A market economy

It is our last day in Chisinau, our last day in Moldova.  Tonight we go back to Romania on the train.

We tried and failed to organise a trip to one of the vineyards, what a shame it didn’t work out, in the end the timings were just to tight. We need to be back at the station by 16.00 this afternoon, the train leaves at half past.

We pack up all of our stuff, including our clean clothes. We managed to do four loads so this has been a pretty efficient trip, laundry wise. We head upstairs so that we can leave our luggage with our host.

We have a couple of things we want to do today, first we head to the market.

There are shops in Chisinau, it is just that they are consumed by the shear number of market stalls and roadside sellers. It must be really difficult as a shop owner trying to get feet through the door, first the customer must climb over or through half a dozen street sellers.

It is also not as if the produce is any cheaper than, say, the supermarkets. Bread is 6 lei at both, about €0.30.

We picked up one like a sort of baguette for lunch.

We also get some strawberries. Strawberries and cherries are in season at the moment and it seems half of the sellers are competing with each other.

We also begin to wonder how this works from the governments point of view. Is this all part of a black economy, if so it seems to represent a large proportion of the retail economy and must mean the tax take is very small. If our Transnistrian friend is correct and the average income is about €500 per month, no wonder few can afford to pay taxes.

The bits of Moldova that we have seen look like a large allotment. The produce even in the market, generally looks really good quality and there is less of this good stuff at the front, rubbish at the back, they will let you pick stuff for yourself.

The quality of some of the other stalls may be of a lesser quality, but it looks like you could find just about anything tucked away in the various area of this massive market.

We have passed through on numerous occasions now, every time it looks different, every time we find a new corner to explore, but rarely find anything to buy?

Next on the agenda, the national history museum.

We cannot work out the significance of the wolf being suckled by children, looks really creepy to me. Apparently there is some myth relating to a wolf bringing up lost children in the forest.

This is probably about the tenth history museum that we have seen on this trip and it is probably a rather obvious point, but one that had never occurred to us before, they are all remarkably similar.

This is particularly true about early history, especially the Palaeolithic stuff.

This is probably the case. There is no that much knowledge collected on Palaeolithic and Neolithic eras. It is prehistory, i.e. before writing was invented. Moreover, these period are so remote from us. Recent history is more interesting, it makes more sense to us, it helps understand costumes, behaviours, reactions, idiosyncrasy of each culture. SM

It was only really at the last few museums that it really dawned on us that these museums are not so much for tourists much more for the local people who may not go to any other museums and therefore this is their only understanding of their history, it is just that generally all human early history is pretty much the same; fire, domestication of animals, wheel, bronze, iron, flight, internet, mobile phone, social media and blogging.

Because these displays are usually locally focused, one thing you do not get to understand is how these discoveries came about. Did the discovery and techniques to make bronze travel word of month from area to area, which must have been a very slow process, and still led to vast differences in development across Europe, or did the discoveries occur simultaneously and separately in different places?

One thing I can tell you, I personally have seen enough flint axes, terracotta bowls and bone combs to last a lifetime.

Where these museums are less successful is how they cover the recent past. This is a shame because selfishly this is what we are most interested in. The transition away from communism and how the population is coming to terms with its past. Maybe these aspects of their history are too new, too raw. What is more likely is that they just haven’t got the budget to upgrade the exhibits, many are looking very tired.

In the basement, tucked away where no one would find it we did discover a small exhibit about the Russian Gulags and the Moldovans who were sent there, unfortunately there were no translations.

We pick up our bag from the lockers. The strawberries are already a bit of a mess. A pool of juice sits in the locker and the bag is dripping and staining the floor. We make a quick exit. We need to find a place for lunch fast.

The local park will do.

We had intended to also go to the natural history museum where apparently they have a skeleton of a woolly mammoth, but time is getting on and we need to head back, pick up our stuff and get the train.

At the back of the park, as you would expect, areas of affluence. The posh bits of Chisinau.

Large houses,

and gated communities with full on security to keep out the riffraff.

But still some sites in between ripe for development.

We pass through the market for the last time and pick up another bread for tonight. The one at lunch was really good.

We also pop into the supermarket and pick up some bits for dinner, no sausage and cabbage for us tonight!

Several salads later and we have exhausted the last of our Lei. We ascend the tower block in the dodgy lift that lurches to a stop on the thirteenth floor, thank our host and pick up our bags and gently stroll back to the station. The boot sale street sellers are selling their trash outside of the station, just as they were when we arrived.

10 minutes to get to the station, compared to 40 minutes to get to it four days ago. We know this city pretty well. I think we can say we have done Chisinau. It is time to go back home. SM

We are living it up on the return journey, travelling first class. We have the compartment to ourselves, the luxury.

The fabric on the chairs is much nicer, but then is covered by a shiny and slippery cloths which is attached by Velcro and keeps coming off. We also have no plastic plant, what a shame.

We leave on time and after a couple of hours reach the border.

On the way here this was in the middle of the night and we were only vaguely aware of what was happening, there was just a lot of shuffling, backward and forward motion that seemed to last for hours.

Actually what was happening was that we were getting new wheels.

The Moldovan rail network has a different gauge of track to that of Romania, so at the border they have to change them.

To do this they separate all of the carriages, there are six. Each carriage is then lifted off of its wheels.

A engineer comes through each carriage, opens a trapdoor in the compartment and removes a pin that hold the wheels to the carriage.

This is heavy engineering at its finest and its simplest. Six massive jacks lift each carriage and they have one set of jacks per carriage so this all happens simultaneously.

The new bogies are then pulled into place, pushing out the old ones, presumably to wait for the next train tomorrow.

There go the old wheels.

r

And then the carriage is dropped back onto its new wheels. Fortunately they split the train in half, so you can watch this marvel happening on one of the other carriages. You obviously aren’t allowed to get off the train as you are three metres above the ground. At the same time all this excitement is happening border control sweeps through the carriages, searching luggage and checking passports.

There goes the other half of our train, soon to be reattached to us.

And a new engine with the correct gauge of wheels we take us the rest of the way to Bucharesti.

Nearly together again.

What is crazy is the actual difference in track width, less than 50mm.

This is the carriage still on the old track, it still just about stays on.

Thanks to all the engineers for changing the wheels. They all looked pretty old, and this is all heavy, hard labour.

And finally we pull into the station, now on the slightly narrower track, to be connected to the engine and have our final passport and customs check, this time by the Romanians.

The whole process has taken about two hours.

Fascinating, interesting and remarkable, but it dose beg the question, why not just change trains?

At least this time it took place in daylight and we can get a relatively goods night sleep in our little compartment as we trundle back to Bucharesti.

Impressions of Moldova

When we first discussed coming here I thought it was a little too far and considering all the insurance issues with Dora thought it was a bad idea. However our visit to Albania changed all that.

We relooked at the country and it sounded really exciting, really different, really communist. To be honest, that is now just a faint glimmer. This is a different country but is fast catching up with its western neighbours.

But it is catching up at a slower rate pace than the rest of Ex-Soviets countries. Moldova doesn’t have much to offer to be fought for, except for its geopolitical location. Russia has no intentions of losing influence on this area. It has also this ‘pain in the neck’ called Transnistria. Both factors are going to make things difficult Moldova to be seen as equal as its European neighbours. SM

The highlights will always be the oddities, the markets were just an expression of how close this country still is to subsistence living, and the train journey and that utterly fascinating but pointless changing of the bogies. No doubt this will eventually change; track gauge will become uniform, or passengers will change trains, or they will develop a bogey that can adjust the width between wheels by 35mm. Perhaps the country will be less desirable because of it, it won’t be such an adventure, but that is not the point. Countries should not get stuck in the past just for the sake of adventure tourism and backpackers. We had a ball and loved every minute but also wished the bloody guide books would not be so overenthusiastic, just tell it how it is.

GDR