Pierre came to visit me from Germany for one week! It was interesting to see Moldova through a fresh set of eyes, to see what he found surprising, confusing, perplexing, and amusing – so many of the same things that baffled me months ago but now I take for granted. And it was wonderful to get to share a bit of my life here with him.
He flew into Chisinau on a Wednesday, and the contrast between his departure from the Frankfurt airport, one of the biggest and busiest in Europe, and his arrival at the Chisinau airport, which has got to be one of the tiniest in all of Europe, was his first indication that things were going to be a bit different for the next seven days. One of the very few advances Moldova has made in the realm of accommodating foreign visitors is that you can buy a visa right at the airport, and you don’t need to order it in advance via an Embassy. (Of course, it’s a bit ridiculous to have to pay $60 for the privilege of entering the country, but that’s another story.)
We took the public transport into the city, which meant a 20-minute ride on a marshuka, one of the thousands of mini-vans that operate on regular routes throughout the city. Actually, it’s incorrect to call it public transport, as the marshukas are all privately owned and operated. I’ve been told that many of the local politicians own the marshuka businesses, and thus they’ve been slowly and steadily decreasing funding to the state-owned bus system in order to increase the demand, and thus the profits, for their privately-owned transport system. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the marshukas definitely out-number the buses by tens to one, I would guess. A ride on a marshuka is not the nicest introduction to Moldova, especially on an unseasonably hot day. As they are profit-oriented, the drivers will cram as many people as possible into one mini-van, well beyond the limits of comfort and safety. They usually have 10-14 seats and there are often at least that many people standing as well. Adding to the discomfort is the fact that Moldovans have an intense dislike, even fear, of air blowing on them; they believe it will make them sick. Thus they will not open windows in moving vehicles. For foreigners who not only enjoy fresh air blowing through a car but who also despise being slowly roasted alive, it can be a rather tortuous experience to ride in a marshuka. But, Pierre was going to get the Real Moldovan Experience, so we opted for the 2 lei marshuka ride instead of the 100 lei taxi ride from the airport. The driver charged us an extra 2 lei for the luggage, which consisted of a gym bag and a backpack. I gotta give Pierre credit for packing light!
We relaxed that evening, went to a nice restaurant for dinner and just walked around the city, through the park, and eventually stopped at a patio bar for a drink. The days are very long here now, with the sun rising about 5:30 am and setting around 9:30 pm. After so many months of long dark evenings in the house, it’s really nice to sit outside late into the night. The outdoor cafes and bars were all busy, children were playing in the fountains; it was a lovely evening.
Thursday we went to the Moldovan National History Museum. It’s an eclectic experience, with a collection ranging from 20,000 year old relics of ancient human settlements in this area, to a small display highlighting the lives of a few Soviet-era dissidents who were exiled to Siberia or executed under Stalin. The entire museum collection is rather spartan, with just a smattering of pieces from the 22,000 years of history it chronicles, yet it is interesting and provides an excellent overview. I find it particularly fascinating to follow the political history of the region via the official documents, maps, books, newspapers and other written records in the museum’s collection – changing century to century, sometimes decade to decade, between Russian, German, Romanian, and other languages. In the basement of the building is a small room full of coins, from ancient Roman coins to Soviet kopeks, and everything in between. It’s another fascinating review of the country’s jumbled political history.
Thursday afternoon we headed to the South bus station, on the edge of the city, for the 5 pm bus to Tvarditsa. Another marshuka ride to get there, only this time no extra charge for the same amount of luggage – just one of those incomprehensibilities of Moldova! There are three alternating drivers on the Tvarditsa route. I’ve concluded that it’s just part of the job description for any bus or marshuka driver to be irritable and bad-tempered, but one of our drivers really is exceptionally mean and nasty. For a while, I thought he was just xenophobic as he’d seemed particularly intolerant of me as a foreigner. I’ve seen him harass enough other people to realize now that he just hates everybody. The bus route includes two stops in Tvarditsa, one at the northern edge of the village and then the final stop in the center, driving down my street and thus right past my house. By request, the driver will often stop at a corner about half-way to the center, near a small store and the cemetery, which is a shorter walk home for me than from the center. On another night returning to Tvarditsa, I asked the driver (one of the other slightly more cooperative ones) to stop near the store, and much to my surprise he said “No, the store is closed.” I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so decided to try again with a slightly different request – to stop by the cemetery. “You don’t want to go there either,” he replied, then cracked a grin. I couldn’t believe it, a bus driver actually displaying a sense of humor! And to top it off, he remembered exactly where I live and dropped me off right in front. Holy cow!
Well, we had no such luck on the bus with Pierre, unfortunately. We got the evil driver, and I didn’t even bother to ask him to drop us off early. It’s only about a 10 minute walk from the village center to home anyway, so Pierre and I just rode to the end and walked back up the street. Anya and Georghi always know, though, that it’s been my “favorite” driver when they hear the bus drive right past the house without stopping.
We arrived to a typical Moldovan feast at home. Anya and Georghi had bought a bottle of Cricova champagne for the occasion, which is the most famous wine label in Moldova and in much of the former Soviet Union. The Cricova winery, in northern Moldova, consists of tens of kilometers of underground caverns where the wine is produced, aged and stored in the consistently cool natural temperature. The champagne was delicious, and it was a very special treat. Anya had also made schnitzels in honor of Pierre’s visit from Germany, which surprised and delighted him.
Friday we toured the homestead, walking through the green garden, visiting all the animals. We met my friend Petya, and the three of us walked around the village together. Petya, who is 17 years old and has excellent English, really enjoys meeting my PCV friends who’ve visited Tvarditsa, and I knew he’d enjoy Pierre, too. It continued to be unseasonably hot and humid, though, and pretty soon we were all exhausted. Pierre had brought a bunch of DVDs with him, so it was a lot of fun to have such a normal evening vegging and watching movies!
Saturday was a busy day, as we had the GLOW Day seminar (Girls Leading Our World). The girls who were leading the seminar had picked the date, and although it conflicted with Pierre’s visit, he was understanding about me taking a few hours to work. He and Petya spent the afternoon together while I was busy with the girls (I’ll write more about GLOW Day in another posting). In the evening, we picked strawberries in the garden, had another delicious dinner and a lots and lots of fresh strawberries for dessert.
Sunday was a quiet day, more movies, and then an invitation to the neighbor’s for a barbeque. The visit involved the usual “tour” of their wine cellar, with samplings from each of their four or five barrels with different varieties. My favorite was a berry wine like nothing I’d ever tasted before – sweet and thick and unbelievably delicious. They cooked pork shashliki, like shish kebabs, over an open fire, and we had lots of salads and plenty of wine. We stayed later than we should have, given our plans to catch the 6:00 am bus the next morning, but it was a fun evening nonetheless. Anya fussed that Pierre didn’t eat enough, but I think there is no such thing as eating enough here. 🙂
We made it to our bus on Monday morning, both of us dozing off and on during the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Chisinau. The combination of slight hangovers, little sleep, and oppressive heat and humidity made for a rather unproductive day. Our main accomplishment was checking into the hotel and dealing with the police registration. A law leftover from the Soviet era requires that all foreigners be registered with the police. Hotels, for a small fee, will handle the paperwork for you, but since we had gone to Tvarditsa for a few days, we technically were supposed to register Pierre with the regional authorities there as well. That’s anything but easy, as it involves a trip to Taraclia, a 90 minute bus ride away. Given my own hassles getting registered with the Taraclia authorities, I wasn’t about to deal with them to register yet another foreigner. We decided to take our chances. Upon our return to the hotel in Chisinau, the clerk pitched a fit when she realized we didn’t have an anexa (the registration document) for the days in Tvarditsa. I waited patiently through her lecture on the law, how it’s important to follow the Moldovan laws just as I would expect to follow U.S. law, blah blah blah. Before I had to ask the question “Is there by chance a way we can resolve this situation?” (which is code for “How much is it going to cost me?”), she said that for an extra 50 lei they would give him a new anexa covering the time he was not registered. It was a bit less than I’d expected, so I willingly slipped the extra bill in with the rest of our payment.
In the evening, we met my host brother Sasha for a beer at an outdoor café. Sasha is a bit of an amateur coin collector, and Pierre brought him a 1972 Olympic coin from Germany, which was a really considerate gift, I thought.
On Tuesday, we went to the Peace Corps office to check email and for me to take care of a couple things there, so Pierre got to see our little piece of America in the middle of Moldova. One of the staff suggested some things for us to do in the city, including walking to a park with a small lake where you can rent a little rowboat. We decided to get lunch first, and then decided to do some shopping. We went to Sun City, the closest thing to a Western-style shopping mall here in Moldova, and it’s best feature that day was that it was air conditioned! I bought a sun hat, and then we headed to Gemini, the “shopping mall” for the regular guy. It’s a large 4 story building which is basically like a market under a roof with hundreds of vendors renting stalls in the building, as opposed to the more familiar shop format of Sun City. We also went to Unic, another large, multi-floor department store. We rode the only escalator in all of Moldova, which only operates in the Up direction, and on that day was only operating between the first and second floors. Another little Moldovan quirk.
After all that walking around, we took a rest at my favorite ice cream shop and decided to wait until evening to try the long walk to the park, when it would hopefully be cooler, and headed back to the hotel to rest and try to cool off from the exhausting heat. As we were about to go out to dinner, a fabulous thunderstorm started, and we sat on the balcony watching the rain and lightening and enjoying the cooling temperature. It ended up raining cats and dogs all night, and we never did make it to the park, but it was very relaxing to watch the storm instead. We even saw a rainbow!
Wednesday was considerably cooler and much more comfortable. We had a leisurely lunch, sitting on the restaurant patio and “people-watching”, then we walked to an art gallery we had noticed earlier in the week. In the lobby was an exhibition of children’s drawings on the theme of India. The pictures were so colorful and interesting! The main exhibition of the gallery, located in one large hall, consisted of two Moldovan artists, a sculpture and a painter. The art was a bit too modern for my taste, but it was interesting nonetheless. Across from the exhibition room was another large room with paintings for sale. The clerk told us they were all works by professional artists, and most of them were quite impressive. None of the prices were displayed, instead the clerk had a large catalogue in which she could look up the ID number of the painting and find the price. We asked about one large framed painting, and it was 2800 MDL, which is about $225.
Unfortunately, it was time to head back to the airport, the week having flown by too quickly. Pierre’s last marshuka ride (again, no extra charge for the same amount of luggage!), and we arrived in plenty of time for his flight. There are lots of good stories about the Chisinau airport – the absurdly thorough checking, double checking, stalling and harassment. Pierre even had to go through a metal detector when he arrived! Departure required passing through 2 metal detectors, and an inspection of the bottle of homemade wine that made him think the worker was even going to take a swig. As we were so curious about the whole registration thing, Pierre kept the anexas in his wallet, separate from his passport just to see if he’d be asked to produce them. Sure enough, he was never asked about them. He was, however, asked how much money he had on him and even had to show the money in his wallet to one clerk. As for the anexa, it was better to be safe than sorry; I’ve heard stories of outrageous fines being levied at the airport if you don’t have the documents, and I figure the 50 lei ($4) we paid was worth the peace of mind.
It was fun to share my rabbit ears and bunny tail with Pierre for the week, even if the time did go too quickly. It’s an interesting benchmark in my time here to compare my adaptation and adjustment to someone experiencing it anew. I’m really glad he visited me.
Anka in Kyiv 