Chisinau

I am in an apartment in Chisinau, alive and well, very well. I left Bloomington at 10 AM EST on Thursday, spent 4 days with a friend in Stuttgart and arrived in Chisinau at 6:15 local time this evening, Monday. I flew in to Chisinau today on Air Moldova and must say that my experience with Air Moldova was nothing but absolutely pleasant, superb even. Despite the fact that we were bussed to what must be the very bottom of the Frankfurt airport runway/terminal hierarchy (literally miles away from the main terminal, so far that I thought we were going to Frankfurt Hahn), we left on time and everything was seamless. The food was, well simply put the best food I have ever had on an airplane and would rival several restaurant meals I’ve had and enjoyed without complaint.  The picture is below but essentially we were served: chicken w/ a tomato sauce, squash, potatoes, a vinegar based salad, a delicious cake, tea and an extremely tasty chocolate. Everything was cooked perfectly,wonderfully seasoned and tasted extremely fresh. It’s a far cry from the re-hydrated, seemingly nuclear and synthetic proteins and carbohydrates I’ve ever been served on U.S. airlines. Plus, red wine, gratis and good, very good. Aside from the meal, the majority of the two-hour flight was spent listening to the flight attendants give message after message in three language, Russian, Moldovan/Romanian and English.

In other news, I managed to navigate: my flight (including selecting chicken for my meal), passport control, getting a ride from the airport and checking into and paying for my apartment without speaking or listening to a word of English. I suppose that’s something to build on.  I did have one slight hiccup though.  I made the mistake of telling the passport control agent that I was staying for a year.  U.S. citizens are allowed to stay in Moldova for 90 days without a visa, but not one year.  I tried explaining that I would be receiving a legitimate from the government before my 90 days was up but he didn’t seem to know what that was or care. He asked for more ID.  Again I told him that the US embassy would be working with the Moldovan government and giving me a legitimate which allows me to stay for a year. Again he said “what?” but then he shrugged his shoulders, gave me my passport and said welcome to Moldova. Nice, I think…..

After I checked into my apartment and came to terms with the security system I went to the kiosk for sustenance and libations, took a shower, changed out of my sticky and stinky airline clothes into a T-shirt, my Fulbright T-shirt (sheesh, forgive me, it was just a coincidence. It happened to be clean). Tomorrow I will explore Chisinau and try to learn how to function in Moldova, but for now, I’m going to enjoy my Chisinau Blonda, mystery pastries and my satellite T.V. currently showing video of Gagauz folk dances. I should add that Lady Gaga was just on this same channel 15 minutes ago, dubbed in Russian with Romanian subtitles.

P.S. Check out the Photo of the Day for the view from my apartment.