Moisturised Humour

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Well, Moldova, where to start? It's Europe's poorest country and we headed straight into it, using the transport more commonly known as... the friendship train!! Or at least that's what our new Moldovan friend Victor told us... Anyway, this story requires a more logical approach.

We left Brasov on a lovely night train (lovely because it actually had beds) and headed towards Chisinau with very little idea of what lay ahead. First of all, we met our new dutch friends - Oliver and Christian, who have now been adopted slightly because they're 18 and well, they need guidance as you'll realise once this story continues. The other person we met on the train was Victor, a Moldovan who has been studying in Michigan for 8 years and had come back to Moldova for a wedding - he was most bemused as to why we would want to go to Chisinau but provided much entertainment for the night all the same.

So around midnight we decided to grab some sleep which was interrupted several times by romanian passport control, romanian customs, moldovian passport control, moldovian customs and the need to change tracks between the two countries by lifting the train across - this takes ages and involves lots and lots and lots and lots of banging.

In the morning, we took a taxi with the dutch guys and another guy from Burnley to our hostel where we were the only ones with reservations, but as we've found - things can always be sorted out somehow. During the day it was mostly exploration of Chisinau - the market, beer in the park etc. etc. Most of the time to be honest, people just laughed at us all, for no apparent reason other than shyness and bemusement at why a load of foreigners are wondering around Chisinau. The greatest revelation however was the extreme cheapness of everything, for example - we thought a slice of melon was 2 lei (less than 10p) - it turned out this was the price PER KILO! Its insane, the dutch guys had a challenge of how many pastries they could buy for under a euro and, well, it was a lot.

In the evening we headed out to eat with our adopted train friends who were staying at the hostel, and who should we bump into but Victor!!! Which was actually very convenient because we couldnt read the menu so he painfully translated every item for us. Over a two course dinner with two bottles of wine (approximate total - less than five pounds) we joined Victor and his friends and headed to a bar. Now, ridiculously cheap alcohol... well... hmm. We ordered several large giraffes of beer, shared out amongst everyone and then around 4am it moved onto vodka - for its reawakening qualities. However, it wasn't just a vodka shot, it was accompanied by cheese, pure raw pork fat (avoided), gherkin and bread which had to be done in some special traditional combination - who knows, who cared by this point? Anyway, even remembering that makes me feel slightly queezy.

And that, was the first night in Moldova, wait for the second...

Oh, and moisturised humour, that was Victor's version of Moldovan humour with reference to dry british humour: "Moldovan humour is like dry british humour, but... moisturised".

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