Kyla:
I’m not gonna get into it with ZPG Zealot , but in my (limited, personal) experience, you’re probably wrong about this, just because Roma teenagers and twenty-somethings are already married. It’s not unusual for Roma kids to get married at age twelve or thirteen.
It is, and I’ll be blunt, that at least in Eastern Europe, it would be unlikely for a non-Roma to approach and flirt with a Roma person in a bar. You know how in the US, if you violate a superstition, like break a mirror or open an umbrella in the house, they say you’ll have seven years bad luck? In Bulgaria at least, if you violate a superstition, the bad thing that will happen to you is that you’ll marry a gypsy.
I’m pretty sure ZPG Zealot no longer lives in Eastern Europe (although I believe she is originally from somewhere in the former Yugoslavia) so I’m not sure how well the line of separation that exists between Roma and non-Roma there translates to other regions.
I’m originally from Chicago and lived in Yugoslavia while it was in the process of becoming the former Yugoslavia. In the former Yugos a non-Roma man approaching a Roma woman anywhere would either be involved in the black-market or involved in a lot worse.