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!

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