Tag #135899 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

My parents didn’t lead a very active social life. The two women’s society, the Orthodox and the Neolog, often organized tea parties in the afternoon. My mother went to both because she had friends in both places. The ladies would gather and sit around the rummy tables and play rummy, drink a cup of coffee or tea, have some cakes and tell each other the gossip around town. My mother had Jewish friends mostly. After the war they no longer cared for rummy. There was also a social thing, they organized a soup kitchen for poor children usually in the wintertime. All poorer children who went there received food for free. It was organized the following way: every day different women brought food and also participated in preparing the meal. They volunteered to bring flour, meat and vegetables, and cooked the meal there. The Jewish community rented a bigger room, not far from the Orthodox synagogue, and they had the kitchen there. The kitchen had a cook and waitresses. My mother also participated in running the soup kitchen.