or just plain shitty, lots of people made it at home (hello, moonshine) or, in desperation, resorted to other products. Our grannie here needed the rubbing alcohol. My mom also tells me our cleaning lady, and occasional babysitter, died from an alcoholic coma. I remember a bit of her, but I don’t remember the drinking. Nothing looked “too” weird in a country where traumas were so rampant that literally nobody got out of communism healthy minded. I don’t even think Romanians realize their drinking is a problem – for them it’s a daily occurrence, just fun, or … breakfast. One doesn’t start physical work in the morning without a shot of moonshine. Oh, and of course a shot before each meal as a digestive. Oh… and after the meal for digestion. And a few more for “health” after that… No wonder I once witnessed my grandpa, an artist and church painter, walk into his home at 12 pm, absolutely plastered and unable to aim for the lock to open the door.
For those who preferred lighter drinks, we had quite a few pretty decent wines from local vineyards, as well as a couple local lager beers, sold in 1L bottles (imagine champagne bottles).
But most people spared the expense by making their own moonshine and wine, if they had the fruit. Hey, good news, any fruit can become moonshine. If you’re fancy like my grandma, you also made liqueur. Her sour cherry liqueur taste still stays with me, as I got to sip it from a very early age. “Give the girl a little” and I would get like a quarter shot glass of liqueur. This grandma was the one who was most skilled at processing fruit – her black cherry preserves were also to die for. When I’d visit her, she would always serve me some sweet preserves on tiny colorful plates. As sweets and treats weren’t always good or just expensive on a low income, people made their own stuff. Grannies would often offer their guests jams, preserves and sorbets, besides the usual cakes and baked goods.
As kids, we knew the babushkas that made good preserves on the block. We would literally go into the building and knock on doors asking babushkas for treats: “Hello, do you have any sweets?” Some would give us a bit of preserves, some had cheap hard candy. Catch a babushka during a nap and she would tell you to fuck off.
But god forbid you’d play ball around their windows, they’d remember you and threaten to not give you treats anymore. One tiny old lady in particular was always paranoid about our ball hitting her window and breaking it – even when we were 200 feet away. On her good days, she’d come out and invite us over to give us candy, without us having to ask. She smelled like booze, but we were delirious.
One time, as I went over to my upstairs neighbour’s place with my mom, the lady opened her fridge, grabbed something and gave me this amazing-looking chocolate. It had colorful and shiny packaging, with what looked like Chinese characters. It was not the dull Romanian chocolate, but an imported one, she must have had some interesting job somewhere and access to such rare treats. I grabbed the chocolate but my mom kept insisting she took it back. Well, you can imagine the hate flowing through my veins, not only was this an opportunity to eat good chocolate but also save the packaging and look at it every day, thus preserving the memory of delicious eats. As foreign products were so rare, we enjoyed them so much that we often saved the packaging, nicely flattened and evened out, in our journals and books.
We’d even trade the precious chocolate packaging – with other kids on the block. Of course that could be done in person, or by teleferic! We built teleferics with neighbour kids who had the window opposite ours. We’d pass a rope around our balcony railing, then attach a box to it. We used the box to drop in treats and other trinkets we’d exchange, or even hand written notes when we didn’t want to use the phone so that our parents wouldn’t overhear our conversation. You guessed, the teleferic was ancient texting at its finest, besides being a self-taught lesson in trade.
The childhood joy of exchanging treats turns into the joy of exchanging homemade moonshine in adulthood. ”You have to taste my palinca”, “Here’s some of my tuica”… one would say, just seconds before watching the other one choke and spontaneously combust into the flames of moonshine. The burn, the torture… And then they ask for one more. There’s something warming about it, especially when you live in a cold apartment where heat is restricted to a short daily schedule. It’s not an alcohol “problem” anymore, it’s a survival strategy. And shockingly, so many of these drunks live well into their old years. I always believed it’s the quality ingredients and cleanliness of the alcohol that make a difference, but now I’m thinking there’s also a damn resilience that only Eastern Europeans can possess.
It's Okay, I'm Eastern European. 