Day 261 - The VIP Store

Under the Soviets, there were always classes of people, in spite of the rhetoric around everyone being a comrade. During my year in Romania, the Romanians tried to emphasize that everyone was all the same by using the term tovarăş, the Romanian word and Russian cognate (товарищ) for comrade, in place of Mr. or Miss when trying to get the attention of a person on the street. I never recognized the word when it was spoken to get my attention which often resulted in someone shouting at me or grabbing my coat sleeve.

In Romania, westerners were in a special class - not necessarily one with higher respect, just special - because we had hard currency to spend. There were special stores for us to shop, dollar stores, in most of the hotels catering to tourists. Anyone in Romania could walk by these shops and see what was on offer in the windows, but only foreigners with hard currency could buy things in them.

In Moldova, there were no visible shops that only certain people could shop in, but there was a VIP shop in Chişinău, previously available only to Communist party functionaries, from which diplomats were allowed to make purchases. Shopping from the VIP store didn't mean we could enter it to see what was on offer. Once a week we called in our orders for the items we thought might be available. Sometimes we got what we ordered, sometimes we didn't.

Paraschiva and Valentina, our custodians/cooks, ordered the chicken, pork, beef, and vegetables they used to cook our lunch from the VIP store. As people began moving from the hotels into houses and as those of us at the Codru began to set up kitchens to cook meals, more of us placed orders. Each week we added something new to our list, to see if the store had it. The ambassador put brandy on the list one week, and a bottle of Moldovan brandy was included with our order that week. Champagne and wine were never a problem. While meeting with a Moldovan official, the ambassador noticed that he had oranges in a bowl at his desk, so she added oranges to her list that week. And that week we received oranges. One week she added strawberries to the order, arguing that if we never asked for them, we would never get them. Well, asking for them wasn't enough for them to turn up.

Valentina

We asked for chocolates and got a box of chocolates one week, but a bag of wrapped chocolate pieces another time. One week when we asked for chocolates, we were told the store didn't have chocolates, but they had candy, so we ordered candy instead and got fruit flavored hard candy.

We ordered ham once, but they told us they didn't have ham; they could offer us smoked pork instead. We agreed to substitute smoked pork for our order. It was delicious. From then on we asked for smoked pork.

One week Becky asked for vinegar, but when the bottle of white vinegar arrived, she refused to pay for it because she only wanted brown vinegar. She used it as a rinse for her hair. One of the other Americans agreed to buy the vinegar so the local employee who picked up the order wouldn't be stuck paying for it, a small amount for us, but not at all insignificant to the Moldovan employee.

One day when we placed our order, we were told they didn't have smoked pork that week, but they did have smoked meat. Since Becky had ordered smoked pork, we weren't about to decide on her behalf to substitute something on her list. She wasn't in the building for us to ask her. The rest of us agreed that we would be happy to try smoked meat instead of smoked pork, so we ordered enough to cover the orders of the rest of the Americans. When the order was delivered, we discovered that the smoked meat was in fact smoked pork. But there wasn't enough for Becky's order. Becky huffed and puffed about our leaving her order out that week and the ambassador came out of her office in the vault to ask why we hadn't ordered any smoked pork for Becky. I am not sure she accepted my explanation that we had been told they had no smoked pork, and none of us were willing to substitute anything on Becky's behalf because of her refusal to pay for the vinegar she ordered when it wasn't the right color.

Becky had been the first person to move into a house, a small bungalow within walking distance of the embassy. The ambassador felt it was important for Becky to move out of the hotel first because she was so often ill and claimed it was from the food at the hotel restaurant. The ambassador hoped that by moving into a house, Becky would be able to control what she ate and would be healthier. Becky's house also had its own boiler which delivered hot water and heat to her house, something those of us in the hotel didn't always enjoy. But Becky chose not to enjoy anything in Moldova. It didn't take the rest of us long to make sure we didn't let Becky keep us from enjoying Moldova.