Back to Soviet days: Moldova
Saturday, September 6th, 2008Coming in at the number one most random country I have visited, Moldova is about as far off the beaten track you can go in Europe and lives up to its (non) reputation of a strange, soviet country with no tourists. Actually not no tourists, there were 2 others in the ‘hostel’ I was staying at, which was really an old couples front room with a few bunk beds in it.
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
Our train pulled up to the capital, Chisinau around 9am and I found this dutch backpacker wandering around looking lost. He didn’t have a hostel or anything so followed me as we walked through town to get to this place. We dumped our bags and grabbed some cheap breakfast at a cafe/bar around the corner which amazingly has an english translation on the menu, therefore becoming my new favourite place in the city. I have mentioned before that in Eastern Europe girls tend to dress a bit more….umm…’nice’, well you could say that they dress a lot like prostitutes….and well, Chisinau was a whole new level, at already by 10am there were girls in tiny dresses and high heels wandering the streets.
Chisinau isn’t exactly bursting with tourist sights, actually there is basically no tourism industry at all because there are no tourists. People are really unfriendly and not at all interested in helping you, so doing anything is difficult. Me and dutch #4 (again…forgot the guys name, I am terrible) decided we would try to hire a car for the following day to get out to the country side as it sounded like it would be cheap. We followed the LP map to where there supposedly was a car hire but no, nothing there, so we walked across town to find a couple of places which had no cars left as apparently they were all rented out (to all the imaginary tourists I guess). Seeing as it had taken most of the day to actually get this far we gave up on the car idea and began a bar crawl back towards the hostel stopped on route at lots of bars and drinking beer and liquored coffee…yum.
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
The town is actually quite nice, you can tell it is poorer than a lot of places in Europe, as a lot more homeless on the streets and things. But the main road is nice, a big wide boulevard with shops, 2 big parks with of course lots of fountains in them. It really is just a bit strange though and feels like you are living in 1992, kind of like going back in time, although with cell phones…lots of cell phones and the unfortunately named ‘Moldcell’
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
By 8pm after a few too many beers and bottles of wine (Moldova has amazingly good and cheap wine, thats there one big thing) I very sleepy, we headed back to the hostel and picked up the english guy who was staying there and headed out to dinner on a street side cafe where we got followed by an old drunk lady with very little clothing on who wouldn’t leave us alone and kept stroking the guys arms (I still think she was a prostitute but who knows) eventually she passes out on the ground but some how gets hold of more alcohol and we keep having to switch tables to get away from her. Food was pretty terrible, I had some sort of salad drowned in mayo. Although Chisinau is a huge party town I was shattered and we headed back to the hostel after stopping at a bar.
The next day the english took off and dutch#4 went for the day to visit Trandsinester, the country that doesn’t exist, they have tried to separate from Moldova but no-one will recognize them, Russia gives them money and they are still very much communist with their own border guards and currency. Basically the fun of going is the crazy border situation to try and get away with not paying too much bribe money. I figured I have had enough border fun in the Middle East so gave it the chop to spend the day catching up on internet stuff and sitting in nice cafes. I did try to visit a museum but it was closed that day. By the evening I was alone in the hostel with no book to read, I went for a bit of a wander around the town then headed back to bed. There are some great wineries close to the city but to get to them for the day is just so difficult with transport and the most unhelpful people ever. So I actually would like to come back and do some tours around these amazing wineries which have huge underground networks of cellars. To make up for not visiting I brought a couple of bottles which are only about 2 euros each, so am saving them till I meet up with the boys.
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
An amazingly beautiful church we stumbled upon
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| From travels 08 blogphotos |
Soviet style buildings
Waking up the next morning I was a bit like what the hell am I doing in this country, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and not excited about the 20hour train journey ahead of me (which the LP said was only 8hours!). I packed my bag and found it was pouring with rain outside. I went to the supermarket with spectacularly rude staff and managed to get some food before trying to change the last of my money and having the guy try to rip me off, untill I asked for a receipt and then he decided to actually give me the rest of my money. Then I tried to catch a tram to the train station which ended up in the middle of nowhere with the ticket guy ignoring me and my attempts at asking wehre the train station was. At one point I tried to get off so I could go back into town but he was like “no no no, train, da” so I stayed on to find myself in some bus park in the middle of nowhere and the ticket guy just took off and left me there! I was worried about issing the train which only leaves every second day and stranded in the middle of nowhere with people literally just ignoring me. Eventually someone was nice and took me to where I could get a taxi and I made it to the station where I got my ticket (cheaper than I thought) brought more junk food for the train and got on in time for he long journey to the Ukraine. A very frustrating morning and I was well over it and wanting to get out of this crazy country! thats what happens when you get ‘off the beaten track’ its just frustrating! haha…but good experience.
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