Tag #125702 - Interview #77962 (Victor Baruh)

Zhenskiya Pazar was close to our street and we often went there to look at the goods - there were pigeons in cages and I wanted very much to have one. I was about seven when I bought a pigeon, I made a cage for it in the attic; I fed it on the dormer window and I wanted to let it fly and come back but it flew away and didn't come back. The pigeon trainers who sold them taught them to come back. There were street traders with cars who walked along the streets at dusk and sold vegetables - cucumbers, lettuce; it was cheaper to buy things from them at sundown. Now there are no cars such as these.

There were saleptchii [street traders who used to sell salep; comes from a Turkish word meaning orchid] - Albanians with cans like the boza [8] sellers who sold a drink made from the roots of salep - a hot, dense and wonderful drink especially when your throat is infected. They walked along the streets and cried, 'Salep, scalds the throat, gets the cough out'. Sometimes the grinders passed - they whetted and stropped knives and scissors.