The Road Less Traveled

My bus arrived in Khmelnytsky half an hour late. It was freezing cold and the wind was whipping the snow around. I made the mistake of getting off at the first stop in the front of the station; I had to drag my big bag up a slick ramp into the bus station building, then lug it down stairs to get to Tina and Victor, who were waiting for me at the actual platform.

We hugged and cried and piled into a taxi back to Tina’s flat. I felt like Santa Claus with my pack of gifts: 1) a gallon of Moldovan wine from Grigore; 2) a box of Moldovan chocolates from Grigore; 3) Moldovan cognac; 4) two big jars of peanut butter; 5) two old videos and a tape of American TV shows; and 6) art supplies for Tina and her students.

We sat in the cozy warmth of Tina’s apartment eating chocolates, drinking cognac and catching up on old times. At about 3 in the afternoon, we bundled up and walked to the local bazaar so Tina could do some grocery shopping before things closed down. Tina introduced me to a friend of hers who sells condiments, and I bought some hot Russian mustard from him.

Next, we went to a café in the bazaar which is run by Johnny and Eka, a couple from Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the American state). I love Georgian food and was hoping they would have hachipuri (a kind of cheesy pizza), but they don’t serve it there. Instead, we had an excellent spicy Georgian soup and a common Ukrainian food called chebureki. Chebureki is a large piece of dough that is filled with meat and then fried. As with most things in Ukraine, it is diet unfriendly but absolutely delicious.

While we were eating, Johnny sat down with us. He opened a bottle of vodka and a box of apple juice. Eka brought us a plate of oranges and persimmons. Tina unfortunately hates persimmons, and Victor wasn’t interested either. It fell on me to be polite and try one. It was like biting into a mushy, slightly sweet tomato. Yuck. I did my best to finish one, but next time I will definitely turn it down.

Anyway, we had a good time talking and drinking. Johnny sang some traditional Georgian songs. He has a beautiful voice. When it was time to leave, Eka refused to take our money. Tina said Eka and Johnny never charge them money. I was pleasantly stunned by that kind of friendship and generosity. I had to do something to repay that kindness, so I gave Eka a postcard I had with me from Florida.

Grigore and Lena took me to the train station in Chisinau and put me on the overnight train. Somehow I lucked out—I had the entire kupe’ (a 4-bed compartment) to myself.

I was a little more nervous about this trip than past trips into Ukraine because it was my first time crossing the border into Ukraine under Ukraine’s new “visa free regime” for Americans. I knew someone who had flown to Kyiv and entered the country without a visa with no problem, but I’d heard stories about train crossings between Azerbaijan and Georgia. It was supposed to be possible to get a visa on the spot, but the person ended up having to pay a bribe to the border police above and beyond that in order to cross the border. One person refused to pay and held up the train for seven hours as a result. Kashmar! (What a nightmare!)

Fortunately, the only surprise on my trip across the border was a visit from the Transdinistrian border police; for the first time in my travels, they collected a 6-lei (50 U.S. cent) border-crossing fee. Transdnistria is an impoverished sliver of land between the Dnister River and the Ukrainian border. It was part of Moldova until 1992, when it started a war with Moldova and created its own border and its own flag. It’s also considered a good place to store or smuggle guns and other illegal goods. Eventually, it wants to be a part of the Russian Federation. I doubt that is going to happen.

In the morning, I ordered tea from the providnik (train car conductor). To me there is something poetic about sitting on a Ukrainian train, listening to the clickety-clack of the wheels on the tracks, looking out the window at the miles of snowy plains I’m passing, and drinking tea in a tall glass with a silver glassholder.

I arrived in Vinnitsya at 9:30 a.m. Normally I would have gotten off an hour and a half earlier in Zhmerinka, an east-west north-south train junction. As Grigore says jokingly, “All roads don’t lead to Rome. They lead to Zhmerinka.” However, when I checked the train times online, there was no connection from my overnight train to another train going to Khmelnytsky. My friend Tina told me there are elektrichkas (regional trains that run on electricity) that go between Zhmerinka and Khmelnytsky, but no one knew the schedule and I didn’t want to be stuck sitting in Zhmerinka for hours on end. I knew in Vinnitsya I could catch a taxi to the bus station and then catch a bus to Khmelnystky; they run at pretty regular intervals and only take two hours.

When I got off the train in Vinnitsya, I was surprised there were no taxi drivers waiting on the platform. In the past they were always there when you didn’t need them. Now that I was hauling a 50-pound bag of winter clothes, teaching materials, and gifts for friends, they were nowhere to be found. I ended up lugging the big bag down the stairs to the underground platform passage and back upstairs again to the exit. Not only did no one offer to help me, one man in passing said, “you should use the ramps”. There are special polished concrete ramps for carts with wheels, but I could not figure out how to get and keep my bag and myself on it.

Finally, at the train station exit, I found a taxi driver willing to take me across town to the bus station. I got really lucky—he took me to directly to the bus platform, and the bus took off about 5 minutes after I got on it. I was able to buy my ticket directly on the bus; I didn’t have to go to the kassa and get one.

About 40 minutes into the journey, I felt a need to go to the bathroom. There are no bathrooms on Ukrainian buses. I tried to ignore it, even when we stopped for another 20 minutes 50 yards from a gas station while the driver and assistant fixed something that was wrong with the bus engine. After we started moving again, I asked when we could stop for a bathroom break. They said not for another half an hour. After another 15 minutes, I said, “could we stop here?” He said, “5 more minutes.” Of course, In Ukraine, “5 more minutes” translates into American English as anywhere between 5 minutes and 2 hours. I felt like an idiot with my constant asking and tapping my feet like a three year old. I imagined the other passengers on the bus were getting impression that foreigners don’t know how to hold their pee. I asked myself, what happened to the girl who used to pride herself on her “biological control” in Ukraine? The girl who once took a 15-hour train ride from Kharkiv to Odessa and didn’t use the bathroom once?

When the bus finally pulled into a town bus station, I walked as fast as I could to the bus station outhouse. It was a dirty, concrete hole in the floor with no lights and no door (there was a wall for privacy from the rest of the station). Snow flurries were drifting in. On my normal bathroom rating scale, it would have received zero stars, but at that moment it was the best bathroom I’d seen in my life.

A friend of mine from my days in Ukraine who now lives in Carlsbad was kind enough to invite me to her home for the weekend.

My plan was to stop on the way in Temecula to get money (there’s a branch of my bank there) and to stop at In-n-Out, the best fast food hamburger in the country.  (If you think I’m exaggerating, talk to someone who grew up in California and then moved back East—9 times out of 10 they’ll tell you the only thing they miss is In-n- Out Burger.)

Anyway, as usual the best laid plans of mice and myself often go awry.  The merge of the 215 and 15 South brought the freeway speed from 85 to 0 in 10 seconds.  Thank God my ABS (Angel Braking System) was working.  After about 10 minutes of waiting in the exit lane for Winchester Road in Temecula and realizing I’d only gone half a mile while cars in the far lanes were going 40-50 miles an hour, I decided even In-n-Out wasn’t worth waiting that long for.  I thought I’d get off at the next exit (Rancho California), but alas, that too was a long line of cars that weren’t moving too quickly. 

It wasn’t until after I passed Rancho California that I realized why these two exits were so popular:  they were the last signs of civilization on I-15 for a good 15-20 miles.  Not that I minded the scenery—the rolling hills were green from recent rains and even the valleys shone brightly in the sunlight.  By the time I got to 78 West, though, I was ready to eat pretty much anything.  I had a problem finding a place to stop: each time I got close to an exit it seemed there was no place to eat, so I’d pass the exit.  Then as I was passing the exit I would see places to eat. 

This went on for several miles until I finally saw Panera Bread just before I got off at Vista Village Drive in Vista. Here’s where things got even odder:  I couldn’t find a place to park in the shopping center.  It was adjacent to the movie theater, and I’m guessing that many people were out seeing movies on a rainy Saturday afternoon. 

The funny thing about my life is that just when I think everything is going wrong for me, I realize that all of those wrong turns were just leading me to a new and unique right.  As I came out of the shopping center, I turned left and ended up driving into the heart of Vista Village (actually Main Street, parallel to Vista Village Dr. and accessible from Santa Fe Avenue).  It looked like a group of shops that were built in the 1950s. It was unexpectedly scenic. 

There was an Italian deli that looked okay, so I stopped and parked at the first space up the street I could find. I stopped at a bank for money, and then I walked into Piancone Bakery and Deli.  Looking at the jars of oil, bags of pasta, rows of Old World Bread, and sheets of cakes on the shelves, I knew I was in a real Italian deli.  For $7.99 I had a large sub sandwich on a ciabatta, a small cucumber salad, and Italian mineral water.  I don’t think I’ve had deli meat that good since I bought prosciutto at the airport in Rome.  The olive spread on the bread was a nice touch too, and I don’t usually like olives.  I didn’t have room for a cannoli (an Italian rolled dessert filled with a special sweet ricotta cheese concoction), but I enjoyed a large sugar cookie with green sprinkles for another 65 cents.  I was a little bit jealous of the locals who could come in there regularly for birthday cakes and catered meals.

15 minutes later I arrived in Carlsbad.  The rest of the day my friend and I hung out at her house drinking (tea and later wine), watching movies, eating homemade Indian food, and chatting. 
Sunday we did two things of note to travelers to Carlsbad. For lunch, we went to Lotus (on Pio Pico near Carlsbad Village Drive), a Thai restaurant voted the best Thai restaurant in Carlsbad. The pad thai was pretty good, but I really liked the fact that on Sunday I was able to get a good lunch special–shrimp pad thai, two fried won-ton (similar to small samosas), two tiny spring rolls, a small salad, and tom yum gam soup for $8.95.   After lunch, we drove down Carlsbad Village Drive through Carlsbad Village. We drove past Mariah’s Restaurant where we’d gone once before for brunch; they have over 300 varieties of omlettes. We drove to Ocean Street and then turned left to find parking. Once we did, we took a nice walk along the beach, talking about the costs of home prices and the possible eating disorders of the skinny runners on the walking path.

The capper of the day was on the drive back from the beach. While stopped at a red light, a man motioned to us to roll down our window.  My friend did and he shouted out, “I saw the In-n-Out Burger bumper sticker on your car. Do you know where I can find one around here?”
 

This was a great weekend. I left work at 2:00 p.m., stopped in my hometown for cheap gas and Auto Club maps, and head north on I-5.  I was lucky to be heading north; the traffic on I-5 South was abysmal.  I was stunned to see snow on the hills next to me as I went over “The Grapevine”.  I arrived at my aunt’s house in San Francisco around 10:30 p.m., and was stunned again to see that gas in San Francisco was cheaper than in L.A. 
 
 
The next morning, I headed out to North Beach (the traditional Italian neigbhorhood), where I met my friend Greg and his fiancee for breakfast.  It was great having such an up-close view of the Transamerica building as I walked towards our meeting point (I believe I was standing on Stockton, but I can’t be 100 percent sure). 
 
 
Greg and Cynthia had wanted to take me to Mama’s, a San Francisco breakfast institution. However, it was crowded and noisy and had a long wait as usual, so we ate down the street instead at Café Divine.  I thought it was truly a divine choice. Inside it felt like a small European café, with a large marble bar and small dark wooden tables. The regular coffee was excellent, as was the asparagus and red pepper quiche.  Cynthia and Greg were equally happy with their choices.
 
 
After lunch, I had planned to meet my aunt and cousin in Chinatown. However, it started to pour rain at their house and wouldn’t let up.  That didn’t seem like good weather for them to be waiting outside for a bus, so I drove back to their house. I have to say that one needs a sense of adventure to drive in San Francisco as a tourist.  There are many one way streets, roads that curve in weird ways, roads that are interrrupted by trolleys and cable cars and buses and parks and large buildings, frighteningly steep hills, and prohibitions from turning left (usually when you need to most).
 
 
Despite these obstacles, I made it home. The rain had lightened up, so from there we drove to 25^th and Geary Street to check out the Russian shops.  We didn’t bother going into the church, but I enjoyed seeing the golden onion domes.
 
 
The first store we walked in seemed to have products mainly from Poland (or at least, the language looked like Polish to me).  Nothing captured my eye here, so we walked on down to 23^rd and Geary where I found a real gem of a place: Regina gift shop. It was run by an older couple; I asked in Russian and the man said he had immigrated from Kyiv, Ukraine.  My cousin fell in love with a stuffed penguin doll; it wasn’t traditional but not uncommon in Ukraine either so I bought it for her. I also bought a card that said “Shana Tova”  (New Year) with Cyrillic characters written to look like Hebrew ones. 
 
 
I thought speaking Russian would help us get a discount on the bigger items, but actually they said they were giving us a discount because we were Jewish. The woman sold me a small set of matroshkas at a 40 percent discount.  My aunt bought a beautiful set of stones from Siberia at a 30 percent discount. They were lavender with a white marbled pattern. The owner said these stones used to be in the rivers of Siberia; now they cannot be found there. He said people by them at his store and take them back to Russia.
 
 
We said our goodbyes and went on to two Russian supermarkets.  The more popular one seemed to be New World Market; the line to pay for groceries in that place was reminiscent of the old bread lines in Communist Russia.  The place had a great collection of foods from around the Soviet Union as well as prepared foods I remembered such as: Korean-style carrots, Chicken Kiev, eggplant salads, and sausauges that have more fat than meat in them. We had no place to sit and eat the prepared foods, so I settled for a small bag of “Krasnaya Oktsabriya” (Red October) chocolates to bring back to my colleagues. 
 
 
By the time we left New World Market, we were all pretty hungry.  My aunt and cousin had a hankering for Korean food (they spent a month there a few years ago visiting friends), and I too had fond memories of Korean food from my 6 months in Korea, so we drove down to 11^th and Geary streets to eat at a Korean restaurant they knew. It was really cold outside so I ordered a spicy tofu soup to warm me up. It turned out that didn’t work half as well as the small charcoal barbecue on our table used to prepare my aunt and cousin’s order of bulgogi (marinated beef).  Although in Korea bulgogi is usually a cook-it-yourself meal, the waitress here took on the task of cooking the meat and cutting into pieces with scissors (Koreans do not use knives at the table).  Eventually my aunt said she could take care of that herself. 
 
 
After the meat was cooked, my aunt offered me some of the meat, which I wrapped up in a lettuce leaf with slightly spicy red sauce, steamed sticky rice, and garlic.  If it weren’t for the rice, Korean food could be the original low-carb diet.  I also chowed down on many of the “side dishes” served in small round white bowls for the whole table:  spicy pickled cucumbers, yellow radishes, kimchi (pickled cabbage), and bean sprouts.  Perhaps because the waitress heard us talking about our experiences in Korea and our knowledge of Korean words and food, she brought us a free plate of glass noodles with meat. Yum! 
 
 
By the time we walked out of there, we were pretty stuffed.  We stopped next door at the Seoul Market, where I bought some cheap Japanese curry sauce. I thought about buying Yu Ja Cha (citron tea), the Korean answer to chicken soup, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend $6 on a jar of tea I’d probably never drink often enough to justify the cost. 
 
 
The next day I planned once again to go to Chinatown, but I got distracted by the signs for Japan Town which I’d never seen before. I had fun wandering around the shops, trying new Japanese foods, and buying odds and ends to make my home in CA feel more “Asian”.
 
 
After Japan Town, I drove 5 minutes away to the Jewish Community Center to see my aunt’s store, Dayenu.  “Dayenu” is a Hebrew word which means “It would have been enough.” It’s also the name of a traditional song sung at Passover. I was impressed with the professional appearance of the store, and with my aunt’s good taste in art.  I bought a card and a magnet here. I thought about buying a mazzusah (to put on the door of my home indicating that I’m Jewish); some of them were really lovely.  But I didn’t see one that struck my fancy. 
 
 
After visiting the store, I meandered back to the house via the Presidio, a former Army base which is now a kind of park. I found a part right on the bay that had a beach and a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alacatraz Island. I walked around until it got too cold. Then I started driving part of the 49 Mile Drive along the coast. I saw the ocean at sunset, which shouldn’t impress me being from Southern California, but Southern California beaches don’t have mountains and fir trees.
 
    
After that, I managed to find my way into and out of Golden Gate Park and back to my aunt’s house.  It was only 2 days in San Francisco, but I felt like I had been around the world.

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?”

For the first time since I’d arrived, I was able to sleep later than 6 a.m. In fact, I made it to 10:30. I had a late breakfast, then I went with Grigore to the office to get myself registered. To be honest, it was pretty painless. But I was still pleased when Diana told me that starting next year, this registration will be done on the spot at the airport.

After we got back to the house, Lena and I set out together to do some sightseeing. Our first stop was Magic Pizza, one of my favorite lunchtime and post-work hangouts when I lived in Moldova. Lena had never been there before. She decided to order a pizza with egg on top. I thought that was a little strange but then thought, eh, why not. Fortunately, there was only one egg in the middle of the pizza so I didn’t have to eat too much of it. And either it was well-cooked or it was from a city chicken because so far I have no signs of bird flu.

From Magic Pizza we walked to the museum of ethnography, but it was closed for lunch. We probably could have waited the 10 minutes for it to open again, but I knew there were at least 3 other museums to see. Thus, we moved on to the History Museum. While I kept my mouth shut, Lena convinced the cashier I was a local so I got in for the local price. I remember when I first came to Ukraine how angry I was to hear that there was a “local” price and a “foreign” price for touristy things. Now I’m not so sure it’s such a bad thing for foreigners to pay more. But I went along with Lena’s ruse anyway.

We went upstairs and first saw an exhibition/contest of proposals to build a monument to a general whose name escapes me now. Like Stefan cel Mare, he won two great battles and then lost. But Moldovans feel he still deserves a monument. I have to say I was impressed by the professional appearance of the drawings, sculptures, and models.

The next room we saw was an exhibit of artifacts from wars between the Russians and the Turks. That was interesting—swords and uniforms and battle plans and the like. We started to go to the next room, but were promptly scolded for it by a woman who said we were going through the museum backwards. Sure enough, when we went out the other door we saw arrows pointing us the right way. I thought the woman was just being controlling or picky, but then I came to understand that the intention was for us to start with prehistoric artifacts and move on to later years. Also, by moving in the correct direction it was easier for the workers to figure out when to turn on and off the light in the rooms.

The most interesting of these rooms were the rooms covering the Communist years. Lena was shocked to see a map which indicated that at one time Chisinau had been part of Romania, and Odessa (a very famous Black Sea beach city) had been part of the Republic of Moldova. It’s certainly hard to imagine that arrangement now. Perhaps the saddest exhibition was that of pictures of people who had been deported to Siberia and later killed. There was one picture with a group of children behind barbed wire. The sign in Russian above them said, roughly, “anyone who approaches these children will be shot”.

After leaving that period of darkness, we went downstairs to see a diorama of a WWII battle in Chisinau between the Germans and the Russians. Here too was waiting my punishment for not paying the foreign price. A woman who was a history major was prepared to explain the diorama—for a fee. Lena said 10-15 lei would be appropriate. She offered to speak in Romanian or French. Since I didn’t quite trust my French, I decided to go with Romanian and let Lena translate. The woman went on about the painters of the diorama, how long it took them to paint it, and the optical illusions within the diorama (e.g. the gun on a tank seems to follow you when you walk across the room). There was very little about the battle itself, and that plus the fact that Lena had to translate is why I gave the woman only 10 lei.

The woman said the scene represented a tragic battle in which the Russians liberated the Moldovans from the Germans. I asked why it was tragic, and she said it was because nearly all of the villagers died in the battle. I then asked, if nearly all the villagers died in the battle, why is it said that the Russians liberated them? The woman said, “that’s just what we say.” I told her my president says the same thing about Iraq. She laughed at that. But she laughed even harder when I tried to speak Romanian to her. I tried to tell her I was in Ukraine for two years, and so I speak Russian better than Romanian. The sentence about Ukraine came out okay (eu am fost doi ani din Ucraina). But when I tried to say “I speak Russian” it came out “Eu vorbesc limba ros,ii”. The woman laughed and explained through Lena that this translates back into English as “I speak the red language”. Of course, in one sense this sentence is highly accurate (red being another English word for Communist), but obviously that’s not what I’d intended.

Just as we were leaving, a foreigner from Finland came in who spoke neither Romanian nor French, and Lena was called on to explain the diorama in English once again. I tried to offer Lena 5 lei for all her work but she wouldn’t have it.

From there we went to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. We paid the proper prices and saw some nice icons and other paintings. At one point we saw a chair that had been used by Decebal, one of the founders of the first village of Moldova. Lena wanted to take a picture of me in that chair. I said I’d do one next to it, but really I didn’t think we should be taking photos. Lena said, “aw, they won’t see you.” So I reluctantly turned on my phone to use as a camera. At the precise moment Lena was about to take the picture, my phone beeped with a message. The picture was never taken.

After this museum, we were both tired and it was after 4:30. We decided to take a bus home. I found out that the rules had changed in Chisinau; rutierias (aka maxitaxis aka minibuses) are no longer allowed on Stefan cel Mare; they have to take side streets. I guess the purpose of that is to cut down on traffic through the main thoroughfare. Lena said it makes traveling very difficult. Fortunately we were already on a side street so it was easy to get a rutiera back to the their house.

When we got home, no one was there. Lena decided we should go ahead and start making placintas, traditional Moldovan pies (like a McDonalds apple pie but longer and 100 times better). Lena started looking around the house for the ingredients:
1. Pre-made dough for placintas
2. Oil
3. Apples
4. Sugar
5. Cinammon
6. Tvorog (a kind of soft cheese)
7. Egg
8. Flour

and

9. Feathers

When Lena said “feathers” I thought for sure this was a language error, or some kind of Moldovan English for something else. But sure enough, she pulled out three white bird feathers from one of the utensil drawers. She explained this is the old-fashioned way to spread oil on the placinta dough. She added, “oh, I bet now you’re gonna write home and tell everyone that Moldovans use feathers when they cook.” Of course she was right.

We started by peeling the apples. Well, I should say Lena did 98 percent of the peeling. I can peel when I have a peeler, but using a knife (especially without bloodshed) is quite difficult. Suffice it to say that a lot of the apple was peeled right off into the sink. After the apples were peeled, it was my job to cut the apples into pieces and get the seeds out. The cut apple slices were covered with sugar and cinammon.

Then came the task of dealing with the dough. The dough, which they had bought earlier at the store, came in a roll of two-ply sheets that had to be separated. Separating the sheets without pieces tearing was extremely difficult. Lena kept telling me not to worry even though there were gaping holes in the dough. With the feathers, I spread oil on one layer of dough. Then I had to lay the second layer of dough on top on top of the first and spread oil on that. (I should add here the oil was mixed with water so that it would be lower in fat.) I put some apples on the dough and rolled it up. That part I knew I could do because the procedure was similar to a streudel production I’d been involved in at my mother’s earlier in the year. I transferred the rolled dough to a greased pan, and had to brush oil on top again. Then I had to close the ends up. Again, I’d dealt with the transfer process before, but it seemed more difficult with this wet and flaky dough. Lena said the whole process is longer and even more difficult if you have to make the dough by hand. I certainly wasn’t about to try that. Lena worked on the cheese placintas herself, combining eggs, flour, and cheese by hand into a smooth mixture. As hard as it was to make, in the end the result was deliciously worth it.

After the tour, Boris dropped Sandu off at daycare, dropped Diana off at work, and dropped me off at the house. I went up the street for lunch at a café. I had mamaliga (a semi-soft dish made from cornmeal, similar to Italian polenta) with brinza (Moldovan goat’s cheese) and sour cream and grilled beef, plus a “shopsky” (chopped vegetable) salad. After lunch, I waddled back down the street to the house, where Boris picked me up with Diana and Sandu already in the car to take us to the bowling alley.

When we walked into New York Bowling, I again had the feeling I was seeing Chisinau for the first time. I was sure when I’d seen the place the first time as a resident of Chisinau, I had been impressed. This time the place made me feel like I was almost in America, but not quite. Maybe it was too small or didn’t have enough games. Maybe there weren’t enough people or lanes (I recall maybe 6 lanes at the most, as opposed to 30 lanes in American bowling alleys). It may also have been questions from Diana such as, “why do we need to rent the bowling shoes?” That was a tough one for me to answer. I said it was tradition, then I said something about the wooden floors and the throwing technique.

Neither Diana nor her 5 colleagues who were with us had ever been bowling before. After we all got our shoes on and the front desk entered our names in the computer, the women just started walking up randomly and throwing the balls whatever way they could down the lane. Some were barely even waiting for the machines at the end to clear the pins. They were having fun, but it was total chaos, like some kind of colorful ball-parade-race. Eventually I was able to explain to the ladies that one person gets two turns, and that each person has a name on the board and therefore a time to bowl.

Not being a very good bowler myself, there was not much I could do for them in terms of throwing technique. I gave up on telling them not to put their foot over the line. Nevertheless, everyone managed to knock pins down. Several people even got spares. When one bright woman got a strike I had to explain why she didn’t get a second turn and why this was a good thing. Explaining the scoring system with strikes and spares was even more difficult with our limited Russian and English knowledge but somehow I managed to get it across. In the process I learned the Russian word for pins (kanofky). The most difficult thing of all in my opinion was explaining to Sandu why it was not nice to run up and try to “help” someone throw the ball down the lane.

Despite these little hiccups, the ladies were clearly having a good time. They enjoyed throwing the ball and hitting the pins. They enjoyed watching the different cartoons that came up on the scoring screen after someone bowled. It felt like we all were enjoying a leisurely life in the American way. And it felt good to see that that was possible here.

I left the house with Diana, Sandu, and Boris as close to promptly at 8:30 a.m. as I could manage. We had a tour of the Cricova winery arranged for 9:00 a.m. It seems like an odd time for a winery tour, but the afternoon tours were all booked and waiting until next week seemed like a bad idea; neither Diana nor I knew what our schedule would look like.

We arrived 5 minutes before 9 at the entrance gate, and of course we were told to wait 5 minutes. Then we drove into a tunnel and picked up our tour guide, Alexander. I have to say his English was excellent. He started by explaining that the Cricova wine cellars are a small underground city. Each street is named after the variety of wine on the street (e.g., Strada Cabernet). The streets run for 120 kilometers, which is why the tour is done by car, not on foot. He joked that people who think Moldova is a small country should be told that it’s really a country built on two levels. I thought that was cute.

Although I’ve been to more than one winery in my life, I learned a lot about wine on this tour. On the tour, we saw wine barrels ranging from 220 liters to over 6000 liters. Alexander explained that each barrel was made of wood and built by hand. Because of this, the volume can vary slightly from barrel to barrel. Each barrel is weighed and marked with the exact number of liters inside. The smaller the barrel, the better the wine.

The tunnels were lined with limestone, which reflected a beautiful green off the headlights of the family Honda as we drove on. Alexander explained that the tunnels were maintained at constant temperature of 12-14 degrees C (about 50 degrees Fahrenheit) and 98 percent humidity. This “microclimate” is considered the perfect conditions for keeping wine.

Our next stop was the champagne room. I didn’t take a picture of the champagne bottling apparatus because it looked a little rusty, and the room it was in had concrete floors and tiled walls like a large bathroom or school gym. I didn’t want to scare anyone off from drinking Cricova champagne.

The champagne storage room was quite interesting. The bottles were not labeled but were capped with regular bottlecaps and placed in large wooden holders. Alexander explained that part of the ageing process involves turning the bottle clockwise and tilting the bottle at different angles over a period of days. The bottom of each bottle is marked with a white line to indicate its position (i.e., so the person turning it knows when and how much to turn the bottle). There is a picture of this in my photos folder. We also saw a machine that had been used in an experiment to turn the bottles automatically, but Alexander said the final product was not as good as the hand-turned product. Thus, I didn’t bother taking a picture of it.

The purpose of all the turning, we learned, was to sift the sediment away from the champagne. Once the sediment is sifted to the end of the bottle, the end is frozen in liquid nitrogen. When the bottle is opened in a special metal machine, the pressure forces the icy block of sediment out of the bottle “like a bullet”. The bottle is then capped with a Portuguese cork.

The final part of our tour was the private collection. We saw wines from around the world, including: a rare 1902 bottle from Jerusalem, European wines taken by the Soviets from Herman Goerring’s collection, and a wine donated by the current Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin. Other wines were grouped into berths rented by collectors. We saw names of some of the renters but didn’t recognize any of them. Diana assumed that they were new Russians with lots and lots of money.

When we booked the tour, I had decided not to reserve a wine tasting for a couple of reasons. One, tasting wine at 10:00 a.m. didn’t seem like a good idea, especially since we would be bowling later that afternoon. Two, we had already paid 200 lei (about $15) per person for the tour; I thought it was ridiculous to spend an extra 150 lei per person for a tasting. After seeing all the wine and the tasting rooms though, I was a little sorry I’d made this choice.

Although we didn’t do the tasting, we had a chance to see the different tasting rooms. Each had fancy glasses and snacks on the table. It looked like women were preparing more snacks to go with the wine as well. Each room was designed with a particular theme in mind; three left an impression on me. One was the “grand room” which was designed to look like a village room for entertaining. There was a wooden relief on the wall of a Moldovan folk wedding scene. The second was “Under the Sea”, which had a large anchor in the middle covered in mosaic tile and a carving of Poseidon on the wall. The walls were round and a beautiful glittery sea green and brown. The final room, which we had our picture taken in, was the presidential room. It had a long table of red chairs where presidents from other countries had sat before us. Alexander pointed out that the acoustics of the room were such that a person talking at one end of the table can hear someone at the other end, even though there are maybe 30 chairs in between. I thought that was impressive. It reminded me of the area of the Old Capitol building in D.C. with a similar feature. I imagine the Cricova variant has the same eavesdropping purposes.

I woke up early (jet lag) and had breakfast with Grigore. I can’t imagine myself eating cold bread and cheese in for breakfast in America and being happy with it, but in Moldova it just seemed right. The homemade red blackberry jam was nice too. Lena went to school early to take a test. I checked my email on the family’s home computer. I had forgotten how slow the Internet can be in Moldova.

After emailing, I ventured out onto Strada Ion Creanga (John Creanga Street). Although I remembered the places I wanted to go to—the bookstore with the money exchange, the bazaar, perhaps a restaurant on the same street—in many ways I felt I was seeing Chisinau again for the first time. And sadly, my second first impression was not as positive. The cars and marshrutkas were half-covered with a thick layer dirt. It was slightly sunny but still the sky seemed bleak compared with golden California sunshine. The people looked more hardened and poorer than before.

The trend continued in the evening. When Lena and I went to the market to buy bread and water, I realized I had forgotten how dark the city is at night. In the backyard walking out to the front gate, I felt I could move only by instinct. Plus, inflation in Moldova is terrible. The exchange rate wasn’t too bad (12.83 lei equaled 1 U.S. dollar), but I paid 3 lei for a bottle of water. Hadn’t it been 2 lei the year before? Thank God after being outside in the real world of Chisinau I could come back to the family sanctuary, home of blini with cherries and soup and warmth.

The flights to D.C., Vienna, and Chisinau were fine. Grigore (the father in the family I had rented a house from when I taught in Moldova) and his daughter Lena were supposed to meet me at the airport, but when I got out of the airport I couldn’t find them anywhere. I ended up calling the house to ask where they were. I thought perhaps there had been some confusion about my arrival. What a miracle it seemed to me that I could bring a cell phone from the States and use it to call with no problems (other than the high cost per minute). Anyway, Lena answered the phone and said her father was at the airport already. Sure enough, after I got off the phone and turned around, I saw him facing the exit for arriving passengers. I called out to him and he gave me a big bear hug. Then he and his driver, Boris, took me back to the house with a stop to pick up Lena and Sandu (Lena’s little brother) at Sandu’s school. I picked up two more hugs there as well.

Diana (the mother in the family) greeted me at their house with yet another big hug. Instantly I felt at home. Diana also spoke English in paragraphs, a very nice change for both us from the time I lived in Moldova. Diana had prepared a feast for my arrival—farshovnaya riba (ground fish). It’s a lot of work to prepare. Even now I’m not sure how they grind the fish and then stuff it back into the skin and arrange it so it looks like a whole fish again. It was delicious. She also prepared markov pa-koresky (Korean style carrots, shredded carrots with spices and vinegar). The family laughed when I told them that I never saw Korean-style carrots in Korea.

I presented the family with some of their favorite American treats as I remembered them: Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea; maple syrup; seasoning for fajitas; and a box of See’s Chocolates. The box of chocolates was wrapped up in holiday wrapping paper. Sandu saw it and wanted to open it, but Diana said “after dinner”. Sandu replied in Romanian, “ah, bomboane” (ah, it’s candy). This was only the beginning of the signs of how clever and impish Sandu could be. Later in the evening when Diana complained that he’d eaten 6 pieces, Sandu said, “No! It was 7!”