The Road Less Traveled

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I woke up late and no one was home.  Lena had left a post-it note on the fridge that their assistant Sylvia would not be coming in the morning to make cirniki (fried sweet cheese patties).  I wasn’t feeling up to the adventure of boiling my own milk and coffee, and since seeing placintas (a long rolled flaky pastry with fruit or cheese inside) in the Fourchette supermarket yesterday, I’d had a real craving for them. I decided to walk up the street to the La Placinte restaurant I’d seen the day before.

When I sat down and looked at the menu, the placintas in the pictures looked different. The one called placinta looked more round and flat like a pizza. There was another variety that looked more like what I remembered, so I ordered a cherry one. Shortly after, the waitress came back and said the cherry one would take 25 minutes, so I ordered the apple.

I was embarrassed by the size of the thick perfect circle of cooked apple, pastry dough, and powdered sugar set before me, and the latte which seemed to be steamed milk with just a splash of coffee. I told myself I would not go again without friends to help me eat such a concoction.  But I was also determined not to waste it.  I’d skip lunch, I figured.

After gorging myself, I walked down the street to the park near the pedagogical university. Lena (the 22-year old university student in my Moldovan family) told me the park had been renovated, and that people line up to pay money to get it in or go there after they get married to have pictures taken.  I walked in, paid my 2 lei (students pay 1 lei), and found immaculate rows of flowers, hanging baskets of more flowers, trees, even a pond with ducks.

I walked back to the house to freshen up, then Lena came and took me to the Hippocrates Center which her mother Diana runs. The center provides physical and social services for children with disabilities, a rare service in a country where parents will abandon healthy or disabled children to work overseas. See http://www.chcmoldova.md for information on the center; click on “donatii” to give money to support their work.

When I walked into the center, one of the employees, Galina, shouted with wide eyes and open arms, “Bridget!” “Bowling!” before giving me a big hug. The last time I was in Moldova, I had gone with Diana and her colleagues to the bowling alley in Chisinau. (See my post, http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Reisefrau/dec-9-part-2-bowling-in-moldova.html, for a description of that experience.) That had been their first time ever bowling and I had to teach them the basics of it, though Diana told they have been bowling other times since then.  It never in my wildest imagination occurred to me that I would be remembered so strongly for teaching them how to bowl.  Other employees hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks and made similar comments before sitting me down—to what was left of their lunch.  Instantly set on a plate for me were pieces of bread with fried chicken or ham on them. And there were plates of placinta with cherry and placinta with cheese. At least I balanced it with fruit tea, tomato, and cucumber.

At the table sat two women from Britain, an occupational therapist and a recreational therapist.  I later found out Linda was from Kent (where my aunt’s mother lives so I’ve been there) and Renata was originally from Berlin but has lived with her husband for many years in Nottingham.  The three of us, Lena, and our driver Boris set out for the Purcari winery.

Although the winery is only 100 km from Chisinau, it took two hours to drive there. The roads are full of potholes that have to be avoided, and we also agreed that Boris is the most careful driver we’ve ever had in Moldova.  It’s good to have such a careful driver transporting disabled children and us.

We arrived at a chateau-like white building set among rows of grapevines.  We met our tour guide, Svetlana, who escorted us through the different stages of wine making.  To be honest, the tour felt out of order at times (we saw the labeling area before the barrels the wine matures in) so I’m still not sure I understood the whole process of fermentation and freezing and maturing and filtering.  But I understood big steel vats, old oak barrels (from France), bottles made of Italian glass so the wine can be exported to Europe,  spots for fishing, and the natural spring running under the grounds.

Our tour ended at the hotel and restaurant. We saw a 4-star suite. It costs 90 Euros a night, but you get three free mini-bottles of wine.  The restaurant had oil paintings hanging tastefully on the white walls, and three windows with a view of the vineyard that looked like a painting themselves.

We sat at a table and watched a video in English about the winery (a bit redundant, but well done) then sat at a table for our tasting.  We tasted four wines—a chardonnay, a pinot noir, a cabernet sauvignon, and cahor (a sweet wine usually used in church ceremonies). We even had a pen and paper to mark our ratings of each wine.  The chardonnay and cabernet came out as the top two, but the pinot noir and cahor were not to my taste at all.

Throughout the day we had heard about the winery’s “black wine”, a darker variant of cabernet-sauvignon.  We were disappointed when it wasn’t included in our tasting.  Apparently we had gotten a special deal on the tour, so we only got four wines. However, our tour included dinner at the hotel (shashlik/grilled meat) and was 25 Euros instead of 23 Euros.  The tour guide agreed that we could use the 2 extra Euros to have a small bottle of the black wine with dinner.  It was without a doubt supreme, totally worth the 175 lei for a big bottle (from a Western standpoint).

After dinner we went to the gift shop to pay for our tour  and to buy wine to take home with us. Then we drove off into the sunset, gazing at the green rolling hills and grazing cows as long as there was light to see.

I woke up a little earlier than the day before and had the breakfast Diana had prepared: bread, cheese, sausages, and pasta with brinza. Grigore, Diana, Sandu and I piled into Grigore’s car and drove to Lena’s school where we picked up Lena and her history teacher. Yes, Lena had school on Sunday morning. I thought it was awful but it’s all part of the “session work” that goes on at the end of a term in Moldova and other former Soviet republics.

Anyway, the 6 of us rode off to Monastery Hincul. It took about an hour to get there. When we arrived, there was a sign greeting us in Romanian. It said, “Peace to those who come. Happiness to those who stay. Blessings to those who leave.” I’m not sure if the church intended this last line to be funny, but we certainly saw the humor in it.

We walked up the rutted dirt road to the main basilica, saying hello to the goats we passed along the way. When we arrived, we found that the church was still under construction. The walls were merely bare brick, and there were plastic sheets where windows should be. Even the “gate to heaven” that traditionally separates Russian Orthodox priests from the congregation was covered with leaves rather than gold. Still, there were paintings of icons on the walls and many people were there to kiss the icons and receive their blessings. There was also a choir of 3-4 nuns who sang hymns with beautiful voices. We stayed for some of the service, then went out to see a special altar. This altar was completely finished; yellow on the outside and light blue on the inside. Inside people left food (mainly bread) and candles in memory of their loved ones.

We wanted to get a guided tour of the whole monastery, but we were told we’d have to wait 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I found out that the history teacher is very religious. She wanted me to meet a priest at the monastery who reportedly is magical, and could help my greatest wish come true. Lena said cynically that I should wish for something impossible. I tried to take the wish more seriously than that. In the end, though, my effort was not necessary. I met the priest, and he started by saying a few words about the monastery and asking if I knew anything about churches like it in America. At that point I wasn’t sure exactly what the affiliation of this monastery was, so I diplomatically said I wasn’t familiar with one exactly but I knew there many Orthodox churches in America aligned with Russia, Armenia, Ukraine and more. The priest then encouraged me to recommend Hincul to other Americans, and offered me a book with pictures. Feeling more generous here than at the museum, I went ahead and paid the 40 lei for the book. Later when I got the book home I realized 98 percent of it was a calendar of religious activities, and 2 percent of it was pictures of the Russian orthodox hierarchy and their meetings with political leaders. Oy. After that lovely experience, we went next door to the gift shop where we were told we’d have to wait yet another 20 minutes for a guided tour. After about 10 minutes of looking around I’d had enough of Hincul. We decided to go back home.

It had been pretty cold at the monastery and we hadn’t stopped for lunch, so it was definitely time to eat and drink something warm. Diana made punch—hot wine with spices. I had come to know and love this treat in Germany (gluhwein) and was happy to have it again at that moment. We had it with soup. After our late lunch/early dinner, Lena and I played “hot and cold” with Sandu, hiding things and helping him find them by saying “cold, warm, hot” (reci, cald, fierbinte). That was fun, but afterwards it was necessary (for Lena and me) to take a nap.

Later in the evening, Lena and I went out to the Cinema Club, an English language movie club. “Theater” is too strong a word. It feels like a private screening room with maybe 18 large leather seats, small tables for beer and other drinks, and a large screen with a projector. The movies were projected onto the screen using a computer. Lena assured me the club shows the movies legally.

The movie we saw was “Anchorman”. I think in the States this movie got mediocre reviews, or it seemed mediocre in the ads to me. But I have to say it was pretty funny. One of the funniest parts of the movie was when a Steve Carrell’s character, who had the IQ of a lamppost, was said to have become a top political adviser to President Bush. The saddest part of the movie was afterwards when Lena asked me, “Are moviemakers in America really allowed to say things like that about the President?”

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