Moldovan Road Trip: Soroca

Heading north from Ciorbuciu. Vineyards and orchards were seen all over the country.









Pastoral beautiful.









More fancy tin work









Above the Dnister River, heading to the Tipova cave monastery.





















The Tipova Cave Monastery, dating back to the 10th and 12th century. Carved into limestone cliffs high above the river. Impressive.









Here's a 360 video of the caves and the river with Transdniestr, an autonomous, pro-Soviet region in Moldova between the Dniestr and the Ukraine.


There are bus stops like these all over Moldova, many with beautiful tile mosaics and paintings.


















Soroca! A medieval town in northern Moldova, known for this fortress.









Along the Dneistr in Soroca. One can reach the Ukraine from here by a simple car ferry (click to enlarge).


















We received these local flowers from an older woman that we gave a ride to into town. In Moldova, personal cars function as taxis--people walk from their small village to the main road, and wave you down; if you have room, it's up to you whether you want to stop. We later learned that it is customary to be paid for this service; for us, it was a way to meet people and give back some of the generosity that we'd received.












The Hotel Centro, found by conveniently located signs.









The town was pretty quiet in the offseason. We had a hard time finding a place to eat with the few restaurants we found hosting weddings that Sunday evening. We stumbled upon a hotel bar and asked if they served meals. And met our second Moldovan woman who worked in Italy. She asked if there was anything we didn't eat, and prepared for us a wonderful schnitzel, fried potatoes, and dilly salad.

We found this little gogosi (donut) shop around the corner from our hotel.

We waited until 9:15am until the oil was hot and enjoyed fresh gogosi with a dusting a sugar.









In Soroca, we had another friendly encounter with a Moldovani in the grocery store. He overheard us discussing which yogurt to buy and introduced himself--he was a retired English teacher and relished opportunities to practice. He gave us directions to the Jewish cemetery up on the hill above town. It was a large cemetery with both large, recent gravestones (many of which had porcelain enamel photographs) and older stones that were no longer legible. We wandered around , looking at pictures and names; to find a Matzevahman would have been unbelievable, we were really there to pay our respects.

Moldovan Road Trip: Cioburciu

Picked up our Dacia Logan at noon on Saturday and headed southeast. We wanted to explore the south of Moldova because of its Turkish influence--not knowing at all where Lesley's Zaida's came from, his dark features were enough for us to explore this region. We were excited to explore the country by car. We love renting cars to experience a place, and the size of Moldova is ideal for this--it could be traversed in a day and we gave ourselves three nights.









Before you are even out of the city limits, the agriculture begins. We passed this cow herder and group of cows not far outside of Chisinau.









A popular mode of transport outside of the city.









Our first picnic site. The rural landscape in Moldova is stunning. The mature plantings of trees, as along this road, speak to a strong rural culture.









Cabbages! Throughout our fall journey, we saw cabbages being harvested all over Moldova and other places we visited in Europe.









We learned that the all of the water in Moldova is safe to drink and clearly revered. Along the highways, there is a well every 1-2 km. Many are decorated with fancy tin work or other ornamentation.









There are large wetlands in southeastern Moldova along the Dniestr River. The area is in process of becoming protected as the Parcul National Nistru Interior. The wetlands look like an ocean as you come over the hill--you may want to click on this one for a closer look.


















We drove down into the village of Cioburciu. Accommodations outside of large cities are hard to find without a local guide, rural Moldova is not set up for tourism yet. We'd read that there was a pensione in this small town and it is here that we met our second Moldovan muse: Diana.
Cioburciu is a small village of a few hundred homes built of brick and plaster, on the slopes above the Dnister River. It is surrounded by farmland and located 10 km off the main road.









A new church made of limestone blocks with tin roof.









The main road.









As we drove through town, we stopped and asked a few people for directions to the pensione. Most laughed and shrugged, so we continued on our way until we hit the end of the town's road. On our way back through town, one of the women we'd asked (the proprietor of a small grocery store) flagged us down. She asked Joe if we were Italian--when we speak Moldovan from the phrasebook we have an Italian accent--and motioned for us to wait. She sent a young girl down the street to get someone, and a young woman returned with her shortly. She greeted us in perfect Italian, Buona sera, and introduced herself as Diana. She invited us to her house to have a coffee and tp help us find accommodations. Diana was certain there was no pensione in her village, a village the size of one street, and made some phone calls to a nearby larger town. After no luck on the phone, she casually invited us to stay with her. We were touched by her generous offer but didn't want to impose, so we sat for a while and chatted, had some cookies and a cup of coffee. After a while, she again offered to put us up, saying its just her son and herself and her mother, and reminded us that at this point, we needed a place to sleep and food. Given that dark was fast approaching and the drive to the next large city was a few hours away, and that we were enjoying each other's company, we accepted.

We had a lovely evening--through Diana's stories, we learned a lot about life in Moldova. Diana spoke fluent Italian and German after working abroad for the last ten years. She explained that every family has one person working abroad given the lack of income potential in Moldova, and we were reminded of our train ride into Moldova with many people returning from work in Moscow. When asked what she did for work in the village, she said that her family owns one of the markets (it was her mother who flagged us down) and that this year, she grew wheat. It wasn't a good year for wheat, so she did what she could to earn money. She was in process for applying for a visa to work abroad again, but was facing a long wait due to restrictions by the Moldovan government (which she explained was a communist government run by the mafia). She went into more detail about the economy. The government sets the bank interest rates at 18-24%, so that it is virtually impossible to borrow money and the interest earned on your money in the bank is set at .007. Much of the food and other products are imported from elsewhere, so though there is fertile land and farming everywhere, it is not lucrative. The imported products and bank situation also means that prices in Moldova are similar to those in Western Europe, a staggering situation given that the Moldovan average income is less than a tenth of Germany's. At one point, Diana explained that in places like Cioburciu, "va bene, ma non andata bene", roughly translated as "we're doing ok, but it's not going ok." We also chatted about other things, the US election (she was not interested; it's all about the oil, she said), our lives in the States, similarities and differences in cooking and meals.

For dinner, Diana prepared a delicious vegetable soup with fresh cream from her neighbor, and a pasta with wild mushrooms, tomatoes, and sharp goat cheese, also from a neighbor. She was very sweet, explaining she normally has salad with pasta but since we'd been traveling all day, we needed to fill up. After dinner we pulled out the Moldovan map and explored possible towns where Sucaron (Lesley's Zaida's village) may have been. The closest Romanian name was Soroca, a town in the north where a large Jewish community had lived. We also went through lots of town names for stonework [Pietar] given that Zaida's last name, Matzevahman, means someone who works with stone. Soon Diana's mother came home, and we had a good laugh about the Cioburciu pensione that we had read about in a guidebook from several years back. Once Lesley said the name of the pension, Diana and her mother broke into laughter and Diana explained that this man had rented rooms, but in a house smaller and dirtier than hers, and that it was years ago that he did this. She also explained that he had made money attracting tourists interested in learning traditional Moldovan handicrafts and ran ad hoc basket weaving classes, with accommodations. A healthy reminder that a guidebook is a guidebook; once you are there. you're there.

Our evening walk--Diana reminded us to not get lost so she wouldn't have to come find us.









In front of Diana's house (she was gracious enough to let us take the picture of her in her robe) before we left to head north to explore Soroca. We ate heartedly again at a breakfast of french toast and ham, Diana reminding us again like an Italian mother that we needed to eat well since we would not be arriving north until midday.









Grazie mille, Diana!

Chisinau

We rented an apartment in Chisinau for a few days. It was a small apartment in an old concrete building. The apartment was nice and cozy; the building caught us off guard--it appeared that most construction in Chisinau is done with sloppily-laid concrete block and compared to some of the other cities we’d recently visited, there is zero ornamentation or finish. This is likely a result of years of Soviet occupation and poverty during those years and to this day. Moldova is one of Europe’s poorest countries—its average per capita income is 2,500 euro compared to @15,000 euro in Central Europe (e.g. Poland) and in the 30,000’s in Western Europe (e.g. Germany). These statistics aren’t evident when walking up the main street of Chisinau, with cafes and shops with Western European prices. We'd read that the modern side of Chisinau exists to support its upper class, whose wealth is mostly mafia driven. While we weren't there long enough to make our own evaluation, the juxtaposition of brand new Mercedes and the poor conditions of much of the city was striking.

Our apartment.

A nice statue near our apt building.

A beautiful park near the center of town, where two main parks lie kitty corner of each other: St Stefan cul Mare and Cathedral Park. There were a lot of people strolling and hanging out on a warm fall afternoon.









One night we visited the huge main market in the center of town. It was a mix of indoor and outdoor stalls, all devoted to different items—smoked meats, cheeses, vegetables, poultry, grains, basic household supplies, you name it. We made our first home cooked meal in a month, pork chops, caramelized onions and rice, with delicious pickled salads from the market: carrots; curry cauliflower; grilled eggplant and mushrooms. It was nice to enjoy a home-cooked meal.


















While in Chisinau, we visited the university library to look for an old map of Bessarabia, in hopes of finding out where Sucaron once was. They were very helpful and accommodating and sent us to the national library nearby. We were guided by a young women named Dorina, who told us her story of getting lost in Montana trying to find the town of Whitefish as she escorted us. At the national archives, this time with a cool teenage kid as our translator, we didn't get very far. We decided to visit local bookstores, get a map of the country, rent a car, and head out to discover the country on a road trip.

Moldova

Given what little we knew about Moldova's past and present, it is fair to say that we approached our visit with some trepidation. In the early 1900’s, Russian-led pogroms targeted Jewish communities throughout Bessarabia (the Moldovan territory west of the Dniestr River), prompting Jewish families to flee to Europe or to the Americas. Lesley’s Zaida was from Bessarabia, and left for Canada when he was a young teenager. Little is known about his childhood. All we know is of a village or shtetl called Sucaron and that he took a ship from Hamburg, perhaps with a cousin, perhaps with some of his brothers and sisters, sometime in the early 1920’s. His parents died when he was young—his mother of influenza in Bessarabia, and his father in Brazil where he was exploring moving the family given the Anti-Semitic climate at home. Zaida never spoke of Bessarabia; Lesley’s Bubby and father could not believe why she would want to visit.

Current Moldovan events continue to be grim---after years of occupation by Russia (and Romania before) and an ugly civil war in1991 after the breakup of the Moldovan S.S.R., the news typically focuses on the drug and arms trade and human trafficking of young women. In looking up the train schedules to Moldova on a travel website, we came across a bleak statistic in a blog entry about the high percentage of young women missing from rural villages. We also read that the mafia presence looms large, as seen by the large new BMW’s and Mercedes cruising around Chisinau. An old guidebook warned you to carry your passport at all times, as not having it on you could warrant a steep fine from the police (though there is technically no law prohibiting this).

It should also be noted that though there is little tourism in Moldova, the few pages in our guidebook spoke of lively people and bucolic fields of sunflowers and wine grapes.

This is the context in which we boarded a train from Kiev to Moldova’s capital city, Chisinau. We both believed that as part of the purpose of this journey, Moldova was an essential place to visit. As you will learn, our time there proved to be very special—we experienced the beauty of a fertile countryside, the most delicious apples we’ve had outside of Washington, and warm, welcoming people who made our visit truly memorable.

Three Moldovan muses: Larisa
At 8:30am Wednesday morning we boarded a15-hour train to Chisinau. The train had traveled from Moscow throughout the night before, and our car was bustling with these passengers waking up and new passengers settling in. The train car was massive, with couchettes to accommodate four sleeping passengers in two double bunks, and two more passengers in one double bunk across the aisle. During the day the upper bunks were folded away and the lower bunks were used as seats. Across from us was a petite, middle-aged red-headed woman who was busily tucking in above and below the seats far more bags than she could carry. We soon learned from watching her that one purchased sheets and towels for the journey from the car steward. We made our bed and tucked ourselves in for a nap to begin the long ride.

We were shortly after woken up by a smiling young man touching Joe’s beard (!). If this were to happen on a train in the States, you might freak out. In this case there was an obvious harmlessness to this situation, and even though we could not communicate with language, it was clear that it was a friendly gesture, if a bit bizarre. Our seatmate soon explained that the young man was very happy (and a bit drunk) because he was returning home to Moldova after working in Moscow, and that his beard-stroking was typical Moldovani. By explained, we mean that through hand gestures and a mix of German, Moldovan and Russian, we learned Valentin’s story. And this is how we met our first muse, Larisa.

The rest of our train ride was spent getting to know each other through stories, photos and food, lots of picture drawing, and some back and forth with our little phrasebook. We soon learned that Moldovan and Romanian are very similar languages (according to some Moldovans, they are the same language; to others, the distinction is important for their national identity). Vasil (another man on leave from working in Moscow and returning to his family) and Larisa helped us put together a little dictionary of key Moldovan words and phrases, from dedushka (grandfather) to svadba (wedding). As we went through the phrases, we were reminded that Romanian is a Roman language, and therefore, similar to Italian. Suddenly we knew some Molodvan, like buna siera (good evening) and come ti chiame (what is your name?). Woo hoo! We knew there was a reason we learned Italian (besides Italy and all its bounty, of course). We also learned that Larisa and her beloved Deema (who she spoke of throughout the trip, giddily, excited to see him) had been together the same amount of time as we have (16 years). Larisa’s many bags were full of family treasures that she generously shared: carvings off a 3-foot long piece of smoked sturgeon, homemade strawberry compote, preserved lemon jellies.

Heading south, we passed through many small stations (here’s one in the Ukraine).

Shortly before crossing into Moldova.

In between getting to know each other, we relaxed with crosswords and writing.

Who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing the front of a train round the bend?

At the Ukraine-Moldova border. Crossing into Moldova in the late afternoon quiet, Lesley was struck by the emotion of the moment, of returning to the country of her grandfather. Without warning, tears well up at times like these--the sense of place is unexpected and beautiful.









Our first Moldovan video (note Joe’s comprehension of Russian and Moldovan).


Pulling away from the border, through Moldovan countryside. The radio that you hear was playing for the entire journey. It was surprisingly quite nice, providing an appropriate soundtrack.

Throughout the train journey, people roam the aisles selling beer, phone cards, battery-operated toys, Christian amulets, and magazines. The woman selling the latter dumps a stack on your table, gives you a few minutes to peruse, you take what you want from the pile or leave them be, then she comes back and takes them away to dump them on the table next to you. In the late afternoon/early evening, bubushkas sell local grapes, grape juice, and apples from their villages, and plates of food at dinnertime. At one stop, Larissa jumped up and ran excitedly off the train, returning with a bag of small crayfish (raki). We had learned this word earlier in the day during one of our many food discussions. The raki had been boiled in a light herb broth and were salty and sweet. We also enjoyed the local grapes—wine grapes with thick skins and seeds that you sucked the juice from. Washed down with pivo (beer), delicious.












When we got to Chisinau at 11:30pm, we were full and happy. Larissa’s kindness continued as she and her husband (a taxi driver) gave us a ride to the apartment that we rented nearby. It was only a 5 minute walk from the station but arriving at night to an unfamiliar city with swarms of taxi drivers and a dark, concrete apartment building with no clear entrance…it was a blessing. We hugged and kissed and she left us with her number should we need anything.

Thinking back, it’s kind of amazing we chatted for hours without sharing a common language other then food, family, beer, travel, love, cats, and friendship. We fell asleep grinning.

Kiev

After a week in Vilnius, we headed south to Moldova. Without visas to enter Belarus or Russia, there was no direct way except 2 days on a train. So, we decided to fly to Kiev then take the train into Moldova's capital city, Chisinau (pronounced Kishinow). Whereas Vilnius reminded us of Zafarelli's Romeo and Juliet, the airport in Kiev conjured up Russian mafia a la Eastern Promises. Broad-shouldered men in long black leather jackets, slicked back hair, shades, strict customs officials, women in 3 inch patent leather stilettos, aggressive "taxi drivers" at the airport. Maybe it's because we woke up at 5am in Vilnius to catch the flight, but our arrival in the Ukraine was a bit startling. Then, when we got to the Kiev train station, it turned out that our train did not leave until the next morning. So, we ended up spending a day in Kiev--which proved to be an extraordinary metropolis and reminded us of the beauty of making up this trip as we go along. Kiev was memorable.

After leaving all but the bare necessities at the train station, we headed into Kiev to find a hotel and explore. It was here we had our first encounter with the Cyrillic alphabet. It's fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it---a B is a V, a P is an R, and a lower-cased b with a little tail on it is pronounced "tvyor-dizank", and so on.

Soon we were strolling up majestic boulevards in the heart of Kiev. We were immediately astounded by the scale.









The Hotel St. Petersberg, as the sign clearly reads.









Do not judge a book by its cover.


















Our first Ukranian meal. These cafeterias are a popular, cheap way to get hot, good food. This place was filled with businessmen and women taking their lunch break. We probably over ordered, but since we were only in Kiev for a day....Lesley had to try the chicken kiev because she is sentimental (this version was made with a potato pancake-like breading), mushrooms and bulgar (also traditional), and a Greek salad (which are all over Europe). Joe had a bowl of 'cilantra' soup (a beef broth with tomato, cabbage, and smoked sausage, a Russian soup that we found throughout the former Soviet Europe), a seaweed and fake crabmeat salad (left untouched, he didn't know what it was when he pointed at it), a plate of stewed cabbage and pork (didn't know there was pork in it), and a chicken cutlet covered with an egg batter and served with potatoes and gravy. While all of these dishes were traditional, an order this large was not. While we ate, we observed others' trays to try and learn the customs. Everyone enjoyed fairly balanced meals--always soup, then maybe a piece of meat or fish, a grain, veg, dessert, perhaps a pivo (beer).












In this part of the city, the buildings are old and massive. We want to read more about Kiev, we had no idea.












Kiev's famous independence square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where over 500,000 people gathered just hours after the November 21, 2004 fraudulent election.









November 22, 2004









At 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon, the square was full of people of all ages, walking through and hanging out. Many were drinking beer like you see people drink water bottles or cokes in the states, men walking home from work with a beer, two girls sipping a brew and chatting on a bench. The glass domes in the photo below are skylights for a large underground shopping mall. This efficient use of underground space was also seen in the pedestrian underpasses (underground crosswalks) of the large boulevards, with small shops selling flowers, coffees, underwear, you name it.









Video of Kiev's metro, taken at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon. It was built in 1960 and has that era look and feel. It costs 10 cents to ride (our very large lunch cost $15 for the two of us). The escalators to the subway tunnels are really deep beneath the streets, reached by long escalator rides. We later found out that one of the stations we visited, Arsenalna, is the deepest metro station in the world at 102 meters.


We had read in the guidebook about a massive metal statue of a Soviet woman looming over the city. To get there, we walked along the Dnieper River east of the main square, then climbed through a forested park. The statue was surrounded by a giant memorial site and Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII). We continue to be overwhelmed by the massive scale of seemingly everything in Kiev.









Video: These large bronze scenes line both walls of the concrete entrance corridor shown in the above photo.


Video: In the large piazza in front of the museum.

Serious.












The memorial grounds. the large satellite-looking dish in the distance is a torch! Imagine.









The entire area was so thought out and well organized, and the scale and quality of the sculpture so impressive. It felt simultaneously like a memorial, patriotism, and propaganda. The overall effect was quite powerful.









In the piazza in front of the museum.









Back in the city, in the piazza in front of St Sophia Cathedral.









The cathedral, dating back to the 10th century.









The bell tower.












Entrance to the funicular station (our second of the trip, yay).









Outside the funicular station.









Back in the main square.


















Enjoyed a second large cafeteria meal for dinner then off to bed. One day is too little to spend in Kiev, all the same it was one terrific day and we are eager to learn more.

Catching an 8am train to Moldova...