Bucharest City Tales: Curing a cold, the Romanian traditional way

Columnist Eleonore af Schaumburg-Lippe writes in her weekly column about life as an expat in Romania. This week she tells about how a cold got cured the Romanian way and she shares her special recipe. What will probably surprise you the most when you visit Bucharest the first time, is how many pharmacies there are in town; you will see a pharmacy on almost every corner. But the good news is the trend I have noticed: Romanians are moving towards more natural solutions to cure minor sicknesses. This can be because of too expensive drugs, or a lack of trust in them. So the advice and recipes from Romanians grandparents are being used instead. I have been fighting a cold the last weeks, one of these that would just not go away. I spoke with a friend, who is an educated doctor but is now working in another field and he said: “This is something you see amidst young Romanians when seasons change.” Wow! I couldn’t be more proud to hear those words. A sort of statement that I had integrated so much in Romania, that I was now getting the Romanian cold and at the same time getting younger! My cold suddenly became a part of my pride, but on the other hand a running nose is not the coolest accessory in town. So after days sleeping with the heat on, turning my place into a Finnish sauna and sleeping with wool socks on (my grandmother's old advice for treating a cold), increasing my consumption of C-Vitamins into quite a dose and drinking lots of orange juice (freshest possible, which is not always easy to find, since most orange juices seem not to be made of oranges), I began to wonder if I would soon turn orange, but with a red nose, looking like a Danish red nosed reindeer who spent a too long time in the Caribbeans. Some people have been telling me it could be an allergy, but I didn’t expect that to be the reason. No, it was a clear sign of integration. Expat friends would say: go to the doctor! But going to a doctor for a cold did seem to be a little too much wasting the doctor's time, I imagine him/her has more important things to cure that a simple cold, and I wouldn’t stop him/her in researching cures on a higher level than a cold. One day I was in a taxi, and the taxi driver could see and hear my running nose, while I was apologizing while blowing my nose yet another time in one of those non perfumed tissues - since the perfumed tissues annoyed my nose with their intense synthetic smell. He then turned to me and said: “Don’t take any medications, you have to eat onions, chop an onion, boil it and add lemon to it, that will cure you.” He then took something from under his seat and while I thought he was trying to adjust the meter price up, to my surprise he pulled out a full A4 page entirely in Romanian about a garlic cure for, well, almost everything. We then talked for a while, he said “no medication”, apparently he was a part time witch doctor in some way, and he said I could always call him and ask for natural cures. The garlic cure was not for the cold, but for a good health in general. Actually it seemed to be a great advice, an onion or garlic cure, why not? When I arrived at my destination, a charity organization called Our Lady of Mercy, who among other projects are helping elder ladies who on their low pensions hardly can afford a warm meal or paying their monthly invoices, I got some pieces of advice there too. One man said: “You have to bathe your feet in salty water every evening” - that was his grandmother's advice. Another lady said I should cut an apple into small pieces, and then add lemon, and eat that every evening – then I would be cured of the cold. When I got home later in the evening, I was kind of curious after hearing all these pieces of advice. I then decided to make a huge portion of a special soup influenced by the advice I had been given. I hereby forward you the recipe, if you are also turning into a young Romanian these days. It is a boiled soup made on onions, garlic, ginger, apples and lemon, it does not taste splendid, I must admit that, but it seems to do something, and for the next two days that soup would be my main meal. What I slightly forgot was that on the second day I had to attend the Irish Saint Patrick’s Ball. Before going, I was thinking how sad it would be for the person who was going to sit next to me, after I had been eating this special homemade brew. But apparently the brew seemed to have worked and my neighbors at the dinner table either had very good manners to say anything or just didn’t notice anything. After a few more days on the special brew, my cold disappeared, so thank you to the taxi driver and the others who came with their grandmothers recipes on how to cure a cold!