Since we have done very little in the last two days of our trip to Moldova (what with the first two being eventful enough) this posting will probably be more observational about Moldova.... Anyway, picking up where we left off: After a team doctor (Vicky) and nurse (Fiona) effort on the dutch boys - due to the shoddy quality of Chisinau hospital care - we dropped them off at the station late in the day. This was good for us because it meant we had a free taxi ride to get our train tickets for the following day and also we [View Full Entry]

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Transnistria Wikipedia - Transnistria Having met our new dutch friends, Vicky no longer felt obliged to go to a territory where she might never come back from so I (Fiona) headed off for the adventure! Obviously, given the night before it was rather a later start than planned... but we made it to the central bus station around midday and headed off to Transnistria in a negotiated private car with some other randoms. After some standard perilous driving, we arrived at the border and definitely on our best behaviour. Now we [View Full Entry]

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Moldova, once part of Romania, has the unhappy distinction of being Europe's poorest country. Historically, due to its strategic location on a route between Asia and Europe, Moldova was repeatedly invaded: Bastarns, Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars, Magyars and the Mongols all fought over this small country. Recently, the 1998 financial crisis in Russia, (Moldova's main economic partner at the time) produced an economic crisis in the country. The standard of living plunged, with 75% of population living below the poverty line, while the economic disaster caused 600,000 people [View Full Entry]

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As I pulled up to Moldovan passport control, my fellow passengers (a 75/25 mix of Moldovans and Romanians) were in hour 7 of having the giggles. I am sure I have never been on a bus that laughed that hard. The girl behind me spoke very good English, and gave very honest opinions on my travels. "We have been talking: we have decided that it would have been better if you had traveled with a tour group." They deemed a trip to Moldova far too exotic for a solo traveler. I shared a little about my solo trip to Asia, and [View Full Entry]

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Moldova was a destination we had decided on more out of curiosity than a desire to see anything specific. It's skipped over by most visitors to the region because the small nation of about 4.5million people has little to boast about historically or culturally compared with neighbouring Romania or Ukraine. We'd heard and read a few things about its celebrated wine industry as well as corruption and poverty, which are both supposedly rife. Continuing our tradition of arriving at rush hour, the three of us waded through the hordes of incessant taxi drivers hawking for business, changed up s [View Full Entry]

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We slept in pretty late on the first day in Romania. Then again, so did everyone else in our dorm; they ended up getting in at 6 am or something. Steve and I walked around for a bit but we happened to be in Bucharest during a rare September heat wave (95 Fahrenheit!) so we didn't do much sightseeing. However, we were both tired of sightseeing anyway. We did eat at this really nice Romanian place for lunch. It looked a lot like a German beer hall. They even had 1 liter beer steins and I had the house beer, which [View Full Entry]

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Early morning we got ready to do a day trip to Tiraspol, capital of the self proclaimed republic of Transnistria, perhaps only Russia recognizes it, anyway you cant stay for longer than 6-8 hours in the area if you try to spend the night, will be lots of hassle, there is a border we need to cross and we heard bad things about the way customs deal with foreigners says our homestay host but we really wanted to get there so we wing it. took the minibus to the Central bus station, where we were supposed to meet Tuuka and Yarom [View Full Entry]

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After much delay, the driver having to go to the police station for some traffic misdemeanor, we finally got to the border around 1 am, straight forward procedure and we bought some Moldovan lei so we have money for taxi when we get to Chisinau. 6am we are in Chisinau, and we negotiated taxi fare to the homestay we booked, Jarmo and Tuuka our Finnish friends we met on the bus wanted to come with us and check if there is room at the homestay, unfortunately it is full and they took a taxi to Larissas mom where it is also [View Full Entry]

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Groeten uit Chisinau in Moldavië! OK, wie had er al van dit land gehoord? Geef maar toe ;-) Het land ligt ingeklemd tussen Oekraïne en Roemenië, en is een van de armste (en corruptste) landen van Europa... Omdat ik weer eens geen bereik heb met mijn mobiel nu alweer een berichtje om te laten weten dat ik nog leef :) Eerst even terug naar Oekraïne. Ik had nog niet gemeld dat ik in het restaurant van mijn hotel in Kamyanets-Podilsky erg luxe gegeten had; de menukaart bevatte enerzijds Japanse en anderzijds Thaise gerechten. Dus ik bes [View Full Entry]

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MORNING GLORY Friday 3:45 in the AM and my Mobile plays the tune “the Entertainer” it’s my wake up call for our (epic) Journey to Moldova. I wake up Marina and Lisa (our little 15 month old bundle of joy) and we start to get dress and wait for our Taxi. So it begins…… The Plan, like all good plans are worked out well in advance and are flexible if anything goes wrong, well the plan was to fly with Czech airlines to Bucharest (via) Prague. And then take a flight to Moldova (Chisinau) with Tarom Airlines. We arrived at [View Full Entry]

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