The hedonistic bell-curve

As some of you may have guessed from the blogs and our general economic climate that we have adopted a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle in some regards. We go out alot, we buy lots of booze, Dave smokes etc. It was not always like this, however. When we first got here we lived like paupers for a few days until we found our feet. Since then we've been gradually getting more extravagant with our purchases; buying wine from a wine shop in the trendy parts of town instead of the minimart around the corner etc. Today we went into said trendy wine shop to get some bottles to accompany our trip to Resita (a mountain town in south-west Romania) over the weekend. What is a trip without wine? Nothing; that's what.
So we went into the shop and perused the selection of fine wines from all around the world. Most of them cost somewhere between 14RON and 40RON, or £2 and £10. We picked two and random (and a third because it was called Lowengang) and went to the counter where a stereotypically attractive woman took our purchases and started to ring them up on the till.
After some faffing around on a calculator (they assume we don't speak Romanian because of our accents, but I'll have you know we nailed the numbers 1-10 at our last lesson) she showed us the price- 345.
Usually when we see a number like this they mean 34 lei and 50 bani, dropping the zero for convenience, one assumes. So Dave looked into his wallet and started to count out some notes. In the mean tume the woman asked "Is too much?" to which we replied "no of course not, that's just fine thanks. 34 lei, right?".
"Nu" she replied, "3 million."
This made us pause for thought.
"Are you sure you mean three million? Is it maybe three hundred and we picked up some expensive bottles?"
"Nu" she replied, "3 million."
"No...we're pretty sure you mean three hundred, but it's ok we'll just leave it thanks."
The girl then decided to emphasise her point by pulling out a 100 lei note and saying "See; one million!"
"No...that's one hundred, but it's ok we'll just leave it. We don't need wine that badly."
And so the transaction ended. One has to wonder how many Western customers she has lost due to her confusion between one hundred and one million? Perhaps a rich westerner proposed to make her a millionaire and promised that 100RON equated to 1000000 in anything else. Who knows. All I know is that we don't have any wine. Off to the minimart.

Today we also visited the largest shopping mall in Romania; the Iulius mall. As soon as we stepped inside we could have been anywhere in the world. There were KFCs, Pizza Huts, Polo, Ralph Lauren, United Colours of Benetton etc. It was all quite depressing. It was a necessary trip though, we needed more towels and jumpers and trying to find items like that in Timisoara is alot more hassle than it's worth in the winter. I think if we go back it will only be out of desperation. Or if they open a Starbucks. I miss my grandé triple shot iced caramel lattés.