Day 247 - I Was Rich Once

Our first Moldovan painting

While in Romania, I received multiple copies of several books to share with my students. The books came from the U.S. Information Agency which was sponsoring a visit by an American exchange visitor who was scheduled to deliver lectures at universities in Romania.  His lecture referred to the themes of the books.

One of those books was John Updike's Bech, A Book. The first line was, "I was rich once." Updike's fictional alter ego, Henry Bech, uttered those words about his month-long visit to the Soviet Union, also as a lecturer sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency, where he was paid in rubles, large quantities of rubles, which he could not take out of the country.  Rubles were not a convertible currency. Bech was rich because he had to spend all his rubles before leaving the country.

That thought - I was rich once - came to me many times during the first year in Moldova. For the first time in my life, I felt rich, so long as I could find something to spend my money on.

Our second weekend in Moldova, we went wandering downtown with no particular purpose, just to see what we could find. One of our finds was a shop selling artwork. There were paintings of all types and sizes. The prices were so low that we walked through the shop pointing first to one painting as we declared, "We'll take this one," followed by another pointing finger and the utterance "and this one," and then another "this one," all without asking the prices. Even with less than $10 worth of rubles in our pockets, we knew we could afford them all. We were rich. For Christmas that year, I gave Alex a set of four watercolors, framed, at a cost of $1 each.

One of a set of four watercolor paintings

Because we didn't have a kitchen in our VIP suite at the Codru Hotel, we had our meals in a private dining room behind the VIP suites. In addition to options for three courses - appetizer, main course, and dessert - we had options for beverages. The bargain was champagne. A bottle of Moldovan champagne cost less than a bottle of Pepsi and it was easier to find.

A visitor from Washington, in town to set up the cleared American guard program which would maintain security during the renovation project that would transform our building punctured with holes in all directions into a secure embassy, joined us for dinner. When he saw the prices on the menu he insisted on paying for our meals. We had soup, we had a main course, we had dessert, we had coffee after the meal, and of course we had champagne. The total bill for the three of us was under $5.00. Our visitor asked if he could keep the bill to take back to Washington to show others how inexpensive life in Moldova was.

We didn't bother arranging for the shipment of 2,000 pounds of non-perishable food we were entitled to have the government pay to transport because the cost of a can of peas was more than our typical three-course meals. And we had no idea when we would end up with a kitchen.

The circus in Chișinau

Then there was the entertainment. The ambassador was always being given tickets to concerts, operas, and ballets, even the circus. You can't beat the price of a free ticket, except a ticket for a nickel, the full price, wasn't bad either. We saw world famous opera singers who sang in Italian, French, Russian, Romanian, and German.

Fur hat

Everyone in Moldova had a fur hat, even children. We wondered if they were issued in the hospital as mothers took their babies home. So we went off in search of fur hats. When we found them, once again, we were rich. They were right around $2 each so we didn't have to make a choice; we bought as many as we liked, provided that the store would sell them to us. Just like the woman selling liter Coke bottles on Stefan cel Mare Blvd on our first trip around Chișinau, most salespeople weren't willing to sell everything to one customer. Later we discovered at least some of them weren't quite the bargains we had at first thought - the fur fell out much like hair on a balding man.

Being rich lasted through the first year. By the second year, Moldova had started catching up with the rest of Europe with prices rising and a few more consumer goods finding their way onto the shelves. I missed the early days.