We're up to Day 12!!!

Day 12

Did I mention the horse carts?  We see at least 30 a day.  Yesterday, one was turning onto the road, across my lane of traffic.  The driver had a friend in the middle of the road, watching for traffic.  I slowed down to make certain he could steer on to the road.  The driver stood up and tipped his hat to me.  

The horse carts are hauling a wide variety of things - hay (they are the best, great big bulks of hay that look like you could pull out one piece and it would all fall), logs (not great big ones, but logs about the diameter of a cantaloupe), dirt, produce, junk, people, and big white bags of something.  Today I saw a cart being loaded with hay, out in the middle of a golden field, nothing around, just the cart, the horse, the hay, and the person with a long hay rake and a pitchfork.  The lighting was enough to make me feel like I was in a painting.

We stopped for "lunch" at a LUK oil truck stop, complete with outdoor cafe tables and a well maintained rose garden.  It was a simple, yogurt, muesli, nacho chips lunch.  When in Romania try Romanian nachos.

Train crossings always have a stop sign, even for the tracks that clearly have not been used since the fall of communism or beyond.  Some cars just continue right on, others stop and cautiously proceed at a diagonal.  I have seen trains, all rusted out freight cars, and passenger trains, much like the ones I rode in Europe in 1983 (I.e., old).  One crossing was actually working, not a train in sight, but both arms were down and traffics was stopped.  no one was even driving around the barrier arms.  Then a train appeared, and a car behind us shot up the wrong side of the road and cut in front of the second car.

There are always smiles at our attempts to say thank you in the local language, and I'm happy to report that NS is the one who proclaimed, "let's figure out how to say thank you BEFORE we get in the country!"

Currencies: we are currently carrying some of each of these: euros, Czech krona, Polish zloty, Ukrainian something - we never did figure out what they were called (only REALLY small stuff because we didn't even have enough left for our last tram ride), Romanian leu, and now, Moldovian leu.

That's right, we are in Moldova!!

Despite the horror stories on the internet, we crossed into Moldova with little to no problems.  Well, we're here, so that must mean it was easy enough.  The first eyebrow raise from the border guard was the fact that we did not have a notarized power of attorney from the owners of the car.  I thought of my Russian friend, Nastya, telling me every document needs to have a stamp on it.  The next eyebrow raise was we did not have proof that we had international insurance.  "Moldova requires international insurance."  We kept apologizing, said "this is all we have" and refrained from asking "do you want us to turn around?"  Instead, she told us to park the car, and Stewart went and bought a week's worth of insurance for 4 euros, either that, or he paid 4 euros for us to be able to drive on the roads.

We explained to Nathalie the wisdom of staying calm with people, never getting angry.  Or as we learned from some Swiss cyclists years ago (so S2 claims, I thought it was just being polite), officials will always match your level of anger, so stay calm.  I also remember S2's youngest sister, Evvy, telling me one time, "I don't worry about you guys, because everything always works out for [S2]."

The best description of the countryside would be a less developed Romania, less fences, more run down buildings, and less of them, worse roads, faster cars, and fields and fields of fruit trees, sunflowers, corn and vineyards.  

We're staying in the capital, Chisinau, in a CLASSIC Soviet style hotel (hot water from 8 to 11, AM and PM...we had none in the PM).  Again, only bottles of wine available at the restaurant.  I didn't come here to drink beer, so the smoothest bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I ever had came back to the hotel with us.

My fascination with this part of Europe might be with the idea of this is how we all used to live, before we got in a hurry to make more money and have more things.