See my comment above. Gypsies acted and menial laborers to Ottoman armies, horse thieves and traders, camp workers, entertainers, blacksmiths, metal workers, carpenters and worked in food supply, meaning they scouted the local population's food caches and livestock and looted them to feed the Turkish armies, they looted the dead and disposed of the dead bodies after battles, they did earthworks during sieges, did woodwork, carpentry, skinned animals, did leather work for horse equipment like saddles and reins. They retained most of these professions even after the Ottomans were pushed back. Up until recently Gypsies in Hungary did a lot of basket weaving, carpentry, earth works during the river regulations, they were used as laborers to dig the irrigation canals, draining swamps, construction of dams and embankments, horse trading, copper and brass work, etching, they worked in agriculture as sharecroppers, menial laborers in the fields. In my grandma's village when an animal died the Gypsies showed up and took it. Chicked, cow, horse, pig, whatever died of some disease the Gypsies took it and took care of it... they ate everything. My mom worked as a child care nurse and social worker and saw that her Gypsy clients cooked hedgehogs, crows, all the dead animals that famers disposed of. This was in the 1980s. Pretty wild stuff by today's standards. When the government gave the Gypsies apartments in high rise buildings, they ripped up the wooden floors and burned them, a family kept a pig on the balcony. They also went around town and begged for used clothes. They yelled downstairs that they take any clothes and you could just throw those out the window and they collected them.

When my grandparents died and we wanted to get rid of the huge, handmade duck down duvets and pillows and the pld washing machine we called a phone number we found on a flyer in our mailbox or local newspaper. And a Gypsy family showed up with an old Mercedes car, paid a little money and took everything.

If you put your unwanted, old furniture outside in front of your house Gypsies will show up and take it all or try to sell it to someone on the spot. There are designated decluttering days in my hometown when residents can put out bulky items in the streets, on corners and the city garbage company will collect them. In theory. Because most of the stuff will be rummaged through by the Gypsies. They take what's valuable and leave the rest thrown around, a mess. They smash old television cathode tubes for some metal parts inside. They steal batteries and elecrical cables from level crossing safety equipment, street lights, traffic lights, traffic signs and sell them at junkyards. New bronze sculpture in the park? They will saw it in half and steal it. Oh, you locked your bicycle in front of the supermarket and went in to do your shopping? They will gradly "recycle" your bicycle, too. What they can't steal, they destroy it. As a local policeman phrased it. When there is a burglary, break-in in my town police know if Gypsies did it because they destroy everything. They don't just simply pick the lock like a Hungarian thief would, Gypsies smash the doors off the hinges and smash them to smithereens, they do unreasonable and unnecessary damage. Like the destroy the door frame, too.