Moldova - The Land of 1,000 wells

We left the somewhat strange city of Soroca and drove west, passing more over-the-top Roma houses along the way. There were so many gold and silver domes on both houses and churches that I realised I had no idea which one was which!

We stayed on a highway for a while then turned off it. The asphalt roads were so bad! We crawled along at less that 60km/hr. In some places, the asphalt had slumped creating car-wrecking high spots in the process. In other places, the surface had been repaired so many times that it resembled a patchwork quilt.  

We always laugh at these signs telling drivers about approaching hills. The hills are nothing! Why drivers need to be notified about small rises and falls in the roads, I have no idea.

We mostly drove through large-scale farming land. The primary crop was sunflowers. There were thousands of acres of them but they were almost ready to harvest and most of them had dried up. Corn was the second most common crop. Again, it was nearly finished.

Despite google maps and other map apps continuously lagging then jumping, making it difficult for me to navigate at times, we made it to our accommodation in the village of Cobani. We only drove about 1.5 hours that day, starting from right near the Ukraine border and finishing very close to the Romanian border! This is such a small country.

Our accommodation there was an agrotourism place. Around the world, these places are usually in rural locations and run by farmers or villagers. We were looking forward to some of the country hospitality and cooking that we had read about.

Our cabin was amazing! It was made of huge logs. In-between they ran lengths of rope to create a seal (sort of, lol).

The front door was a work of art.

Above the front door hung a pair of old suede boots.

All the furniture was hand-made, chunky and very solid.

The owner, Olga, was lovely. She didn't speak much English but with her sparkly blue eyes and fun personality, it didn't matter. We quickly learned that she had been a world champion (we think) javelin thrower in the 1980's. We realised later that Moldova was part of the USSR then so she would have trained in the old Soviet regime. That would have been tough! She was also the runner up European champion in the Masters games in 2019.

Olga was such a great cook! We only ordered breakfast and dinner here and I'm so glad we did that because there was so much food that we just ate leftovers for lunch.

Our first dinner was amazing! These pork steaks were probably the tastiest and tenderest ones I've ever had. Oh - plus there was a large salad (each!), bread and a huge, heavy dessert. Needless to say, we couldn't eat it all.

At breakfast the next morning, she served up a fabulous baked omelette each. And that's all I needed. There were also two bruschetta each, bread, butter, honey, a plate of cheese and four baked apples. We snuck a lot of it for lunch but she was seriously offended when we didn't touch the bruschetta!

I loved that she served us traditional meals. This is a traditional soup called zeama. It's basically chicken noodle soup but the chicken is local village chicken and the ingredients are all home-made. It was delicious!

Mamaliga (corn mash) plus chicken and strong, sour sheep's cheese plus sour cream (they put this on everything!) plus pickled vegies. I wasn't a fan of the pickles but everything else was wonderful!

We drank well water here, but Olga does things the modern way. A pump is hooked up to the well and is attached to a hose with a trigger gun. We simply pull the trigger and direct the strong stream of water into a jug. The jug has a filter and we have to wait a few moments for the water to filter through it. The water is slightly salty but is otherwise fine.

Olga has planted out the back section of her long block with grapes and lavender. The lavender is planted in neat rows and is kept trimmed with the regular cutting of the flowers. There are three types of wine grapes in this section and she gave us a bunch of each. The red variety, curiously called Moldova, was lovely. The Chardonnay was sweet and the Muscat was sensational! It was like eating wine! 

Strangely, this is all for the tourists! At the moment she only has the one room to let, but a larger building is in the process of construction. The place won't be the same once the big building is there but I can't blame her for giving it a go. She's a great host and I think she enjoys the company.

We went exploring the area. We headed north to Duruitoarea. It was only 20kms but it took half an hour to drive due to the condition of the roads.

We soon learned that wells are everywhere! Most villages seemed to have dozens of them and most of those seem to be operational.

My title of this post is "Land of 1,000 wells" but that is a serious understatement. I thought there might be hundreds of thousands of them so I googled it. Here's what I found:

Artesian wells: Over 7,000.

Water table wells: Around 179,574.

Shallow wells and springs: Approximately 120,000.

Wells with unsafe water: Over 47,000.

Hmmm, I hope we haven't drunk from any of the unsafe wells!

The Prut cliffs run for about 100 to 200 kms (depending on whether you believe google maps or the Moldovan tourist information!) from where we are staying to the northern border. The cliffs are limestone and the tourist info we've read raves about them but they're really just small cliffs. It was good to see them though.

Climbing up to the top we had good views back over the village we walked from.

From the top we could peer into the gorge. It really wasn't very big but it was nice.

At the edge of a finished sunflower crop, a lone flower sprouted very late, giving me a close glimpse of its sunny face.

We wandered around the village a bit and it was really interesting. We think this thatch-roofed house was part of a camp ground but nothing was open so we're not sure.

An older well in less pristine condition than many others.

The next day we explored the "Valley of the Hundred Hills". There are actually over 3,000 hills there apparently. They are just small rises but each one stands alone. It's quite unusual. 

We walked to the top of one.

From the top we could look across to Romania.

We saw so many wells but this one was the fanciest by far!

At the village of Butesti, we checked out a cave There are many caves in the limestone cliffs.

The village of Butesti looked lovely from above with the blue spires of the church reaching up above the trees.

John returned to the car and drove back to our accommodation and I walked back. I had to admire the amazing dark soil they have here. It's so fertile! 

I saw quite a few of these mounds. They're molehills!

The trail had been hard to follow and the walk took longer than I expected. I was walking into town along the main road when a horse and cart came by. The guy driving called out to me and offered me a lift! Normally I would never accept a lift in a car but a horse and cart was far different to a car. We were near the town, on the main road and seriously, I figured that if he tried to race the horse off with me in the cart, I'd just jump out. I couldn't resist - I climbed aboard.

There was no racing anywhere. The horse just plodded along. The guy didn't speak a work of English but we shared our names. I quickly dropped into the conversation (mostly miming) that my husband was driving the car. I always drop the word 'husband' early in a conversation when I end up alone with men, lol. (In this case I pointed to my wedding ring.) He may not have spoken English but I'm quite sure he said he drives a horse because a car is too expensive. I'm thinking all his money probably went on the four gold teeth he had in the front of his mouth!

A quick selfie in the cart. 

He had a load of walnuts in the cart and I think he was delivering them to different people. He pulled up at a house and I jumped out and thanked him in his language. It's the only word I've learned so far. He was rapt!

I walked back through our village. All the villages that we've seen so far are quite spread out because everyone seems to have their own quarter- or half-acre of land where they grow fruit and vegies. The villages have a lovely rural feel.

Many of the houses were small but very neat. This shade of green has been popular everywhere we've been

I saw some kids coming home from school. They looked like they were wearing traditional clothes but I don't know if that was a school uniform or they just had a special event on.

A well prettily overgrown with grape vines.

This style of well was very different. A huge arm with a bucket hanging from it had a support part way along it. The bucket was raised and lowered by pushing or releasing the lower part of the arm, just like a see saw.

Another walk took us to a limestone outcrop just near the town.

White limestone road and green plains.

We had to cross this very rickety bridge to get home. It was held together with hope I think!

Walnuts were everywhere - lining roads, in paddocks and in gardens. We later heard that the Soviets planted a lot of these.

I've come to realise that life in Moldova today is probably like life was like in most parts of Europe over the last few hundred years. Life is simple. Milk the cow. Watch over the sheep while they graze. Collect walnuts and berries. Grow your own vegetables. Round up geese and chooks that get out. These are practices that have been carried out for centuries, if not millennia. Moldova still holds onto the roots of our current civilisation, probably largely thanks to their long period of Soviet rule.

It was sad to leave Olga and her lovely cabin. She had been a real delight to meet. 

It's been so hard to get information here. Guide books give you background, an understanding of the place your visiting. A good guide book tells you about the good and the bad as well as the ugly. It makes recommendations for things to see and do in big cities and smaller villages. It highlights any areas of interest. There is no guide book that we could find on Moldova. Armed with nothing more than the Moldovan travel website, we've had to try to work things out for ourselves, which hasn't been easy when we can't ask people about things.

I saw on the website that a herd of bison were near us but we had no info on how to find them. Luckily google maps had a site marked so we just headed there. We found the place and saw one lone bison asleep in a yard. Oh well! T\

We had a nice walk in the large oak forest nearby.

Driving on to our next destination took us 1.5 hours to travel about 100kms. The slumps in the road and the corresponding asphalt mounds were shocking in places. Slumps and bumps became something we had to keep a very sharp eye out for.

It was interesting to see the forms of transport in the villages we drove through. An older woman wobbled slowly along the road in a village on a rusty bike that looked older than her. People drove tiny tractors pulling trailers. Speedy mobility scooters are used by anyone, not just those with mobility issues. We saw people driving rotary hoes, tractors of all sizes, headers, a golf cart, horses and carts and sometimes even cars! In villages, I'd say that cars are not the most common form of transport that we see!

Our next stop was a winery. There was a bit more English spoken here. First up, we had a wine tasting and again, the whites were amazing but John wasn't too keen on the reds. We met three American guys - one was Moldovan living in the US and the three had come across for a wedding. We ended up having a pretty big night with them!

Part of the reason we came here is because there are supposed to be walking trails here, however the staff didn't know what we were talking about even though there was a sign on the wall proclaiming that they were a part of the wine trails. We eventually just followed our noses and more or less found the walks anyway.

It's autumn here and the fungi are growing.

To our amazement, we came across this huge dome. It was in bad repair and was clearly abandoned. We later learned that it was a former Soviet radar. 

The acoustics inside it were amazing!

I found a sheep bell!

We walked back through the vineyard. It was lovely.

It's picking season and pickers were working on certain varieties. There are about 15 varieties of grapes here in only 16 hectares!

The next day was quite cool and it threatened to rain, although the rain didn't eventuate. We've carted puffer jackets and raincoats with us for the last four months and we finally got a chance to use them!

Once again, the people at the winery weren't generally warm people, but there was one exception. The amazing Marcella was friendly, warm and welcoming. I usually got a hug at the start and end of each day! When we asked questions about the winery, she gave us an impromptu tour. She even got some unfermented chardonnay juice for us out of one of the tanks. It was incredibly sweet and really lovely - much like her really!

We don't know what people get paid here but it can't be much. Decent, but not top-shelf, bottles of wine sold for about Aussie $13 to $15 in this winery. There seemed to be an incredible number of people working on the property and they all were given food at lunchtime. There were pickers, wine makers, cooks, cleaners, wait staff and more. They had nine hotel rooms I think. I can't see how they can sell wine for that price and pay all those staff. I did some googling and came up with an hourly average pay of $10 an hour in Moldova. That's actually more than I expected.

Marcella has two daughters but in summer she works 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's tough!

We had wonderful food here and met more English-speaking tourists than we have anywhere else so far.

Us at the winery.

To be honest, we're not finding Moldova to be all that amazing so far. The people keep to themselves quite a bit, there isn't a lot of English spoken, it's hard to get information and the country isn't exactly packed with amazing sights. Anyway, we're here and we'll make the most of it. It's certainly interesting in its own way.

Hooroo!
Heather and John

Moldova -

Our last day in Greece didn't start well when our neighbours came home at 1.30am and woke us up. We had to get up at 4.30 to catch our flight and we both tossed and turned for a couple of hours until we gave in and got up at 3.30. Our pre-booked taxi turned up on time and we headed to the small international airport on Lemnos.

We pulled up outside and the airport didn't look open! Our helpful taxi driver worked out how to open the doors before they were officially unlocked and we sat inside with a couple of security guys until someone turned the main lights on!

We soon realised why there weren't many people there. We were the only flight out for the whole morning.

The sky finally lightened and our plane arrived. This is where it sat on the tarmac. I took the photo from the terminal. They bussed us to the plane!!!

Our series of flights went relatively smoothly and we landed in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. The whole country is only about 350kms x 150kms and has a population of about 2.5 million We really had no idea what to expect. 

We quickly got a sim card and some cash at the airport without any difficulty and headed outside to get a taxi. We had read that taxi drivers can try to overcharge here so we were armed with info. The first drivers that approached us wanted almost double the going rate. John called them the taxi mafia. We found another guy who took a better price and we jumped in. He was a lovely guy but his driving was unbelievable! We took off at a rate of knots. I was sitting in the front and could see that most of the time he drove at almost 90km/hr in a 50 zone. We approached a stop sign and he just raced straight through, after checking each way without slowing. Then he did the same thing again at the next one. He then called his mate who spoke English to get him to ask us if we wanted him to take us on a tour somewhere. While this conversation was happening, he drove through two red lights - fast! He then took my phone and put in his mate's number in case we needed it. Mate - we don't need the number. We aren't calling you under any circumstances! The good thing about all this phone use was that he slowed down while he used the phone! He was really good at dropping us right at the door of our apartment though - it wasn't easy to find.

We didn't know what the accommodation would really be like but our apartment was fantastic! It was one of the best places we've stayed in in months. There was nothing special about it but it had good light and ventilation and workable space. Plus it was in a really central location but very quiet.

And the big thing - we could put dunny paper in the toilet, not in a bin! Yep, in Greece you have to put toilet paper into a bin next to the toilet as the plumbing can't cope with toilet paper. It's pretty unpleasant really, especially as there are never instructions about where to put the bags of rubbish if we're in a place that doesn't include cleaning. We usually sort it out but we were pretty happy to be back to 'normal' here!

Moldova is famous for its wines and apparently it has the cheapest alcohol in Europe! We were zonked from lack of sleep but John was determined to try some wine on our first night so we found a wine bar that did tastings. The young girl serving us spoke reasonable English, but it's not that common here so the language barrier is going to be interesting. Some of the whites were great but John wasn't impressed with the red. We got talking to a lovely young couple at the next table and ended up sharing a bottle of wine with them. He was Russian, she was Moldovan and they lived in the Netherlands. We were soon to learn that Moldovan people seem to be a mix of lots of other nationalities. We had a lovely night.

The room was lined with wines.

Unfortunately, we woke up the next morning to find an email telling us that Garuda had cancelled one of our more remote Indonesian flights (we are going to Indonesia after this). This was a real problem as the only other way out of where we would be was with really dodgy airlines. It took me all day but we finally got something worked out, at great expense. I then wasted part of the next day trying to claim compensation from Garuda but it was so hard that I gave up. It'll have to wait til later.

We only had two full days in Chisinau so we didn't see a lot. The weather was lovely - sunny and warm during the day and surprisingly cold at night. 

Moldova fist became a country, called Moldavia, in the 1300's when it was combined with parts of what is now Romania. From 1538 to 1812 it was part of the Ottoman Empire until it was annexed by the Russians in 1940 and became part of the USSR. It declared independence from the USSR in 1991 and, in recent years, has pursued closer ties with the European Union, submitting a formal membership application in 2022.

The result of all these different influences is that the people, the architecture and the customs are all very mixed. The architecture in Chisinau reflected this. Ugly old Soviet-era concrete monstrosities sat side-by-side with gorgeous domed churches and pretty houses with steepled rooves.

Chisinau was very much a people-oriented town. Footpaths were wider than many of the roads. Busses running on electric wires were everywhere and heaps of people used them. The result is that the traffic wasn't too bad. There were lots of lovely parks and trees were everywhere. Autumn leaves seemed to become more colourful each day.

I confess, at this stage I can't tell you anything about the local food. We sought out Asian and Italian food - anything but Greek, lol. We miss our Asian food so much!

John read about an interesting coffee shop so we went there. The shop wasn't actually open as the owner was installing a stage (work that one out!) but he welcomed us with open arms. The shop was almost a museum dedicated to coffee. The owner had good English (though he was Russian) and he was a mine of information about coffee. He made a cardamon flavoured coffee for John and I asked for a hot chocolate. Instead, he wanted me to try something else. It was called salep and it was like drinking a sweet white sauce! It was really tasty but it was incredibly thick. He googled it for me and I learned it was made from special orchid bulbs. How bizarre!

The whole place was colourful, crowded and chaotic. And that was without there being any other people there!

There were tributes to coffee everywhere.

We wandered through the local market. It was huge! The dairy section was amazing. It smelled like John used to smell when he worked at the cheese factory a very long time ago. Once you know that smell, you never forget it, haha.

There were lots of soft cheeses and curds. Some of these were served by sweet women in white aprons and white headscarves. If you look closely in the photo above, one of the women is wearing something like this.

There was even one section of the market that was entirely for selling eggs! Food and water hygiene is a bit of an issue here. You absolutely can't drink the water and we need to avoid things like uncooked meats and soft cheeses. I suspect most of the cheeses above are home-made.

Our apartment was opposite the Central Park. A few grand buildings stood there. This bell tower was a favourite hangout for hundreds of pigeons.

They had even taken over the seating. Just after I took this, a woman walked past with a plastic bag that she opened to check something inside. The pigeons thought she was bringing food and swarmed her!

I walked to a lake that was situated not far from the city centre. It was lovely and many people were jogging or walking around it. One large corner of the lake was separated with a concrete wall. Inside were ducks and reeds ....... and dozens of dead fish floating on the surface. Outside the walled area, just nearby, were people fishing. I'm not eating any fish around here!

A dramatic grand staircase led back up to the city. Water cascaded down a series of pools but there was so much limestone in the water that the water was white and it had coated all the rocks and concrete ledges that it flowed over.

It was time to leave the capital and head out into the countryside. Our lovely apartment host helped us to get a taxi in the pouring rain and the ride to the airport, where we would pickup our rental car, was far safer than the crazy one we had a few days earlier.

John had picked up a bit of a bug and wasn't feeling 100% but the cost of adding a second driver was ridiculous so John had to drive. We picked up our car and headed out into the rain. We quickly learned that Moldovan roads, even in the capital, aren't much chop sometimes. Water sat across the road in many places and we hit potholes a few times. The drivers were pretty civilised though and we made it to our first stay safely.

Not surprisingly, our first stay was a winery! We were taken to our room and it was massive, but a little weird. Old wooden floorboards creaked with each step and it just felt a bit strange. There was nothing wrong with it though, it's just that we're not used to things yet. And then I saw the sign on the bathroom wall saying that we can't throw toilet paper in the toilet......

We had less than an hour to settle in before our pre-booked wine tasting started. It turned out to be fantastic. A bright young woman with good knowledge and good English showed us around the winery. We saw tanks, filtering machines and barrels. 

This room had been set up to display wines from other countries but the room was too warm and all the wines got ruined so they keep them for display only now! We bet someone lost their job over that blunder.

There was some special Sauternes there. John was pretty disappointed that our lovely guide wouldn't let us try it just to be sure that it was no good!

A grand staircase, made of interlacing vines cast in metal and a favourite posing spot for brides and grooms, led down to the cellars.

Best of all though was a special light show at the end of the tour. Yes - that was unexpected! On some of their bottles, they have a QR code that you can scan and it shows you a movie about the wine. This time, we stood in front of a group of barrels and a fantastic story about the sun, water and earth spirits was played out across the barrels. It sounds strange but it was wonderful! 

At the end, a full-on lightshow played across the whole cellar.

We then got to choose which wines we wanted to taste. We could choose six bottles. As there were no more tours after us, we got to keep the rest of the bottles! What are we going to do with six bottles of wine??? Anyway, we gave them a good nudge that night. We then got them to put the corks back in so we could have another go at them the next night! The white wines in particular were amazing and they were so cheap!

The ice wine was the best I've ever had!

Meanwhile, a lovely sunset happened outside the window.

We tried our first local foods here. This was a pretty good restaurant and the local meal I had there was wonderful! It was like a serve of cornmeal with beef scallopini and a yoghourt sauce. It tasted much better than it sounds, lol.

The vine covered restaurant looked amazing.

John still wasn't well but was good enough to do a bit of exploring. We headed out to Old Orhei, Moldova's biggest tourist attraction. The area was of interest both for natural and historical reasons. A river had carved out a really interesting cliff in a horseshoe shape, creating a landscape that people had lived in for millennia. 

An important town flourished around the horseshoe from the mid 1300's to the mid 1500's. Evidence still remains of the first wooden citadel, a larger stone one, a palace (now reburied), a mosque, a caravanserai and more. Many of these had now been restored to walls just a few stones high.

An ancient cobblestoned road led to the well-maintained ruins of an old bathhouse.

The more tangible things to see were a lot newer than the stone ruins and were focussed around one part of the cliff.. A walking trail led across the top of the cliff. The river curved away beneath us.

As we approached the area we could see the Pestera Monastery carved into the cliff. A belltower stood above it to mark where the monastery is.

We walked down through a tunnel carved into the rock in 1850 to reach the monastery. We walked through a small church in the rock then out onto a ledge. Windows from the monks' cells were carved into the cliff beside us.

All along the outside wall where the above photo was taken, were tiny pieces of paper and coins tucked into niches in the rock wall. We assume they were prayers of some sort.

Further along, a lovely church now stands on the ruins of a 2,500 year old fort. There were friendly dogs and cats here but one dog had a completely broken leg which had obviously never healed. It was pretty awful.

The river had another horseshoe bend when we looked back in the opposite direction. All these river flats and protective cliffs made it a great place to settle for thousands of years.

We then wandered along the main street of a nearby village. They love their gates here!

This was a very touristy village as it's right beside the Orheiul Vechi area although we were there in the late morning so nothing was open yet, lol.

We visited an old house that was made into a museum. It had an unusual thatched roof. It seemed to be made out of a very coarse straw of some sort.

They seemed to be obsessed with this mauve-blue colour. Every second house and wall seemed to be painted with it.

An old wine press with a huge screw carved from wood.

Much to our surprise, there must have been at least 10 wells just along the main road. They all seemed to be being used.

We could see the wear from years of use on the wooden roller.

Pretty flowers lined the street in places.

This house had so much colour that its verandah posts looked like candy canes!

There seem to be lots of stray dogs in Moldova that seem friendly and well-fed. Two dogs followed us for about 20 minutes on our walk. This one loved cuddles so much! They only abandoned us when some people in a car brought out food for them!

To our astonishment, we found an outdoor opera stage! We saw posters around the place and they seem to hold operas here regularly. They sometimes get big-name performers too. 

Back in the car, we looked back on the cliff with the church on top.

At one place, a cow conveniently posed in the right place, lol.

As we drove out, we passed another old monastery in the cliffs. You could spend days here exploring everything.

A superb church in a nearby village.

I love these domes on churches!

One thing we've noticed is that they seem to have quite a few places set up for tourists and they're really tacky. They sometimes stand out like sore thumbs. Twee houses in overly-pretty gardens are the locations for some restaurants. We kept passing signs to "Orhei Land". Seriously? I think we're staying in a tacky tourist hotels further along the trip so it's going to be interesting!

We returned to our accommodation at the winery and had a lovely meal accompanied by as much of the leftover wine as we could drink. We gave it a good go but had to leave quite a bit behind. This was sad as the wine was excellent!

The next day we left and headed north. As we drove along one particular section of road, we realised that everyone was driving straddling the white lines. We remembered we had seen this before and followed suit. The way it works is that this effectively makes an extra lane for passing. It's so weird!

Not too long after this, we saw police were pulling over random drivers. They pulled us over. We weren't in the least bit worried as we had read that it's common to get pulled over in Moldova. Once the policeman worked out we spoke English, he switched to it. It wasn't perfect but we could mostly understand each other. It turns out that he pulled us over because one of our lights wasn't working. Bloody rental car company! He then asked if John had had anything to drink in the last 24 hours. John knew he was safe so he said yes. We think the policeman then said he could smell alcohol in the car and interrogated John on how much he had drunk. The blood alcohol limit in Moldova is 0.015 - less than a third of what it is in Australia. John hadn't drunk anything since the night before and was pretty confident he was under even that low limit but there were long discussions about this. We think that any alcohol testing had to be done elsewhere so the cop wanted to be convinced that John would be over the limit before he carted him off. We think he kept John talking to try to judge if he was drunk or not (of course he wasn't). Anyway, the end result was that he let us go - more because he wanted to make a good impression of his country to the tourists than anything else, we imagine. 

We were pretty relieved to get out of there and we cursed the car rental company all the way to the next destination for getting us pulled over in the first place.

After that, John drove soooo carefully. We didn't want to get picked up again! We soon started playing a game we've played before in other countries - "Guess the speed limit"! Everyone else seemed to know what the speed limits were but we had no clue. In the end we worked it out - 90km/hr on the country roads, 70 as you approach and leave the towns, 50 in the towns and 30 at the multitude of pedestrian crossings. Very few of these speed changes were actually marked with signs although we learned that some were marked with faded signs painted on the asphalt.

We made it to our next destination, a town in the north called Soroca. This was such a bizarre place! I felt quite out of place here. Very few people spoke English. There were such a mix of incredible old buildings, new ones, abandoned ones and gaudy ones. The main walking track along the river was mostly a wreck of potholes and cracked asphalt. People didn't smile much. We saw a few stereotypical Russian-looking women - big, solid and fierce looking. We also saw a few women with over-botoxed lips here. How can anyone think this looks good?

Our lovely, but cigarette-tainted apartment overlooked the Dniester River - which is the border between Moldova and Ukraine! We looked straight out of our window to the back of a village in Ukraine. Now before you panic and think we're mad, the war is on the opposite side of Ukraine to where we are. It's a long way away.

Life in this part of Ukraine seemed to be plodding along just as it probably has been for a very long time. We watched the comings and goings of some local farmers from our apartment and it was fascinating.

The river curved here and lots of grass grew on the river flats on the other side of the river. Each day, a farmer would drive his horse and cart to the edge of the river, with three cows tied to the wagon. He would tether the cows one by one so they could eat the green grass along the river's edge. The horse in the cart would wander along eating grass while the man tethered the cows. When the farmer was finished, he would get back in the cart and go home to get the next three cows. I'm not sure how many cows belonged to the one farmer but there were about 10 cows tethered along the river and he owned at least six of them. 

He would come back at lunchtime and untie each cow so she could drink from the river. He would then re-tether them in a fresh spot. One day I saw the farmer's wife milking one of the cows. At the end of the day, the farmers would repeat the process in reverse, taking the cows back home for the night. Needless to say, they were very healthy looking cows!

The cow on the left is being milked. The two cows in the water have been let off their ropes to drink while the farmer watches on. The horse in the cart just grazed while it waited.

The contrast between the two sides of the river was quite amazing. Lining the river in Soroca, in Moldova, were both new and old high-rise buildings, a grand fortress and a mix of buildings that stretched on for quite a long way along the river. 

On the Ukraine side, the only thing lining the river were cows. After that were trees then we could see low-rise buildings scattered through the trees. We couldn't see any roads so the farmers and their horse and cows were our sole experience of Ukraine life!

I have to be honest and say that the Ukraine village looked a lot more appealing than this fairly ugly town in Moldova. This was all so quaint and lovely but I'm probably romanticising things. We also saw a woman on the Ukraine side washing her clothes in the river. As much as the river is lovely to look at, I'm under no illusion that it's clean. Drains from the streets run straight into it. What I'm looking at is probably a result of poverty. I have no idea if the war has affected the quality of people's lifestyles in this part of Ukraine.

Back on our side of the river, Soroca might have had a weird mix of buildings but it certainly had interesting parts. It is known as the Roma capital of Moldova. Roma are gypsies who live in various parts of the world. Different countries call them different things - in Ireland they call them 'travellers'. They traditionally are nomads and make their living doing whatever they can. They generally have an unsavoury reputation as thieves although I have no idea what their reputation is like here where they are well and truly settled. I did a bit of research and learned that the Roma people here became quite wealthy during a couple of periods of Soviet rule in the 20th century as they were clever manufacturers and traders - mostly of underwear!

The result was that the Roma started to build grand houses. Each one tried to outdo their neighbours and now "Gypsy Hill" stands as testament to the outlandish preferences of the Roma when it comes to architecture.

These strange silver rooves, presumable Ottoman- or Soviet -inspired, were popular. Yes, these are houses, not mosques!

Yep - that gold dome belongs to another house!

There were plenty of grand old gateways that would fit right in with the Addams family

This house was designed to look like the Bolshoi Theatre!

Even the local well got the special, extremely-decorated treatment!

This turret had a golden eagle on top.

We don't know what this silver metal was but it was popular.

Even the downpipes got the special treatment. I wish I'd taken a photo of the bottom of the downpipe though - it just emptied straight into a patch of dirt.

Then, in the 1990's, the Soviet Union broke up and the borders closed. The golden years for the Roma were over.  As the money dried up, many homes were left unfinished. In some cases, the choice was deliberate. Under local law, homes which are more than 80 per cent unfinished don’t have to pay council property taxes. Now there are many romantic ruins interspersed among the grand gaudy homes.

The Roma are, once again, impoverished. Some families cram many people into a room, with kids sleeping on the floor. Many kids don't go to school. As we walked past the houses, some people asked for money.

In this city of contrasts, our next visit was to the Soroca Fortress. Originally built of wood in 1499, it was rebuilt in stone between 1543 and 1546. Its unusual round design made it more resistant to attack. Today it has been completely renovated.

The inside of one of the witches hat rooves.

Looking over the fortress walls to Gypsy Hill in the distance.

We had great views over interesting houses and modern skyscrapers.

The town isn't that big and it wasn't a long walk from where we were staying was a gorgeous wooden church.

A teenage boy and an older man sat outside. It turned out that the teenage boy was the son of the priest there and he spoke English. He took it upon himself to show us around the church. This was the first time that anyone has shown us around an Orthodox church so we were rapt. (All those churches and monasteries we visited in Greece were Orthodox too.)

He showed us this icon. It's of a saint who is very important to their church. Inside the fancy little box are supposedly some of his remains! There were several other medallions nearby that we learned contained some of the remains of unknown priests who were killed by the Ottomans when they refused to convert to Islam.

A tour group arrived so we left. As we walked down the stairs to leave, a few people were looking at something on the bottom step. It was a tiny snake!

We saw a few interesting things around the town. We love that a hairdresser is called a frizerie! I'm not sure that I'd want anyone frizzing up my hair!

The churches are so beautiful.

So many things seemed either really ugly or overly elaborate. The street signs definitely fell into the elaborate category.

We didn't manage to eat much traditional food here, mainly because we were staying opposite a supermarket with the best bakery range in town, plus we were in the same building as one of the best restaurants, which seemed to sell only western and Asian food. We know we've got lots of traditional food coming up at the next place though so this will just have to do for now.

I'm not sure what to think of Moldova so far. The lack of English being spoken is a big part of that as it's hard to understand a country if you can't easily talk to the people. I can't say it's not interesting though!

Cheers,

Heather and John