Stale bread, stray dogs, snouty pigs. 

I was just chomping on some “bagel crisps” from a salad kit and, as soon as I shoved a couple in my mouth, I was struck by the familiarity of the taste. Oh, but what could this be? I was confused because it tasted good but awful at the same time, and let’s just say, emotions were involved. After minutes of taste buds introspection, I finally figured this taste reminded me of stale bread. Good ol’ white bread. Growing up in communist Romania, nothing really went to waste, and with fresh bread being pretty scarce in a week, we would save the bread leftovers dry. To my recollection, the old bread crumbs would be later used in fillings and as an ingredient in foods, dry or soaked in water. We didn’t have the concept of croutons. Try to give a salad with croutons to an old Romanian babushka right now and she will spit it right out in disgust and call you out for giving her stale bread. PERSPECTIVES. I am somewhat a babushka because I am always appalled at the 2-3 pieces I get in a restaurant salad “with croutons” – like, bro, you can’t even afford stale bread at your fancy restaurant? Must be tough.

We actually munched on stale bread sometimes. It was dried in the oven but not super toasted. Sometimes it felt good to just taste the carb goodness, but oftentimes it was just breaking our teeth. Bagel crisps are a far better option nowadays. Apart from us using this as a snack, stale bread also made a great meal for animals. Soaked in some water or broth, the old bread is used by people in the countryside to feed their chicken and pigs. I think it’s because of this notoriety that many people associate stale bread with something only animals eat, and refuse to be fed anything like it nowadays. 

I grew up in the city, as did a couple of generations before me, so I’m a city girl through and through. I didn’t have close relatives in the countryside, like most kids who had some grandparents there and would spend their summers away at their house – to my dismay, because that meant I wouldn’t get to hang out with them during the vacation. I know that if I ever told you that I rode a horse carriage in town you would question how much of a city girl I am, but let’s just say I didn’t know how living in a detached house with land or animals really is. Communism industrialized cities and tore down houses to build ghetto apartment buildings, then relocated people to have them work in factories. My grandparents’ house in the city was in this situation, before I was born, they were forcefully relocated into a small apartment while their house got torn down to make way for some 10 storey building complex. So for me, visiting my grandparents only meant walking to a building a few blocks away, not exactly traveling to the green countryside and playing in horse shit. 

I saw cows and pigs in books, as I learned to say my first “moo ” and “oink”, but I only got to see my first real life pig when I was 7 years old. My grandfather, who was a church painter, got to finish a new church project in a village close by called Prajesti. The family attended the grand opening. It was a hot sunny day, and they had set up the outdoor area by the church with rows of white chairs. I arrived there and, before the whole event started, I walked around with my mom and grandma. Visited the church, looked at the paintings, walked to the gardens and the residences. And there it was, in a little barn, the most gigantic pig I could ever see. Jiggly back, short legs, snout the size of my leg.  It was a sow in fact, with tiny piglets by her side, nibbling on her overstretched nipples. This pig, almost my size in reality, appeared to be of mammoth proportions. I stood behind the little fence, and as I got a bit closer, the sow got angry and came charging at the fence. Ok, away we go, sorry ma’am. Somewhat scared, I walked back to the event area, and had to sit through the most boring, soul-drenching speeches from priests and other church higher-ups. I zoned out, thinking of that colossal, snouty pig. It made an impression on me. So naturally, at some point, in an attempt to preserve the last shred of soul left in me, I sneaked out of my seat and walked away from the festivities towards the pigpen. I went to see my pig, and I hung out there for a while, staring at her fat rolls, until my desperate mother came looking for me. 

We didn’t have pets until later, in part because my mom wasn’t a fan. But we did have stray dogs and cats everywhere in the streets. Usually they’d get shelter by buildings that employed night watch, and they’d get fed by security people there. But they were free to roam the streets and they would come by our block, looking through garbage or waiting for the kids to throw them some food. If we saw a stray dog ready to give birth, we would set up boxes with blankets and rags they could use for the puppies, and we would ask our parents to save bones and any leftovers (stale bread!) to feed them. I know a few dog owners will be appalled right now just hearing how we fed dogs some bones and bread, but these were feral animals that were starving otherwise, and they really ate anything as their bodies adapted. We didn’t have much protein for ourselves, as a matter of fact. Stray dogs became a huge problem in communism, as houses got torn down people didn’t have room for dogs inside apartments – in part because it was believed a dog is supposed to live outside in his pen to guard the house. So there they were, later, roaming free, not being sterilized or anything, until it got out of control, and many generations of post-communist city leaders attempted to solve the problem without much success. None of them were brighter than a dog anyway. It wouldn’t be an issue to see cute cuddly dogs in the streets, but feral ones would often get territorial and attack, and many people got bitten or even died as a result. And no, from my experience, dogs don’t feel a ‘bad person’. They just try to survive.

Cats were not such a major issue, after all they hunted mice. We did have quite a few stray cats around, and saw many litters of kittens being born in boxes outside our building entrances. Some kittens survived, some didn’t, then they got a garden burial from the kids on the block. Ok, I promise it wasn’t all morbid. Though I don’t remember where the living kittens kept disappearing at some point…. Maybe aliens. Yes, there must be a kitten planet somewhere. 

Our buildings and yards were our playgrounds. The gardens were great for foraging, climbing trees,  finding snails, cross spiders, or just burial places for anything that died on our watch. The stairs at the building entrances served as seating, and the carpet cleaning rails were great for gymnastics, because when you grow up with Nadia as the national icon, you need to at least try a swing or two on a horizontal bar. Every building had such a railing in the yard or close by. People took their carpets there to beat the dust out of them with a carpetbeater, as few people actually owned vacuum cleaners. It was quite a workout, and the whole family had to participate in this mafia-style training. Roll a giant-ass Persian carpet, carry it down the stairs (no elevators), try to hang it up the rail which was like 7 ft high, beat the crap out of it, brush it, take it down and then up the stairs back into the house. Couple this with learning how to bury a bird in the backyard and the mobster skill set is complete. 

Cleaning carpets was probably my mother’s most obsessive endeavor a few times a year and I personally loathed it, especially if my friends were around playing and I had to do such chores. Although, nothing was more loathsome than having to do laundry manually for big clothing pieces, scrubbing and cleaning with a laundry bar soap that smelled like lye and death (…and was probably made of something dead. Mafia?)

I guess I can’t say that living in a building took away from the workouts you’d naturally do if you owned a house with a garden and some animals. It made us stay active, resilient, and hard working, even at the cost of gagging from the soap aroma or inhaling clouds of dust from your carpets as you beat the shit out of them. Surprisingly not many people looked fit, but then our pig-like diets were mostly carbs, because that kind of stuff was at least available. We had big bums before Kardashian and our pigs were thicc as fuck. Maybe communists thought of our well being in the city, and all these privileged Canadian hipsters telling us communism is good for humanity are on to something. Maybe it’s even better than the kitten planet…