Moldova: A Poor Country With a Fun Gypsy Feel

The train ride to Moldova took 15 hours, from 8:30 a.m. until 11:30 p.m., most of the time being spent sitting at border crossings waiting on slow moving border guards and customs officials to check the whole train. Hours passed slowly. The countryside was pretty, though littered with plastic bags and bottles of beer. The bag of snacks was dwindling, not enough pretzels, not enough beer, not enough grapefruit juice. The Moscow-to-Chisinau had mostly emptied in Kiev, and most of the remaining passengers were getting off well before reaching Moldova. By the time we hit the border, my friend Fleur and I were almost the only people in our wagon. Rolling into Chisinau, I was immediately struck by the lack of capital flair. The main train station was a dull affair (in contrast to the stations in Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, and other big Soviet cities), and the feeling of provinciality hung over the dull buildings built in the later Soviet style—cheap 1970’s eyesores. We managed to get a hold of our host over Skype on the McDonalds Wi-Fi. Lena, a 20 year old German, picked us up and brought us back to her apartment in a high-rise Khrushchevka (build under Khrushchev, of poor quality). She was a volunteer with the European Voluntary Service, which is a bit like the American Peace Corps. She lived with a few other Germans and one Belgian guy. Fleur, who is from the Netherlands and lived in Berlin for a while, was right at home speaking German and Dutch with our new friends. Chisinau was an interesting mix of Soviet and Romanian. Moldovans are really just Romanians who were separated when Stalin decided to incorporate the Bessarabia region of Moldova into the Soviet Union after it was taken by the Red Army. The Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic was created and a policy promoting Moldovan national heritage was put in place as a means to stifle pro-Romanian sentiments. They started writing Romanian in the Cyrillic alphabet and calling it the Moldovan language. In 1990, as the Soviet Union was falling apart, the Moldovan Soviet changed the language policy and brought back the Latin alphabet. Strong nationalist parties took control and there were cries for reunification with Romania. Radical elements wanted to expel all of the Slavic peoples (Russians and Ukrainians mostly), who made up a majority in some regions. I’ll deal with that history separately. For whatever reason, Moldova remained its own nation and will probably continue to be its own nation since Romania has now joined the EU, and the EU doesn’t want to take on the poorest country in Europe. Downtown Chisinau is basically just one street with a few big government buildings and some Western high-end stores that have come in to cater to the ever-present small group of super rich in every post-Soviet country. Most of the old buildings are crumbling ruins. Lena took us to an abandoned theatre. We had to climb through what used to be a window to get inside, and I ripped my pants in the process. The building used to be beautiful and opulent. Intricate Corinthian columns and ornate moldings were now covered with graffiti. The floor was rubble, bits of plaster and stone chipped or torn from the walls and ceiling. Trash filled the corners. In one of the stairwells was a dirty cot where someone had obviously slept the night before. The ceiling had fallen away in parts, leaving the rooms completely exposed to the elements. This had probably once been the most beautiful building in the city. The Soviet buildings aren’t fairing much better, particularly the housing blocks on the outskirts of town. The main government building in the center has a big pedestal in front where an enormous Lenin used to stand. He fell quickly after the Soviet Union. On both sides of the building were semi-permanent protests, one about discrimination against blacks in Moldova and the other set up by a veteran of the Transdnistria war who wanted government benefits. I knocked on the door of the little shack where the veteran and his wife were living. His wife emerged from the smelly room with a toddler by her side. She agreed to an interview the next day. Pavel, a 19 year old Moldovan and a friend of Lena’s came along with us to the interview to translate. Inside the shack it was hot and smelled strongly of body odor. The place was heated by a small woodstove and there were no signs of a water hose or spot to cook. A few socks were drying on a piece of string strung across one wall. The woman sat on the dirty sleeping pallet with the toddler, while Fleur, Pavel, and I squeezed in on the cardboard floor. The interview was conducted in Romanian. The lady told us that her husband had been wounded in the war and was now an invalid, unable to work. They were hoping to get some kind of benefits from the Moldovan government so that they could buy an apartment. She told us that when Joe Biden came to Moldova, she and her husband had been chased out. She went on describing their life in the shack, a vacant expression on her face, speaking at an abnormally timid pace. She said that she was 44 years old, though I would have guessed 62 judging by the wrinkles and her generally tattered aura. I was too distracted by the surroundings to pay much attention to the interview, which started to sound like a bunch of rambling to me. The toddler, Gabriella, didn’t smile once, even when Fleur tickled her cheeks in a girly maternal way. While interviewing her, we met a young guy named Maksim Nidelku who was a self-proclaimed Moldovan-Romanian nationalist. We went with him to the park for another interview in which he detailed Moldova’s historical connection with Romania and how the Soviet “occupation” had created an artificial division. He claimed that it was the fault of a weak former president that Moldova had not been reabsorbed into greater Romania. On his jacket he wore a ribbon with the colors of the Moldovan flag. He rubbed his knuckles nervously during interview and balled his hands into fists. He talked a bit about the break away state of Transdnistria and said that it was being “occupied” by Russians and was just an arm of Moscow. He suspected that it would reunify with Moldova at some point. When asked if he would fight to regain the territory he answered with an emphatic affirmative, saying that he would take up arms with the hope of Romanian and NATO backing. Not likely. Moldovan culture is like one big wine-fuelled street festival with a strong gypsy feel. The markets in Chisinau were lively and chaotic, with people yelling back and forth over crates of pomegranates and madcap arrangements of tacky electric picture frames that make noise and have a moving light that simulates flowing water—the kind they always have in Chinese restaurants. On the sidewalk old ladies sell fatty cuts of beef and whole chickens with the heads and gizzards stuffed inside. There is no refrigeration and the meat just sits on newspaper all day in the sun. I bought a pair of handmade fur-lined slippers. I asked the lady what kind of fur it was, she answered proudly: dog. Moldovan food is quite a bit better than the bland Slavic cuisine. Wine is always the centerpiece, and it comes in the liters. Because of its more Southerly position, fresh vegetables play a much larger role in the food, though they are still very heavy on the cheese and meat. Most interesting for me was a dish that was really just grits, like what we eat in the south, though without the cheddar cheese. We sampled the local cuisine, particularly the wine, over a few parties with our new German expat friends. We also went to a salsa club in Chisinau, which was tremendously boring for me, though the salsa dancers were surprisingly good. Two days was too short a time for Moldova, but Fleur and I had to be on our way. We said goodbye and hopped on a bus bound for the breakaway region of Transdnistria.