Moldova Travel

To my surprise, Moldova is the poorest country in Europe per capita. And while there might not be much money to go around for those working, the streets are kept clean and people I met were respectful. As far as travel goes, it seemed the theme to Moldova was wineries and monasteries, with some interesting places in the capital and plenty of timeless rural villages around the country.

Moldova Links
	I entered Moldova by road coming from Ukraine, and the photo on the upper left was my first views of the capital Chisinau, this is known as the 'Gates of Chisinau'. The city has about two thrids of a million people mostly living in apartments. On the upper right is a downtown area of Chisinau at night.
	With Moldova being the poorest country in Europe, a lot of things are pretty beat up here while somethings are relatively well maintained such as the roads for example. One thing that always seemed to be in need of serious maintenance were the country's elevators. All of them seemed to be cursed, the one in my hotel was dated 1982, about 10 years before the collaspe of the Soviet Union. When I first arrived to Moldova I had to call my bank because they had shut of my credit card. Normally hotel rates are atrocious, so I went out into the city hoping to find an internet cafe with a phone center which seem to be pretty popular in these kind of places. I went into one large building for directions and talked to a woman who didn't speak a word of English. I made what I thought was the universal sign for a telephone, mimicing a phone with my hand and holding it up to my mouth. The lady seemed very confident of what I needed and took me into the most dangerous elevator I had ever been in. She took me to a top floor and opened up a random door where a dentist was operating on a patient! I never found a call center, or the stairs out of the building for that matter so I had to take the dangerous Soviet elevator back to the floor lobby. Speaking of Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle sign exists all over Moldova still. The picture above was taken from the window of a car, I assumed it to be some political party symbol. Instead I was told it symbolized the unification of the Soviet Union, western Europe and the United States in the fight against the Nazis.

Most of this trip, I didn't have anyone around me who spoke English so I'm under the assumption this is some type of movement by a communist party in Chisinau with many of the flags flying the hammer and sickle still. This is kind of surprisng to me since Moldova isn't on good terms with Russia, as their are thousands of Russian troops in Moldova's eastern border supporting the rebel province of Transnistria. There was enough of a show here to give me the impression that a significat number of people support communism and aren't happy with the way their country is run.

For those not wanting to participate in protests or ride sketchy elevators, two places of entertainment in downtown Chisinau are the city's main theater on the left and their national museum on the right. Unfortunately the museum was closed on the day I passed by it, and I never made it to a show in the theater. I did walk inside of it which was slightly awkard since most people were dressed up and I was wearing shorts and a shirt.

Something famous in Moldova regarding food is Andy's pizza. A waiter working here explained to me, "America has McDonalds, Moldova has Andy's Pizza". On the upper left is a photo of a not so packed Andy's on a Friday night. I went there with some British guys I ran into who were also traveling through Moldova. On the right is a picture of one of them showing the results of our wine tour, his jet lag and some beer.

Chisinau has a nice city park that was packed with people during the late Spring. Above is one of the main paths leading to a large fountain where kids could rent small cars, people sold ice cream, and dozens of people were out on the park benches using their laptops.


With about 600,000 people, Chisinau is a medium sized city but small for most European capitals. The lack of huge mobs of people and crowds was a plus for me. Since taxis are pretty cheap here I normally took them to different parts of the capital and other cities. In one of the taxis I took the driver was using a hammer and sickle pin, so he must be a communist! I found it strange to see so many hammer and sickles everywhere and people supporting communists in such large numbers, I honestly thought it was something of the past. For those travelers looking for a more local experience there is the city tram on the right which would probably damn near be free.

These forested country roads were my first views of Moldova after I entered the country from Ukraine. They seem to like to line their streets with trees, as right past these was nothing but open fields and farms. On the right is a line of weeping willows that continued on for miles.

Outside Chisnau, of course the country is made up of farmland and small villages built on rolling hills. Above is some typical scenery in the countryside, with the post on the right marking the entrance to a small town. Most Moldovans I saw who were working in farms were doing everything by hand, like these people on the lower left. I even passed by one field that had maybe 20 people working the fields with hand tools.


I hadn't seen these style motorcycles in forever, but I saw lots of them in the countrside of Moldova, including the horses and carriages on the upper right. In one small town I passed through I even saw some kids riding horses through a village road

No idea what these flowers are used for, but when I came across these huge red fields of them I had to stop for a few photos. Since this was a backpacking trip where I passed through several other countries, I saw these same red flowers in Romania but not nearly in these numbers.

A famous trip to do in Moldova is a wine tour to the Milestii Mici winery. I've never really done a wine tour and almost didn't go on this one, but this was one of my favorite places in Moldova. What makes this winery special is it's huge underground 'city' as they call it. The winery has thousands of kilometers of tunnels underground that were once used as mines. Once the mines were depleted, during the underground tunnels then became a giant bunker incase of a nuclear war with United States, since this was part of the Soviet Union at the time. Finally in the late 1960s someone realized that the perfect temperature and humidity here could be used to make wine, and then Milestii Mici became one of the largest wineries in the world. Below is an underground waterfall and some giant barrels stored a few hundred feet underground.


Milestii Mici was proudly entered in the Guiness book of world records for having the largest wine cellars in the world. It's estimated that there are about 1.6 million bottles of wine stored here, all of them for sale. These photos above show some of the stored wine, but I forgot to mention that the photo above showing the giant wine barrels and we reached them by driving underground with a convoy of cars.
All the wine in the cellars below is for sale, with prices ranging from a few dollars for the newer and cheaper bottles to a few thousand dollars for their oldest. On the right is some of the very old bottles that have been here for decades, if you purchase one I was told they will clean it up and relabel it for you, unless you want it in the current state. Since this winery existed during the Soviet times, there was once a period when alcohol was made illegal and ordered destroyed. Those working at the winery created a secret room which we were taken into, and this is where they hid their best and most valuable wine while they allowed the remaining stocks to be destroyed. As we continued on the tour, we eventually we made it to an underground restaurant that even had a real fire place going. Below is a photo of the entrance to the underground restaurant with a photo of a dining able and fire on the right, this is where we did the wine tasting too.


I didn't do any hiking in Moldova, a big regret of mine. When I went by their higher elevations I saw some forested mountains that went as far as I could see. I think their must be a lot of perserved wildlife and interesting scenery here in Moldova's natural world. Here is a photo of some of ther forests, and one of their many small ponds and lakes I came across.

A random small town I came across. I got pretty lost here and no one spoke a word of English, so it was hard to get back on track but I got lucky and found my way. The right hand photo shows a small market that was part of the town.

Moldova has several ancient monasteries within its borders, but in my opinion this one above was the most beautiful out of the ones I visited. Built in the mid 15th century, Capriana Monastery has stood here for over 500 years. The most beautiful building in my opinion is the 'winter church' seen on the upper left, even though this was added over 100 years ago. The monastery house is on the upper right, with some photos of the inside of the winter church seen below including a brief service that was going on.

While I was visiting the Capriana monastery, I came across this wedding and the couple was nice enough to let me take their photo. I'm not sure how many monks live here today, and since no one spoke English and I didn't use a guide it was difficult to find out any information like this about the place. The well on the right is part of the monastery as well, I have no idea how old it is but I'm sure it dates back hundreds of years and has been replaced several times. Below are the only permanent residents I saw in the Capriana monastery, a pack of puppies who seemed to definitely be younger than a year, no signs of the parents!


These surrounding photos are of some of the most beautiful land I came across in Moldova. A very steep embankment rises up along a river while it gives great views for those who want to climb it and protection from the elements for those who discovered the caves here long ago. This area is where the Orheiul Vechi church was founded, marked by the cross on the upper left.


Atop the embankment is the small and humble church seen above. With no guide here to direct me whhere to go, I came very close to completely missing a church within the caves that was accessible through some stairs I barely noticed. Below on the left is a photo of the inside of the church above ground, with the lower right photo showing the inside of the cave church.


	The cave church has an opening that takes you outside on one of the embankment walls where you many people make donations by stuffing coins and bills into tiny holes along the walls. The monk inside was pretty talkative with the little English that he knew, and was moer than happy to let me take his photo.

	Until this trip, this was the first real wildlife I saw in Europe, mostly some small animals in Romania. In Moldova though, I came across this wild boar which I've often heard about living in Europe. The large snake skin on the right was left behind by what what have been at least a 1.5 meter or 5 foot snake.

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