Week 1 - Moldova - Manderley Gits

Buna ziua, my dearest readers !

Although, to me it isn’t such a fortunate day. As you might have already read, we’ve been to a wine tasting tour and from this moment on, I can officially say wine is NOT my cup of tea. (pun not intended, in case you’re wondering). Normally I’m not the type to be hung over, but after our wine tasting we enjoyed some other (more, well lots and lots actually) bottles of delicious wine with our dinner. And, well, you can probably guess what happened afterwards. But, as they say, misery loves company, because I’m not the only one wearing my sunglasses today, hoping for the pounding noise in my head to go away. We’re all enjoying our very first Moldovan hangover!

But, enough about that now! Today was our last day in this beautiful country and you can say we have saved the best for last. For the first time, we decided to explore some of the Moldovan culture on our own. Public transport in Moldova is very easy to use (and always on time! With our Belgian public transport, we weren’t quite prepared for this) so we took a city bus from Gara de Nord in Chisinau to Soroca town. It’s a medieval town where you can see fortresses, built to ensure the safety of the Moldovans in medieval times. The town is situated near the Dniestr river and brought us close to the Ukrainian border (our next stop by the way!) We visited one fortress, but we were forced to leave after Anne en Jeroen decided to act like knights who were fighting over the love of Els. I guess the alcohol didn’t quite reach the end of its effect on those two.

 

Afterwards we decided to take a long walk across the city and its green fields. Partially because we were afraid to enter any more buildings, but mostly because we were fascinated by the gipsy community that lives in Soroca town. You can see the people are poor, but they were very nice, given the fact we were staring at most of them. Before we even got the time to visit the candle of gratitude, we had to go back to the hotel to pack our bags and, of course, update you on our latest events.

In the end we can conclude Moldova is a picturesque country with green hills and flower fields so perfect and colorful, you can only see them again in cartoon movies. The country itself is poor but the people are extremely nice. It’s kind of a shame we have to leave already, but I’m sure we’ll come across some other amazing countries and cities. So I don’t see this as an ending. To me it was a perfect beginning to a hopefully equally amazing journey around the world (without any other hangovers I hope).

Lots of peace, love & hangover pills

Manderley






http://www.marisha.net/sites.htm
http://moldova.webark.org/
http://amazingmoldova.com/2010/10/26/soroca/