DAYS 1 to 7 - CHISINAU

Despite some trepidation, the afternoon Air Moldova flight from 'London' Luton was on time, only half-full, and served our first taste of local wine.  Chisinau International is not, shall we say, the busiest of Europe's airports and we were through in a trice.  Our taxi driver proved to have almost no fuel(!) but we made it to the back of an apartment block in the very centre of the city, to check into our flat, and the owner pointed us to a nearby supermarket for some provisions before a quick wander and a good night's sleep.

Opposite us was the Orthodox Cathedral on Parcul Catedrale

and, beyond that, Chisinau's Arcul de Triumf

Given our plan to head to Bucharest on an overnight train at the end of the week, of course a priority was to go for a walk

to find the (impressive) station

If you want to get to Russia or, thankfully, Bucharest, you're in luck.  Otherwise... 

Happily, at the international ticket-booth sits an English-speaker, so we came away with two singles for the 'Prietenia' train between Chisinau and Bucharest, leaving in a few days' time at 16.45 via the Moldovan/Romanian frontier at Ungheni

 

As well as the fine historic architecture (of which more below), Chisinau boasts some cracking Soviet-era mistakes, such as this supermarket which I especially admired

By now, we'd worked out how the trolleybuses operate (conductor-run bargains at 2MDL per trip; given it's 25MDL to £1, each trip is 8p!)

Unsurprisingly, they were popular and busy, and also a source of local colour.  A weird Russian chap struck up conversation with me, asking what I do for a living before telling me his surname was Putin and he was a professional ‘keeeller’ (cue eye-rolling from the woman sitting next to me) and that he wanted me to ask the 'King of England' to make him a present of a Bugatti Veron.  He was keen to tell how rich he was but less so when I inquired why, then, he was travelling by bus.

A detour past the 24hr flower market

and the imposing Government House

Next morning, some rather more classical buildings

 

and the first couple of Chisinau's galleries 

and museums

And, after all that, some fine local cuisine

Another day, another museum.  The oldest museum in Moldova, in fact: The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History.

exhibiting among many other things the (almost) complete and enormous skeleton of a 7m year old deinotherium gigantissimum

Time for a day in the countryside - 60km north to Old Orhei, a historical and archaeological complex in the bend of the River Raut. It's one of Moldova's most famous sites - a monastery complex, carved into a massive limestone cliff by Orthodox monks in the 13th century; it was inhabited until the 18th century and, in 1996, a handful of monks returned and began restoring it.

Great idea... except, it was closed on a Monday!  Still, a lovely walk along the river

to the church (with the steps down the cliffside which we couldn't use)

and eventually to the church

If you squint hard, between the right-hand twig and smaller chapel, you can see the monastery doorways set into the rock?

Coming back into the city

And a last beautiful day in the city (the flag flying inside the Arc)

and two last museums - the Museum of the city of Chisinau, in the 22m Chisinau Water Tower, built at the end of the 19th century.  The exhibits were unfortunately mainly in Moldovan but there was a nice view...

and lastly the War Museum, which has a startling reminder of Moldova's past: carved up (a couple of days before WW2 started, in an agreement between Hitler and Stalin) and then given over to the Soviet powers in 1945; in fact, even though the country suffered during WW2, more Moldovans died in the early 1950s when its crops were transported out, lock, stock and barrel, over the border, through Ukraine, into Russia

 

Our last day

past the courts,

the Parliament Building

and a park dedicated to Stephen the Great

And a happy reminder of home on a trolleybus

And so to the station

though there wasn't exactly a scrum

even when the train arrived!

First class turned out to be less luxurious than you might expect

though the entertainment of swapping track sizes at the border kept us interested for an hour or so, carriages lifted on hydraulic jacks to have the bogies changed

 

And so to sleep.  Next stop, bar a few clunks and bumps in the night, Bucharest