Romanian Villages Where All Locals Practice the same Craft

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While exploring Romania, don’t be surprised if you hit villages where everyone sells exactly the same thing. They are remnants of a highly productive peasant culture. There are Romanian villages selling only woven baskets, brooms only, or traditional food.

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Broom Making Craft and Trade

If it wasn’t for it’s location, many of us would have probably never heard of Gherăeştii Noi. Luckily, this village lies in Neamţ county, on the European road E85, which takes us to Bukovina. The use of indicators signaling local crafts has never really caught on in Romania, but buckets of brooms, strategically placed in front of each gate indicates a community of skilled broom making craftsmen.
Traditional broom making craft Has been around for a long time and no one can tell exactly what sparked everyone’s interest in broom making. At a first glance, the village looks abandoned, with brooms for sale in front of each house, but no one around. To get in touch, you need to shout until someone hears you. They are housekeeping, working in the garden or making brooms in the yards.

People in These Romanian Villages Make Pickles Like No Other

Pickles are the  obsession of every traditional family. With the coming of autumn, jars are filled with cucumbers, fermented whole cabbage, peppers, which will be consumed during winter as a side dish with stew, stewed beans, steak.

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Same thing happens in Milişăuţi, a town located in Suceava, Bukovina, the only difference being that these guys make between 10 and 20 tons per barrel, which is 3 to 4 meters tall. A family has at least two or three barrels in the backyard, where they make the pickles.
In winter, they are put in bottles and immersed in small pools, made especially for winter storage. One by one, the bottles are taken outside for sale. The copious quantity of these sour goodies makes it hard for anyone to resist not stopping to try some, only to discover a particular taste given by a special ingredient used in pickling: the natural salty water extracted from the depths of the salt mine in Cacica. This town’s annual production of 500 tons explains why it is known as the “capital of pickles”.