Day 43 ROMANIA Baia Mare

We went to the local farmer's market in Baia Mare this morning. The vendors were very keen for you to try their produce. Even when you were walking past the stall but not engaging with the farmer, they drew you in by calling out to you to sample their cheeses, strawberries, sour cream etc. We saw some fresh mushrooms and stopped to buy some. After the purchase of mushrooms were finalised, the grower handed me a bunch of daffodils and said it was a gift. Then we found a dairy farmer who sold yoghurt that Ruby had developed an addiction to. To verify which animal the yoghurt came from we made "moo"and "baa"noises. The farmer shook his head vigorously and placed his finger around his head showing horns. So we exclaimed buffalo together. Happy with the purchase of buffalo yoghurt we were ready to leave when the farmer cut pieces of cheese for us to taste. Then continued cutting bigger and bigger pieces of different cheeses for us to taste. He gestured for us to wait, disappeared behind the fridge and returned with even more cheeses to taste. We even had to taste a large slice of the bacon fat we had been avoiding in all our breakfast and meat platters. It was smokey and melted almost as soon as it touched our tongues, like rich smokey butter. He then proceeded to show us on his phone pictures of his animals, cow, pigs, sheep and his wife. It felt like we were playing a game of charades and he was winning.
When we finally peeled ourselves away from the dairy farmer we avoided eye contact with all other cheese sellers and quickly exited the dairy section. We headed to the vege stands to buy a bunch of spinach. I decided to give my bunch of daffodils to the spinach lady and she said with a warm tap on my hand that the spinach I got was complimentary because of the daffodils gift.
As we were leaving the market I spotted a stall selling placinta creata (a gozleme crossed with roti chanai), that my friend in Perth had highly recommended. We ordered one each only to find that they were huge and had to take away the remaining ¾.
We spent the afternoon in the Baia Mare Art Gallery and a little walk around the old town. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the art in the art gallery so I took pictures of all the ceramic heaters instead. We came back to the apartment to prepare dinner.Read more