Shoes

If you want to fit in, fashion-wise, and also not stand out like a tourist, one thing that has to match around here is your shoes. Luckily I showed up with a pair I purchased in Chernevtsi, Ukraine five years ago. Black pointy dress shoes, well dress shoes by N. American standards, but just plain old shoes to wear with blue jeans or a sport coat around here. I added a pair of brown within two weeks.

This week, Chrisna got some local shoes. We looked around for about a week because you have to pick just right shoes to express who you are and what you stand for and how bad you want your back problems to be when you are 50. The selection here is absolutely immense. There are shoes for sale everywhere. Shoes seem to be something of a cross between a regional pass-time, fetish and statement. The style for both men and women are elongated toe-boxes, usually somewhat upturned, narrowing toward the end, sometimes to a sharp point and sometimes to a squared off toe. For women, the heels are high and mostly stiletto style. Boots are worn all year, in winter with warm lining inside and it is quite common for women to wear everyday boots that have four inch heels and go up to or past their knees. Five years ago in Ukraine I saw this style of shoe, figured it was part of changing fashion, believed we’d see them in the USA within a short time, and that they’d subsequently go out of style in this region. Wrong. While something like these shoes can be found around Europe, they will be in high fashion stores only, and quite costly. In the USA, they are still not widely seen at all. But here in Moldova, and all around the region up in Ukarine and in Russia and Romania, they are still what everyone wears, and what they grow up wearing.