Part 88 - Road trip to Moldova

Be still my beating heart

Turns out I wasn't the only weirdo who fancied driving hundreds of miles just to spend time in a slightly different country. Cosmin and I set off from Bucharest on our road trip, stopping for dinner near Braila (at Cosmin's dad's house. Cosmin's dad wasn't there. Cosmin's dad doesn't actually live there). However, his brother Justin, his wife Sylvie, and her parents were there, and there were very hospitable. They fed me a delicious dinner, including sarmale (Romanian cabbage rolls with various fillings). 

Sylvie's parents didn't speak English, but thankfully everyone could still join in the national pastime of laughing at my attempts to pronounce Romanian words. To the (English speaking) man in the street, Ciuc beer could be pronounced a dozen different ways, and all eleven of the incorrect ways sound hilarious to locals. And for the grand finale, being asked to repeat the word lemon (lamaie) and saying the word for blowjob (la muie). Still, everyone was lovely, but there was no time to take photos as it was off to Braila itself to spend the night in their apartment (Cosmin's dad doesn't live there either). 

The next morning, we finally tracked Cosmin's dad down at his girlfriend's house. Papa Popa is hilarious - he only knows a few words of English but he says all of them in a perfect upper-class English accent that I could listen to all day. But, there was no time to chat (or to take any photos), as it was off to the border, pausing only to admire a new bridge over the Danube ...

... and stopping for lunch in a town called Husi, which no matter how many times I said it, should not be pronounced Hussy. 

Compared to other land borders (I'm looking at you Thailand/Laos), the crossing went quite smoothly. There was even a bar you could go to while you wait for the countless border officials to wander about and not do a great deal. 

Somewhat bizarrely, the Moldovan guard asked me (but not Cosmin) if I was going to Moldova to marry a local woman. I couldn't think of a suitably sarcastic response (or even whether he was being serious), but it didn't matter, we were in!

Lock up your daughters Moldova

Most of my knowledge of Moldova stemmed from a book by the British comedian Tony Hawks, in which he attempts to travel to Moldova in the late 1990s to win a bet that he can play and beat all eleven members of the Moldovan national football team. It's as much of a travel book as a comedy one, but paints a pretty bleak-at-times picture of an impoverished ex-Soviet republic. 

It turns out the book is completely out-of-date, because Moldova, and especially its capital Chişinău (don't ask me to pronounce it) is very clean, modern, vibrant, and with seemingly a McDonald's on every corner. 

They didn't shy away from the odd pun either

They're also rather keen to get into the EU, so they have EU flags flying everywhere.  

Mentry. The opposite of Brexit. 

That's not to say there wasn't any reminders of the country's Soviet past ...

A somewhat foreboding playpark outside our apartment

Some of the locals serving you in shops were delightfully rude, and there was plenty of abandoned / half-built buildings scattered about for me to gaze at in awe. 

Look at the smile on my wee face 

The most popular tourist attraction in Moldova is the Mileștii Mici winery, which boasts the world's largest wine cellar. Before we went there, we amused ourselves at their wine fountains...

The winery tour itself was brilliant, mainly because it skipped the boring lectures about how wine is produced and instead transported us straight into the cellars via a wee bus (not the same as a minibus), There are apparently 250km of roads, of which half are currently in use. Everywhere you looked, there were hundreds of barrels awaiting bottling. 

It was also effing baltic

The wine cellar was incredible and appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest wine cellar (in terms of number of bottles). I don't think anyone knows the exact number, but I counted nearly 2 million bottles, stacked high and wide in every direction.

Someone should run a duster round this place

I'll take that bottle on the bottom row please

And there was just enough time for everyone to indulge in the national pastime of taking the piss out of Richie...

... before we were back on the road and to our next destination, which probably doesn't even appear in the top 100 of things to do in Moldova ... its border with Transnistria. 

To cut a long story I don't fully understand short, the breakaway ex-Soviet republic of Moldova has its own breakaway area (Transnistria) that wants to rejoin the Motherland. It's a bit of a lawless area, and the UK Foreign Office warns you not to go anywhere near the place. I reasoned that the last time I ignored their advice, I had a great time, so off we popaed.

When we arrived. Cosmin put on the Kenny Loggin's song "Highway to the Danger Zone" for about the 925th time this trip, although it turned out to be quite an appropriate tune.

To be honest, apart from the poorly camouflaged armoured vehicle and a Russian soldier warning Cosmin not to take any photos, there wasn't a great deal to see. It was BRILLIANT.

Little did the soldier know Cosmin had already taken this picture of me skulking away.
Take that Putin.

Then it was back to our Moldovan apartment for half a night's sleep and a long drive back to Bucharest to say "papa" to my charming hosts (thank you again Cosmin and Paula!). Incidentally, "papa" is Romanian for "goodbye" and not "father", so I imagine Cosmin's dad was a bit confused when I said "Salut papa!" - as I was essentially saying hello goodbye).

A quick tram + train to the airport, and I'm off for the final leg of my mammoth trek, London. I wonder if it has changed much in the last 11.5 months? (Someone told me the Queen died and we had a prime minister last only a few weeks, but it all sounds very far-fetched).