Where is Moldova, anyway?

I was lucky enough to spend three weeks this summer traveling through former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. (Pictures to come, when my internet connection decides to behave – and when I can pick out which photos best represent my trip – I’m picky, you know). It was beautiful! I loved Montenegro the best, followed by Bosnia. Croatia was gorgeous as well – but the boat-loads of tourists seemed to take away from the atmosphere, where as Montenegro was very natural, and calm – with mountains coming all the way up to the sea. SEA! That’s right. With the exception of Hungary and Bosnia, I traveled along the coast because I miss salt water, living in a landlocked country during shore season.

During my trip, I picked up a few souvenirs for some Moldovan friends when it was fitting – my host mother has a magnet collection of all the places I (and the former volunteer who lived with her) have visited, chocolate for my chocoholic host brother, fresh lavender for a friend from my village who loves perfumes, a glass necklace for my partner who loves colorful, bright things, the magazine “cosmo” in English for my Romanian tutor (this was upon request), and a mug from a city in Croatia shaped like a Roman theater for my other Romanian tutor. All little things, but I took time to carefully, and personally select these tokens.

I didn’t realize there was a problem until I was on my way back to Moldova. I had purchased the mug for my Romanian tutor in the Croatian city of Pula – a small city, close to the Italian border, that has awesome Roman ruins in it. It was also the home of James Joyce at one point – and since my tutor loves to hear about authors and their travels – she is very big on the literature – I chose this city to buy her a gift from. It’s a nice mug, is in the shape of a theater, and has the word Pula written on it.

Problem: The word Pula means “bitch” in Romanian. I had purchased my tutor, and dear friend, a mug that says BITCH in capital, block letters – and was about to present it to her as a gift. I laugh at myself for how quickly (it was towards the end of my 3 week travels) I got out of the mindset of speaking Romanian that I didn’t even catch my error.

After consulting my host mom on the issue, and having her laugh at me – I decided to go against her advice and give the gift anyway – thinking it would be something funny that she could remember me, the eccentric American, by.

I prefaced giving her the gift by asking her not to get mad. Have you ever received a gift introduced by such lovely prose? Awkward. But she laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And agreed that the mug was lovely, was mad at me that I forgot Romanian vocab words in purchasing the cup, and laughed some more. She said she would try to change to “P” to an “R” – or just put it on a shelf instead of using it (but backwards, so no one can see what is written on it) -- who wants to drink their morning coffee, or serve guests tea, in a mug that says bitch? – definitely not frumos. But she ended up landing on the idea of leaving it Pula – because she says, in her words, the story is too precious – and that I couldn’t leave her with a better one if I tried. How's that for a conversation piece?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 1:27 PM.