Drinking in Romania

By "drinking" I mean alcohol.

People here grow grapes and make many kinds of alcohol, including wine, ţuica, and palincă. Ţuica (pronounced tsweek-ah) and palinca (puh-link-ah) are both like rubbing alcohol to me. I've had some that was very, very good, but most of it is awful. Fortunately they usually serve it in small shot glasses.

At every meal people drink ţuica, wine or beer. Romanian's drink very little water or soda. Mostly alcohol.

If you tell someone you want "a finger" of ţuica, meaning only enough in the glass to equal the width of your finger, they say, "Okay, a finger's worth." Then they stand a finger beside the glass and start pouring. Arguing is usually futile.

The other night I went to a meeting of teachers at the Sport School. At the meeting they had a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of a local drink with raspberries. They always have whiskey, scotch, and vodka at meetings. I don't like whiskey and I can't get over our prohibition against alcohol at schools and school functions. Compared to Romanians, we are positively puritanical!

However, the other drink they had was a locally made berry alcohol. A popular local drink here is afinată (ah-feen-ah-tuh). It's made with either vodka or palinka and blueberries. They just put fresh blue berries into the alcohol and let it sit for a few weeks. It is yummy! This particular night they had a similar alcohol but with raspberries rather than blue berries. Okay, it was yummy also. :)

As I drank a second small, very small, VERY small glass of raspberry alcohol my reluctance to drink in a school began to fade.

After the meeting I went with Maria and Adriana to their friend's house for supper. This lady is Brînduşă (broon-dush-ah), which means crocus. Her family lives in a very new, large house on the outskirts of Suceava. More and more Romanians are building these mega-houses. I can't blame them because they've lived for almost 100 years in tiny, cement apartments.

Brînduşă offered us drinks and made me a gin with ice cubes (she didn't have tonic). She served us (but did not eat with us) a first course of chicken şniţel (breaded, fried chicken), pickled beets (yum!), and a gelatinous type of head cheese (gag!). For a second course we had mamaliga (corn mush) with smantana (sour cream), and sarmale (sahr-mah-leh) (baked cabbage rolls). Fortunately I like sarmale so it was okay that I didn't like that other nasty stuff. Desert was chocolate candies.

After two gin drinks Brînduşă gave me a drink made with gratefruit juice and some kind of alcohol. By then I didn't understand what is was and didn't care.

When I finally got home, after climbing the 5 flights of stairs, Dennis said, "Would you like something to drink? I bought you some wine." So, I had a glass, one finger's worth, of locally made wine.

For some reason, the next day I had a headache!