Country #129 The joy of the unexpected

After all the years of Adventure of the Month'ing, I really should just come up with a few fill in the blank templates that would effectively cover most of my posts. One that would come in handy right now is the one that reads "I went to (fill in the blank) just because it was a country I had never been to and surprise, surprise, it turned out to be so much more/ better/ cooler than I expected". Because guess what?  I went to country #129 because something was bothering me. Specifically, this map was irking me.

You see all that blue? Those are the countries I've already been to. Not bad, right? I've covered a lot of Europe... but for that little red blemish sitting right between Romania and Ukraine. That is all I could see when looking at this map. (Full disclosure: I'm also missing Azerbaijan and Armenia but since those are Euro/ Asia hybrids, it wasn't bothering me near as much).

That blotch is better known as Moldova, the least visited country in Europe. As such, getting there is a bit of a mission. You can either spend a fortune to get on one of the few flights into the country or fly into Romania and bus/ train it across the border. We all know which one I chose. The plan was simple, I would fly into Bucharest and take an 8 hr overnight bus to Chisinau. I envisioned the city to be a USSR throwback, with dingy Communist era buildings, stray dogs and lots of angry looking women in babushkas. In other words, I was picturing early 2000's Bucharest, so no need to spend a lot of time there. One day was more than enough to turn that red to blue. 

During that one day, I had pre-booked a tour to fill my time. The Amazing Ionika hostel offered a day trip to Transnistria, a part of Moldova that swears it is an independent country with its own border crossing, currency and government. The rest of the world has seemingly responded with "Um, no you're Moldova" but for my purposes, let's just say it was country #129.5*. I'll go into more detail in my next post about the tour but suffice it to say that the little I saw of Chisinau on my way to/ from Tirasol had me scrambling to add another night to my itinerary. 

Contrary to my expectations,while the requisite brutalist architecture was there on the outskirts of town, the area around the hostel was lively and cosmopolitan. It was also inexpensive and gloriously warm (as opposed to my home base of Amsterdam that had not yet gotten word that July is supposed to summer). I changed my bus ticket, got another night at the hostel and spent day two exploring this pleasant surprise. 

Armed with a hand color-coded tourist map from Rubens, our Italian hostel owner, I started the morning at the Parcul Valea Morilor, a gorgeous urban park that once was home to actual Mammoths. Today, you are more likely to find joggers, stroller pushing moms and people stopping for a coffee on their way to work. My attempts at getting a vegetarian pastry from one of the food vendors led to a lively discussion amongst the English-speaking office folk and resulted in a delicious mushroom and onion turnover thingy. They also made a valiant effort at figuring out my map before giving up and relying on Google Maps to help me find Lenin.

The park, which was built in the 1950's was originally called the "Central Park of Culture and Rest of the Leninist Commune", which politics aside is just way too damn literal. Just stop at "Central Park", not everything needs to be a statement. The name has been changed but Lenny can still be found chilling right by the merry-go-round and go-karts section of the park. 

I was enjoying the peace and tranquility of the park and decided to extend my stay with a visit to the butterfly garden. For roughly $3, you can chill in a room just watching them flit around.

If you are lucky, you might even spot a couple of butterflies doing it. 

If you are not so lucky, you might be chilling on a bench when a stream of still warm poop lands on your arm. Let me just tell you, if you have never had the pleasure of trying to ask a non-English speaking butterfly world employee "Excuse me. Do you have a napkin? Also, is this butterfly shit? This seems like an awful lot of shit for a butterfly." while waving your shit-covered arm, have you even lived? I was more successful in getting a wipe than an answer but my subsequent CSI investigation led me to believe that a passing bird had unleashed from above the netting covering the space. 

Time to get the hell out of butterfly world. I continued on to the 19th century water tower turned city museum and lookout point. 

Few of the exhibits were in English but the views were nice and nothing crapped on me so 5 stars. 

Continuing along the map's route, I was checking out the Triumphal Arch , when I ran into my two new Turkish friends from the hostel. I had hung out with them the prior night. Drinking in the communal area during my time at Ionika was both fascinating and humbling as there were two distinct contingents. One group was there, like myself, because it was someplace new. Amongst that group, I met a guy who had actually been to all the countries in the world and was now doubling back. But the other group, about half of the hostel residents, were Ukranians trying to escape the war.  Many of them had crossed into Moldova illegally, at great risk to themselves and were in the midst of seeking asylum. While some of us were engaged in our very first world quest, others were literally fleeing for their lives. But we were also a bunch of people sitting around a table drinking, all of us trying to just enjoy a nice summer evening, so the challenge was to find an appropriate topic of conversation. And that is how I ended up discussing soccer for most of the night. 

But back to my wanderings, Deniz and Serkan, my Turkish buddies were on their way to lunch so I temporarily ditched the map and ended up at Taverna Kalamaki, eating some truly excellent Greek food and enjoying some local beers. 

It was to be but a brief rest because we quickly learned that the scale of Rubens' map was a bit off. What started out as a nice stroll evolved into a 14 mile journey. Luckily, there was plenty to see. There was the ornate Cathedral of Christ's Nativity, originally built in 1836 and now the city's main Moldovan Orthodox church. 

We continued through a massive outdoor flea market (which I neglected to photograph), followed by a stop at the Liberation Monument, which celebrates the Russians freeing Moldova from the Nazis in 1944.

Probably pre-dating that occurrence was the Hotel Chisinau, located immediately behind the monument. Wandering into the lobby was akin to time travel, in the best possible way. 

In the distance, we could see the domes of the Ciuflea Monastery so I suggested we venture there as well. It was at this point that Serkan noted, with a bit of despair in his voice, that I really liked to walk too much. But c'mon, this is one pretty nunnery.

Time for another break, this time at the well-stocked Beer House  . 

Refreshed and rebeered, we made our way back to the hostel, stopping to admire some impressive governmental architecture along the way. 

Prosecutor General's Office of Moldova

The Ministry of Internal Affairs

Chisinau City Hall

By the time we returned to the hostel, it was already nighttime, meaning it was time to go back out. After some drinks and more soccer conversation with the Ukrainians, we headed to the Rockovoy Bar, where the music was as good as the beers. 

All in all, it was a full day, one that I almost missed out on because of my mistaken preconceptions about Moldova. But I wasn't even done yet. I had changed my bus to the next evening, meaning there still was most of day 3 to play with. 

I had hoped to do a wine tour but since that was not available, Deniz and I simply took a Bolt (think European Uber) to the second largest wine cellar in the world. In case you are wondering where the 1st largest one resides, it's also Moldova. That's right, the two largest wine cellars in the world are located in Europe's least visited country. Who knew?

To call Cricova a wine cellar is the epitome of an understatement. It is an underground wine city with over 75 miles of roads, storage facilities, production areas and tasting rooms. There is a wedding chapel down there.  They have 5k races run along "streets" which bear the names of different types of wine.  The astronaut Yuri Gagarin got lost down there and didn't emerge for two days, drunk and happy. 

It's really big is what I'm saying. The reason for this is that these caves were originally limestone quarries. At some point, someone noticed that the consistently cool temperature roughly 250 feet underground created excellent conditions for wine storage and thus Cricova was born.  

To get around, we boarded a train-trolley that took our group of approximately 30-40 people through a small percentage of the city. To start off, we were taken to a movie theater, given a glass of really nice sparkling wine and left to watch a 15 movie on the history of wine in Moldova. 

Then we were led to a bottling and production area. It was here that we learned that some 35,000 bottles of sparkling rose are sporadically rotated by hand, so that the sediment doesn't settle for too long. 

Another part on the tour focused on their collections. If you have the means, you can rent a storage space and have them store your wine for you. I later learned that one of the biggest collections belong to Vladimir Putin, although not surprisingly, that was not mentioned on the tour. 

The highlight of course was the tasting portion. The wines were all quite good and also very reasonably priced. But for the fact that I was flying back to Amsterdam the next day and had no checked bags, I would have left there knee deep in Moldovan wines. 

Since that was not an option, I finished my visit to Chisinau with dinner at a restaurant known for its wine list. Divus, with its impeccable service and innovative menu would not be out of place in the chicest of cities. Yet, here it was in Chisinau. 

Perhaps one day, I'll stop being surprised that overlooked places are often so much better than expected, but today was not that day. And probably not tomorrow either. Best to start working on that template already...