There are very few places in Chisinau having the predispositions to be loved by all the foreigners and hated by majority of locals. And Piata Centrala is definitely one of them.
You do not even have to cross the borders of the marketplace to enter to this unique ecosystem, a world by itself.
Piata is a place of possibilities.
Let us be honest, going there and getting lost in an eternal mass of people once in a while, you are not very likely to meet any of your friends or acquaintances, so you can be free to join the people in any unusual behaviour you see.
You can enjoy going from babushka to babushka and checking the best bargains, try endless samples of various types of cheese, or absolutely adapt to the atmosphere of the place by cleaning your dirty feet in the stream of water coming from a car slowly passing the main road of the market.
One of my favourite thing to do in Chisinau, and what I simply cannot do at home, is buying a glass of cvas on every corner of this East-European city. During visits to Piata in the summer, this action is an absolute necessity. I enjoy to just approaching a random girl behind small stand and in three seconds, for a neglectable sum, you get a small instant bit of refreshment in a plastic cup that you throw away few moments later (one of the not very praiseworthy things that I have adopted during this year, for the sake of keeping my own sanity, is overlooking the excessive usage of disposable plastic that you just cannot avoid here).
When I feel like just wandering and I do not seek any purpose of my walk here, I usually visit the “engineering” department filled with components for handymen. All the small metal parts whose function will probably always remain unknown to me, the very narrow alleys between the rows of stands and the rusty atmosphere reminding me the time I was a kid exploring my grandfather’s workroom. All of this makes me feel like I left the city and entered a weird wonderland.
Small things like this make this place surprisingly fascinating and pleasant for foreigners and tourists. For little expenses you can get a lot of distraction. It is a game, a quest. You look for the cheapest peaches, for a metal cup you might need for camping or for the most disgusting fast food in the country (because it is also part of the experience). And you always find it here eventually.
And most of the time you end up buying also things that you were never looking for. Once I was walking in the fruit area and saw a woman with a pile of rose petals on her table. I was so surprised I had to come closer. I had never seen people selling roses with a different purpose than decoration. Coming from a cold, mountainous region in the north of Slovakia, I just could not imagine taking from your garden something that is so hard to grow for me. The price was 25 lei. I asked if it was for one kilogram or 100 grams. When she said it was the price per kilogram, I was so shocked I asked for one. Few minutes later I was leaving the market with a big plastic bag full of wonderfully smelling pink petals and I still did not understand how I had become an owner of one kilogram of roses. Honestly, I started to panic a bit because I had no idea what I would do with them. I called a friend who calmed me down saying we will make a jam. A rose jam. A thing that I am sure no Slovak person knows that exists. But it can be found at Piata Centrala if you look a bit.
(Katarína Jakubjaková, Slovakia)
This is a serie of small stories depicting my (foreigner ́s) uneasy hate-love relationship with the city I spent almost one year in Chisinau.
CU 