Bucharest City Tales: Daily shopping in Romania

Columnist Eleonore af Schaumburg-Lippe writes in her weekly column about life as an expat in Romania. This week she writes about daily shopping as an expat living in Romania. Trying to buy all things in one place if you are organizing a gathering or throwing party or simply for daily shopping is not that easy in Romania, unless you live next to a mall. If you don’t, then you will have to go to a supermarket to buy the practical things and most of the items you can find there. But when it comes to meat or fish, then I will recommend you to find a meat or fish shop because the variety is just bigger there. When it comes to vegetables, traditional markets are preferred because the vegetables are just so much tastier if bought from local farmers. If you are invited to a gathering and want to bring a present, and are trying to find paper, tape and colored ribbons to wrap the present in, that will seem almost impossible to find. Instead in Romania the present is placed in a decorated paper bag that you can find almost everywhere and in many different sizes. Don’t try to hand over your present though in a gift bag in Denmark, for example, that would make you look odd in the eyes of your friends, who would most likely comment on the fact that you haven’t taken the time to wrap your present. Been there, done that, it won’t happen again. At every corner you will find a pharmacy, a bank or a place where you can make copies or have your papers printed out, but then there are also these shops that you won’t find in many other places, small, older shops where you can repair your typewriter or have your stockings fixed. Little shops that have survived a rapidly changing market. They are somehow still there and usually the person behind the desk has been working there their entire lifetime. It is good to see the many places where you can buy books; there are many street corner shops that sells books, most books are in Romanian. But among the bigger bookshops here you will find books written in English; the variety is not so big and they are quite pricy, but then there is always the possibility of doing some online book shopping and having them deliver to Romania; but be aware that sadly not all bookshops online deliver to Romania. There are also a lot of flower shops in Bucharest, but flowers are really pricy compared to my home country Denmark though. You can also go to one of the small corner shops, where you can either buy a bouquet or individual flowers for a more affordable price. Remember, if you buy individual flowers, the bouquet has to have an uneven number, otherwise it is considered to bring bad luck. An interesting fact about daily shopping in Romania: while in Denmark you can buy huge boxes of everything, since a lot of people in Denmark shop once a week in a huge amount to cover the week, here in Romania it is not always like that, and it is even possible to buy in the smaller shops only 1 cigarette, 1 roll of toilet paper, or even one pill at the pharmacy. Of course there is a difference in purchasing power, but this can also come in handy for an expat once in a while. Shopping in Romania is not full of negotiations, what you might expect from your traveling experience. What I find strange is that if you buy a couple of things from a shop, I haven’t so far noticed that you can get a reduction. For example, I once wanted to buy 3 pairs of shoes, I admit it happened, but then I also expected getting a discount. Asking about that seemed to trigger a funny face on the desk clerk: “a discount? Oh, no, we can’t do that!” So I bought just one pair instead. Usually you can get a fidelity car or use coupons or leaflets with a discount, that you are handed over in the streets by a person, or reduction coupons within magazines (the ones you have to cut out yourself), part of a goodie bag from an event you have attended, or even part of your salary since many companies in Romania will offer food coupons to their employees. But what you don’t really find in Romania are sales: once in a while you can see that a shop will have a discount on some items, but I haven’t seen sales on the same scale as in Denmark, for example. Which I do miss, because there's nothing better than sales season! In Denmark, usually all the shops will have sale periods at the same time, when the seasons change and it’s a whole gathering that Danish people look forward to, because you can make some great buys. If you go to the countryside, and want to go shopping, it is a whole different story since in the small villages, there will maybe be one store or kiosk where you can buy milk, bread, meat, vegetables etc, if you are lucky and the village is big enough. Otherwise there are the little one-person shops that you will see along the roads. It will sometimes be a person selling homemade cheese, honey and syrup - these are natural products, very tasty and you feel that you are something good both to yourself and also by supporting this little one person enterprise. You can find all sorts of things in these little enterprises, depending a bit where you are in the country. One village will specialize in selling home knitted sweaters, socks and shoes. In another town it will be all sorts of homemade baskets of straw, another one will sell cobber pots and pans. And then there are of course the markets and the small shops, where they sell vegetables. There is just nothing better than stopping at one side of the road to buy a huge watermelon, onions, apples or carrots, depending on the season Romanians are becoming more and more aware of eating healthy, they talk about eating natural food without the feared E additives, that you will see on many store shop products. Instead they search for ecological or natural food, and when there is an invitation to a gathering between Romanians most of the food will be homemade and then added to with fresh vegetables and cheeses from the market. And it is just tasty. I know many Romanians can remember in detail the first time they tasted an orange or banana after 1989. I personally still remember the taste of the first Romanian tomato and cucumber, not to mention the first watermelon, or the first red onion, I have never liked onions a lot, but a red onion chopped and then added a little oil and salt, you have a whole meal that will make your taste buds sing. Enjoy your daily shopping in Romania!