Foaie verde, cinci chiperi, eu am fost la Cantemir

Amidst travelling home to England, spending Christmas with my family, and looking for work in the New Year, this blog has sadly not taken priority. However, since I’m determined to finish documenting my travels, I will write as best as my memory can serve me, and hope that being back in England and not Moldova does not taint my narrative. Enjoy!

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We set off under clear skies with the low, glaring winter sun giving just a glimpse of warmth, the ubiquitous mud now dry as we trundle over the path from the house and join the main road of the village. Our driver continually swerves to avoid the worst parts of the road, and then lingers on the wrong side to give way to a passing car. A strange concept, but on Moldovan roads the 'normal' perceptions of travel are slightly skewed, as is confirmed when I see a couple pass in a small open carriage, pulled by a donkey. As we near Cantemir, with the open fields stretching wide beside us, I see some men planting an orchard, one leaning on his spade and surveying the vineyard next to him, the Moldovan earth is likely all he knows, and all he has to know. Descending a winding hillside road I take in a panorama of Cantemir, capital of the region of the same name. The town is a sprawling blend of familiar coloured houses, small apartments blocks and grey, vacant factories, with one major road snaking through the middle.

We park and enter the market, the entrance of which has a bold iron sign stating ‘Commercial Centre’, but what’s inside is a simple but nonetheless charming collection of grocery and household stores.

The layout reminds me of my near-native Newton Heath market, but with more stalls and permanent buildings, and less pirated DVDs and counterfeit trainers. Typically dressed ‘babushkas’, laden with bulging plastic bags, hustle through the narrow paths between stalls, and my taking photos puzzles some of them, since I’m hardly in a tourist spot. My girlfriend even overhears one worried stall owner warn the vendor near her that I could be carrying out an inspection for the government. One man stares at me curiously at the end of an alley, and when I pass him he blurts out, in a thick Eastern European accent: “Merry Christmas, Santa Claus”, I smile acknowledging his seasonal greetings despite it being November, but don’t have the heart to tell him that, in fact, I’m not Saint Nicholas.

Aside from the traditional market atmosphere, there is the confusing image of a second hand stall with a flashing disco light hanging above its door as pulsing rave music blares out of a speaker nearby, an obscure sight within the mundane marketplace. Another store sells sweets and confectionary, next to the till is a small piece of history in the form of a pair of old Soviet-era scales that look like something you’d see used to measure out rations in war-plagued Russia. Sparrows dart between the varied and rustic fruit and vegetable stalls, stopping to pick up scraps beside women selling sunflower seeds from huge sacks.

Before leaving the market we wait in line to buy half a dozen plăcintă, and the queueing is worth it for the oven-fresh snacks, warming our hands as they steam away in the chilly piaţă air. A surreal break follows in a bar where the ceiling is made of chipping board, as we drink instant coffee while most other punters wield full tankards of beer, ‘Mr. Bombastic’ by Shaggy plays, and the Kafkaesque painting is complete.

Dismayed, we visit a more swanky bar, which is stylish enough to have a billiard room downstairs, and even the toilet signs shows a sense of humour.

Finally, we pick up my girlfriend’s sister from her high school, before visiting the war memorial nearby, erected in memory of the Moldovans who lost their lives in the in the Transnistria conflict with Russia.

And lastly, the quickest way to clean your sole: a Jesus floor mat!

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Mulțumesc, grazie and thank you!

Drum Bun

In terms of travelling, the exploration of more obscure, rural and out-of-the-way countries has always appealed to me more than any other urban counterpart. Although admittedly a modern European city has its perks, there comes a time when one wishes to withdraw from the chaos. After living in Verona since June, and for a year during my Erasmus studies before that, I decided to go with my girlfriend to her motherland, Moldova, a small banana shaped country in Eastern Europe. Officially the poorest country in Europe, and an ex-Soviet state, it gained its independence as a republic in 1991, and continues to be an intriguing blend of both Romanian and Russian culture. The language of the nation itself, essentially a dialect of Romanian that uses many Russian loan words, reflects its liminal position between Europe’s perceived East/West border.

I have decided to create a blog to document my travels here, some posts may be of a single day, as this first entry will be, others will span between days on a certain topic. I hope the reader will enjoy hearing about my experience, and be encouraged to stray off the beaten path once in a while, and find the gems the world has to offer.

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Flying from Bergamo airport in Italy, we landed in Chisinau at noon, met with a grey drizzle and overcast sky. The airport was a relatively small building, with some new areas under construction. Tools, sand and other building equipment all lay strewn across the floor metres away from where we enter passport control. The queue begins, and as in many continental European countries the line is most un-English. Four clumps of people stand separately awaiting the passport checks, while a retro 80s synth jingle plays over the PA every time an announcement is made. Once at the front of the queue my girlfriend explains to the passport checker that I am English and do not speak Moldovan well, although that is only a half truth, as my spoken Moldovan is poor, but I understand easily enough. As with many people in tourism and travel, the checker states she speaks English anyway, and wishes me a good day, while I erroneously respond ‘grazie’ still stuck with my Italian manners. I pass the security border into Moldova, where our lift is waiting for us.

My girlfriend’s mother greets us, while our driver is a neighbour of hers, driving a bottle green Volkswagen campervan. It is snug inside, with a patterned cover lay over the back seats. My comfort, however, soon begins to fade, as the quality of road surfacing becomes apparent. Bumps, cracks, holes and humps all pepper the road in front, and I am discouraged when my girlfriend tells me the roads around the capital are better than anywhere else. We skirt around the city in order to avoid the traffic, with a half an hour detour taking us onto a road heading south, towards the district of Cantemir, named after the twice prince of Moldova Dimitrie Cantemir. The two hour journey ahead of us is filled with me glancing left then right, and then left again to capture all the details I now recount. The vehicles sharing the road with us are a mixture of sports cars, military style trucks, vans and stylish soviet throwbacks. I begin to note more people at the road side, one man stands by his car, a fish for sale hooked onto his open boot. At a crossroads, another man waves us on, as we slow to avoid spooking his horse, while he sits in his carriage, with an open wagon in tow, filled to the top with apples. Further on, dips in the road become small lakes, the constant rain we’ve had since landing preventing me taking any quality photos, with the windows steamy and dashed with water. Some women stand near artfully painted wooden bus stops, hitch-hiking, we slow so as not to drench them with the muddy mocha puddles beside them. As we pass through small villages and towns, I see a recurring image of simplistic breeze-block outhouses, brightly coloured roofs, corrugate-covered garages and green wooden fences. Yet, in between all these humble habitations, I notice the empty shells of decrepit buildings, some small houses, the owners now gone or their homes forgotten, while others are large, vacant spaces, that I imagine to have been hotels, factories or hospitals. Away from civilisation, the view is often an endless, haunting skyline of fields, some verdant and lush others brown and tilled, now bare in the coming winter.

Half way through our journey we stop in a bar that doubles as a youth hostel, the building is modest and well-built, like many things here. We order coffee and some plăcintă cu brânză, a kind of Moldovan pastry filled with cheese (in this case), potato or cabbage, not too dissimilar to English pasties. When the coffee comes, I am confronted by a cup of water with what appears to be cement floating on the surface. The rest of our party laugh at my surprise and tell me here in Moldova, instant coffees are more common to be served, and a mix-it-yourself philosophy is encouraged, in line with the whole country’s DIY prevalence. The plăcintă goes down well with everyone, especially my girlfriend and I, who have not eaten since seven in the morning, with it now being past one. As we approach the bar to pay, I glance at the menu, and am confused again about how to convert the inflated currency of the Moldovan leu (meaning lion), with the plăcintă costing 24 leu, an equilavent of just over 1€. Also on the menu I note two typical Moldovan dishes, both with sovietic origins, borsh (a beetroot based soup) and zeamă (a type of chicken and noodle broth.)

Amongst the unassuming but attractive houses, other areas are more like a bomb site, with the earth seemingly ruptured, remnants of a farmhouse scattered in a field, now deserted. As we progress on the road, overtaking slower vehicles like tractors is a hazard. With the sloppily laid tarmac on the street ending abruptly, what would be a shoulder lane is just a dirty sidewalk, with tufts of grass giving us more bumps as we slug on ahead in our VW, which sometimes rattles as we go up hills. Every village we pass has an image or statue of Christ’s crucifixion at every corner, almost a statement of religious strength in opposition to the harsh secular measures of the old Soviet government.

The last stretch of the journey is a pot-holed mess, and our driver dodges and weaves in every part of the road to avoid the holes, like some arcade game. We stop on the street to my girlfriend’s family home, our driver reluctant to go further on a street now turned from tarmac to mud. He wheels away, slipping through the dirt, and we walk the rest of the journey on foot.