Wait, Where Are We?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re still in Helsinki, Finland. The temperature is beginning to drop, but my long pants are in my suitcase. Which has progressed as far the Helsinki airport, but now appears to be stuck again. So close, and yet so far.
I wrote this essay a month or so ago. Back when I had luggage, and not a care in the world.
Wait, Where Are We?
Y’all, I’m so intrigued by Moldova. I mean, I’m writing this about 12 hours after we arrived, so thus far I’ve seen: the inside of the airport, the inside of a taxi, the inside of my eyelids, and the breakfast room at the Courtyard by Marriott. But it has been fascinating. (Except my eyelids. They were just tired.)
Thing 1: One of Lee’s members commented that if we’re in Moldova, we’re in the eye of the storm. Well, yes. We’re about 60 miles from Odessa. For more information about Odessa, see: any news source.
Thing 2: Everything I read before we arrived (admittedly not much) indicated that Romanian is the local language, but most people also speak Russian. The name of the capital—Chișinău—is Romanian. Before we went, Lee and I spent weeks debating the pronunciation (we were both wrong). BUT! Our boarding passes, to my consternation, said Kishinev.
I had NO idea we were going to Kishinev. None whatsoever. For a hot second, I was afraid we were getting on the wrong plane. But no—Kishinev was the old name, when the region, then called Bessarabia, was part of Imperial Russia. I had heard of Kishinev, but honestly didn’t even realize it still exists. Turns out, that’s how you pronounce Chișinău.
Thing 3: There is rose petal jam on the breakfast buffet. I adore rose petal jam. Especially on the magical little cottage cheese pancakes called syrniki.
I wrote all the above in my excitement on our first morning in Chișinău. Having since had some time and distance for reflection, I stand by my original impression: our brief time in Moldova was not dull.
Chișinău is a small, but very pretty city. I read somewhere that it has the most green space of any capital in Europe. It’s full of tidy parks. Most streets are lined with trees. There are productive gardens and even fruit trees behind a high percentage of houses. There’s hipster coffee and fancy cars and some really good food.
There is also a lot of concern about what the war next door in Ukraine might mean for Moldova. The day the war started, the bombardment was audible in Chișinău. During our five days in the city, the airport was evacuated three times because of bomb threats, and the airport is only one of dozens of buildings that have been threatened. At this point there have only been threats, thank goodness, but you can tell people are worried. I don’t blame them one bit.
There’s a tremendous amount of history in Moldova, even though most Americans have no idea where it is. While we were there, I read a book about the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, and the impact it had on world events (like Jewish immigration to the US, and the establishment of Israel—both more than a little significant). I also started to read about the Nazi occupation of Kishinev, but honestly, that’s a theme that begins to take a mental toll. If you can figure out which part of Europe doesn’t have traumatic stories of the Second World War, please let me know.
Then there’s the Jewish cemetery: it’s said to be the largest in Europe. We went on a muggy, warm summer morning. Smack in the middle of the city, there’s a tall wall with a beautiful wrought iron gate. You step inside, and you’re in a jungle of trees and creeping vines. A few paths are paved, but most of the graves are jammed together with no space between, and the rampant, impenetrable undergrowth is gradually pulling them down. The headstones are engraved with three alphabets, sometimes all on one stone: Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Romanian. It was a beautiful, untended, peaceful monument to a rich and troubled history.
And then there was our day trip to Transnistria, which is and isn’t part of Moldova. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, that was also fascinating, just because it’s so unusual (to me) to be in a country that doesn’t exactly exist. I mean, what makes a country a country, really? Border police? Passports? Taxes? Or is a country only a country if everyone outside of that country says it is?
There is no there there. What is reality even? What does it all mean??
Existential crisis, anyone?
It’ll be okay … Have some rose petal jam.
Take care,
Lisa
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