Moldova Days 1 and 2

To get to Moldova we took a 9 hour overnight bus from Brasov to Chisinau. The bus was filled with students heading home for Easter which is like Christmas here. We arrived at our hostel at about 6am and promptly went to sleep. Katie got in to Chisinau at 10am and we left soon after to see the Chisinau sites. Katie acted as tour guide showing us the two parks, some flower vendors, the cathedral, Chisinau's Arc de Triomphe, and the central market. This took a mere two hours. Chisinau is actually a nicely maintained city, but there isn't much to see.

The next morning we headed to Katie's town of Hînceşti (pronounced Hinchesht) via bus. It's a pretty quick 30 minute ride from Chisinau through farm land. Katie's host family house is in a nice neighborhood. The houses are fairly close together, all with good sized but not large yards with low fences. Each yard contains some mix of chickens, geese, ducks, and goats. Many families have guard dogs that live outside chained to dog houses. We took a quick tour of Katie's house (click here for a video tour).

We then set out to see the sites of Hînceşti. We ran into these puppies in the grass. We then crossed a large field and headed up hill to where Katie works. We saw a couple churches and visited her office. Her office is too small for one person, but they somehow fit three of them in there. She also does not have internet access in her office. From there we headed to the park where Katie recently organized 500 school children to clean up the park! There is a nice lake and some cabanas to picnic in.

After the park we headed to the monument where we walked down the steps to the main street. We then ate at a very awkward restaurant that mainly hosts weddings. We ordered deviled eggs and had some really bad moldovan wine. We then headed to a pizza place and had some pizza with mayo (very popular there). We then saw a large flock of sheep crossing the main road!

We headed back to Katie's to get a tour of her house's yard, including her host dad's bee hives. Her host dad let me hold one of their dozen or so chickens. He then showed us Dasha's puppies. Katie's host dad also gave us a tour of their basement. There are tons of jarred foods (we had some great tomato juice in the morning) and he makes his own alcohol which is very good. We tried his red wine, white wine, cognac, fake cognac, sour cherry liquor, and sloe gin which is made out of sloe berry.

Some random facts:

• In Moldova is it very important to clean up for Easter, so the entire town was being re-painted and Katie's host family was at work getting their own house ready.
• Wells are considered sacred and many people's wells are decorated with this cut metal.