At the kitchen table
It’s not my intention to point blame at anyone or claim that any one group has the right idea, but I’ve been meaning for some time now to point out an idiosyncratic disparity between most Romanians and most Americans.
I think in all cultures we have small children and oblivious adults who may eat their food using their hands directly over the kitchen floor. Possibly even another room’s floor. This generally results in particles clinging to one’s shoes (in America) or house sandals (in Romania) where it’s then tracked all over the place.
But that’s not most people, right? Cred ca nu.
I think most people attempt to eat over something besides the floor. I’ve personally been seen leaning over the kitchen sink while eating under certain circumstances. Anything to avoid spills onto the floor which can dirty up the place, basically.
In America, this often takes the form of a plate. With the possible exception of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, Americans generally eat over a plate. It could be polystyrene or paper, but generally it’s just your ordinary ceramic type plate you’d use every day.
We may use the small plate to hold pizza near our computer workstation. We may use the large plate to serve barbecue on the porch. We may use whatever plastic bowl was handy just to keep muffin crumbs from falling on kitchen tile.
Even at the kitchen table, whether a meal or a snack, Americans typically use a plate because we find it both portable (in case there’s need to move) and easy to wash (one might argue we’re leneş because we have automatic dishwashing machines, but it’s easy to spalat pe maini).
It’s just kinda what most Yanks do.
Not the Romanians! Ba nu!
No, in Romania, it’s long been my observation that plates are generally reserved for pre-planned, scheduled, formal meal settings. And sometimes not even then. Plus, if the plates were used, they’re not always used carefully.
While there are no doubt some exceptions to the rule among my readership, the simple truth is that Romanians just eat right on the table. Spilling crumbs, fragments, pieces, and portions. Dripping sauces, creams, fillings, and dressings. It all goes on the table without hesitation.
If you put some bread in front of any three Romanians, for example, the table top will in short order be cluttered up with enough flakes and dust to go toe-to-toe with the sawdust covered, peanut shell riddled floor of a stereotypical Texas bar.
Grabbing and tearing, clutching and sawing. The bread just gets no reprieve. The masa is a total mess. And it’s foarte normal around these here parts. That’s simply how I’ve seen most people eat.
And why not? It’s easy enough to wipe up a table, isn’t? Certainly can’t be any more difficult that cleaning up a bunch of plates when you’ve got no washing machine.
Besides, some people don’t even wipe. I’ve seen it!
That’s right, some folks’ll just up and fold their plastic table cover like a giant tortilla, march right over to the open kitchen window, and shake out the residue left from five people eating four times a day for the past two days right down on top of the porches and heads of the estimated 57 people who live in the nine apartment bloc floors below.
Clearly, living on the first floor has it’s disadvantages. In addition to cigarette ashes falling on your head or shaken carpet cruft flying in your open window, you must also add wet and dry table muck to your list of lower etaj dangers.
If you put a plate in front of this proto-Roman, they’re likely to snort derisively. Some just give you a blank stare. I’ve heard them ask me before, “what is this farfurie pentru?” as they chomped on something crumbly which was spilling haphazardly over all creation.
Once I have coaxed them into allowing a plate to be placed beneath them, there is generally almost no acknowledgement of its’ presence or purpose.
A sisyphusian overture on my part, clar.
It’s taken me all this time to get used to it. And now I am tolerant to these alternative methods. One way is just about as easy as another, depending on details and personal preference.
Anything to keep the floor from getting filthy any faster than it will by default.
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
The neighbours were just being friendly and offering you food as a sign of friendship. Actually that kind of sucks, people just dumping food from up above, you should toss something friendly up there way and tell them it’s an American custom.
July 3rd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Me thinks the Queen of England would be totally bewildered by all of this.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
This depends on what role did you assume your guests to take.
Details:
There are two variables: authority and mood.
Authority
– the host is somebody with higher authority or lower authority: the Rumanian will do their best to avoid dropping anything
– the host is a peer: a reasonable amount of crumbs might be spilled
Mood
– mood is confrontational: no crumbs will be spilled, since it would mean loss of face
– mood is relaxed: crumbs will be spilled in reasonable amounts.
Now combine:
– Host has significantly more/less authority and mood is relaxed: some crumbs might result by accident
– Host has significantly more/less authority and mood is confrontational: no crumbs whatsoever
– Host is a peer and mood is confrontational: some crumbs might be spilled by accident
– Host is a peer and mood is relaxed: crumbs will be all over the place, sometimes on purpose.
Now I guess your guests were friends, and if they spilled crumbs, it means they were having a good time, so it’s a compliment :).
This is the major complaint Rumanians have regarding their US experience: everybody is so tense and so face-conscious that it’s impossible to get the “soul to soul” communication they get acasa.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:47 pm
xamox – I think you may have struck gold there with the whole eye for an eye thing.
shadow – Forget the useless British queen! We already have enough lamers pretending to be royalty in Romania as it is.
emilp – You’ve just made my day! Multumesc. :]] I think it may explain some parts of what I witness among a large percentage of Romanians. Include, as you suspect, my friends. But I’ll have to continue pondering the complex formula explaining those motivations behind the clear-n-toss-table-on-neighbor method of cleaning up. Who’s brushed up on their calculus around here? It’s been a while for me…
July 4th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Ah yes, the platelessness of the Romanian eating experience. In our kitchen cupboard we have about 20 wooden chopping boards. I wondered when I arrived here, why we would need so many but now have realised that they double as plates in many instances. Everybody gets a chopping board, a hunk of salami, some bread, a tomato and a spring onion or two, and chops and eats directly from the board. That is if they want to appear moderately organised. The option of nothing at all you mention is more common. Whereas plates, as you say tend to only emerge at special occasions (or, in our house, when I organise the meal)
July 4th, 2007 at 11:53 am
“those motivations behind the clear-n-toss-table-on-neighbor method of cleaning up”
that’s just saying “I hate this f****** place and I wish I were some place else but I cannot afford and even I cannot afford to acknowledge I want to be some place else, so have a mouthful of vacuum cleaner dust, you … neighbor! “.
I have seen people that licked (metaphorically speaking) the yard of their “casa de la tara” and combed and trimmed the grass on the outside of their fence, and when came back to the city, tossed garbage out of the window.
From the ’50s to the ’70s it was almost a privilege to move to the big city, so you can see, in the older “Communist” districts of Bucharest, such as Drumul Taberei or Floreasca, old ladies watching over the spatiul verde. In the ’80s it became mandatory to move la bloc if your mahala was to be turned into cartier, so in Berceni, Rahova, Colentina or in the smaller towns/cities that were sistematizate in the ’80s the older (40 and above) people still feel like being inmates, and behave accordingly.
still, that’s not an excuse for the garbage tossers …
July 4th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Andy – oh, those chopping boards …. I guess they are a Szekely thing, since the only man I’ve ever seen eating this way is my beloved husband. The habit goes hand in hand with that of eating things directly with the knife, used as a fork, which makes me cringe in spasmodic disgust – but he still uses it sometimes :D
July 4th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Csiki – I did overlook the necessity of The Cutting Board. Quite right. It’s all part of the ritual to bring out The Cutting Board where one slices up salami and tomatoes to go with the hunk of bread torn asunder.
But multiple cutting boards? One for each person? I hadn’t experienced that one yet, although I see Ada gives us the answer. The Szekely sure seem distinct.
Heads-up; depending on our comparative shedjewels, I think I may make an effort to come your way for a second, short visit this month. While it’s still summer proper.
emilp – I can actually see that point of view. After being cattled-carred into the urban concrete, I would imagine a goodly number of folks were none too happy about their condition.
But, I’ve got another theory to propose in combination with or opposition to The Inmate Theory. Your remarks drove me to think about having seen this behavior largely in blocs and largely with older folks. I don’t see it in regular single family homes, be they in a big city or in a small town. I don’t see it with people born after 1960.
It does tend to be precisely what you described. The generation born in the 1940s and 1950s, many of whom would have been rounded up from rural life at the countryside where their bunica probably cleaned off that table in exactly the same way. Kids being kids, just learned the habit. Thus, we have the This Is How My Grandma Did It Theory.
Ada – There are times when Robi seems like a sort of Daniel Boone.
July 5th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Ah yes, Ada, the eating from the knife thing goes hand in hand with the chopping board as plate. It’s often as not a big and very sharp knife which gets pressed into service as a fork too. Obviously round here it is typically the bicska that gets pressed into service at all occasions. I’m glad we don;t have a meat cleaver at home as I’m quite sure that would get used somehow in transferring food to mouth.
(I think it must be a general Maghiara thing, since my in-laws are not Szekely, and they all do it.)
July 5th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Not quite- my mom’s folks are Magyars from Timis county and I’ve never seen any of them using the cutting board or the knife for anything else than their standard uses.