Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Chisinau

As the ancient sleeper starts to pull out of Chişinau station, with me curled up and inert in a corner of one of those compartments of faded grandeur, it feels like a good time to reflect on this trip.

Lamps in the Stephen the Great park.

The Kyiv train. Maybe another time.

Moldova has been through an insane number of administrative shifts in recent times. In 1800 it was part of the Principality of Moldavia, along with northeastern Romania, which at that point was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire ruled by the Phanariot Greeks. Not long after, in 1812, the Moldovan part of Moldavia was ceded to Imperial Russia and constituted most of the Bessarabia Governorate. While the rest of Moldavia and Wallachia unified to become Romania in 1859, what is now Moldova remained Russian-dominated for the rest of the nineteenth century, with varying degrees of self-determination. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, a Moldavian Republic was founded, first as an autonomous region within a federal Russia, then in 1918 as a fully independent state, before two months later it unified with (or was annexed to) Romania. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in 1940, the Russians strong-armed Romania into ceding the region to them again, becoming the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Despite the Romanians' best efforts (recapturing the area in 1941 with a little help from the Nazis, but then losing it again in 1944), it remained so until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991 the modern state of Moldova came into existence, and almost immediately the transition from state planning to an unfettered market economy caused financial crisis: it remains by far the poorest country in Europe by nominal GDP per capita. Today's government is pro-Romanian and westward-leaning, but that hasn't always been the case: from 2001 to 2009 the Communists were in power.

History museum.

All this means that the oldest living people in Moldova have lived through three separate periods of Russian rule, two separate periods of Romanian rule, and two separate periods of independence. What has this chequered history done to the city of Chişinǎu?

I'll be honest: I wasn't expecting much from Chişinǎu. This is one of the reasons I decided to spend more time in the countryside than in the city. On TripAdvisor, the top two things to do in the capital involve visiting parks, and the third is "Malldova", a shopping centre. Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised. Both days I was in Chişinǎu I spent wandering around on foot, experiencing and learning about the place. It is an incredibly green city: if you want to get from A to B as a pedestrian, odds are that you'll be able to do a solid chunk of the journey without walking next to a road. The Stephen the Great park borders the cathedral park, which opens onto Chişinau's Eugen Doga pedestrian street. And these are lush, well-maintained parks full of people enjoying the greenery. To the west of the city, the much larger Valea Morilor park is more open, with a lake as its centrepiece, and is frequented by Chişinǎu's fitness freaks. This in turn is separated only by a single road from the Dendrarium, an enormous space for trees, skulking cats, and frolicking children. The heat picked up again over the last couple of days, but the tree cover in these parks meant that it was never unpleasant to explore them.

In the Dendrarium.

People seem happy and relatively well-to-do (though I'm aware this is likely only a city-centre phenomenon). The westward-lookingness is very prominent culturally too, with a lot of Chişinau's restaurants having American, German or especially French pretensions. If it doesn't succeed in being quite as Parisian as it apparently wants to be, that's understandable: Paris itself doesn't always succeed in being quite as Parisian as it apparently wants to be, either. As regards architecture, there are some horrible blunders – both Soviet and post-1991 – but also some beautiful eclectic and neoclassical buildings. One such is the National History Museum. Here, too, there's a westward-looking bias: the museum has lots to say about the Soviet era, none of it positive, but nothing at all to say about Romania's Nazi collaboration, other than to mourn the victims. There is, however, a whole room devoted to Old Orhei, and the lion's share of the finds are evidently here, not in the rather feeble archaeological museum I visited on site: I get a better feel for Old Orhei here, with the painstaking reconstructions and collections of silver ingots and coins, than I did at the place itself.

Former Soviet stadium, now overgrown

St Theodor of Tiron monastery on the outskirts of town

Flash forward. It's 8pm and we're at the border. Earlier I found out that A., a student I once taught at Konstanz, is on the same train, next compartment along, in one of those one-in-a-million chances. There's a bar car on the train, manned by a man who speaks Romanian and Russian. When I use my mixture of Duolingo level 1 Romanian and ropey Ukrainian on him, together with some hand gestures, to ask for the menu, he picks up his phone and shows me a photo of a fry-up with eggs and mici. I assent and put away a beer while he's cooking, in the process getting to know a garrulous New Zealander. The food comes and is magnificent; we waffle on. Later we're joined by A. and his partner, and I opt for another beer. 

Gauge change station at Ungheni.

We need to return to our compartments for passport control, and stay there while the train is switched to standard gauge and we cross into Romania proper; but it's a good opportunity for me to finish writing this post. This is what international travel should be like, not crammed like sardines into a flying tube! 

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Going Underground In Moldova

Trebujeni is a cute little village. It and Butuceni are coated with a layer of fine, cream-coloured sand which, when disturbed, penetrates everything: after an hour or two on foot, it's inside my shoes and socks, impressively given that there are holes in neither. There's a well outside virtually every house here. Given the sand and the heat, I have been consuming vast quantities of cool water, so I can see why it would be a priority.

Well, well, well.

I've spent a day and a half doing not much of anything, venturing out occasionally to explore the village and environs, including a dramatic series of caves just up the path. In between, I return to decompress, enjoy more of Liuba's cooking, lie on the bed, and get the sand out from between my toes, not necessarily in that order. But it's time to move on.

The heat has been intense – not something I hadn't envisaged in August, of course. Even if it's cooler today, doing something distinctly chillier is appealing. So, before returning to Chişinǎu, I take a trip to the Cricova winery.

I'm not particularly a fan of wine. A glass or two with a meal is all I'll usually go for. I tend to think of wine as a particularly dead drink: deracinated grapestuff from wherever, which has been mouldering in a cellar for years, the bottle gathering dust. That said, Moldovan wine (like Georgian wine) is different, very much alive, and vocal. Not always saying the same thing of course: some wines sound like they're trying to sell you insurance, others sound like they're threatening to punch you in the nose. I don't have anyone else to make conversation with on this trip, so the wine's loquacity has been welcome at mealtimes. 

All that said, the Cricova winery is well worth a visit even if you're not interested in wine. I sign in for a tour, join the crowds milling around the tourist-friendly entryway, and eventually we're shepherded onto a sort of elongated golf caddy. This passes through an ominous tunnel mouth and into a true underworld, a seemingly endless warren of wine. We're conveyed past pitch black openings, sterilized machinery, bottles and barrels, through twists and turns. My direction bump is usually pretty good, but I've lost all sense of it within five minutes of entering this place. We're told that there are 120km of tunnels down here. That makes it the world's second-largest underground winery complex; the largest is also in Moldova, though is apparently less interesting to visit.

Tunnels.

Our transport picks up quite some speed, and it gets pretty chilly as we whip through the subterranean air. The website warns visitors to bring a warm jacket. I didn't (since I'm jacketless for the entire trip), but I did put on an extra T-shirt under my T-shirt, and this serves me well. Some of my less British tourmates are shivering even in their coats. I think of climate change and the survival potential of living in places like this.

After a while we're brought to a factory, where a production line of serious-looking women are bottling sparkling wine. (Not champagne, since we're not in Champagne, but made using the same method.) When I ask her, our guide informs me that the sparkling-wine-bottlers are invariably women because women are patient and hard-working. I laugh at the implicature about men, but I don't think this goes down well.

Bottles, all at the appropriate angle.

There's also an underground cinema, where we're treated to a surprisingly philosophical promotional video (what is wine? what is Cricova?). Fortunately, this is accompanied by a very tangible glass of sparkling wine to wash it down. The end of the tour shows us the weirdly palatial underground facilities near the entrance, where the great and the good and many who were neither have assembled to taste the result. From what I can gather, the Cricova winery is one of the jewels in Moldova's crown, and supplied the whole Soviet Union for many years. The first tasting hall is named after Yuri Gagarin, who – he quipped – spent much longer enjoying the wine here than he ever did in space. His portrait hangs by the door.

Gagarin and his letter of thanks.

The tour ends at the gift shop, and we're promised a caddy-bus to transport us back to the entrance, but none materializes. In a rare moment of human self-organization, the group starts walking back to the exit instead. I have my doubts about this – are we even going the right way? – but they are dispelled by the sunlight when we round a corner. Back under the sun, I collect my backpack and trek into the centre of Cricova to get the bus to Chişinǎu. Shockingly, the price for a bus ticket has gone up from the advertized 4.5 lei (about 20p) to a bank-breaking 6 lei (more like 26p). Inspired by my visit, I start thinking about my conversation partner for dinner this evening.

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Old Orhei (With My Feet On The Ground)

Moldova is one of those countries with only one real city. Wikipedia tells me that Bǎlți municipality, the next largest after Chişinǎu, has fewer than 100,000 people, which is barely bigger than Konstanz. This makes it understandable that minibuses – the marshrutkas that are omnipresent in post-Soviet states – are the main means of public transport around here. And indeed, after picking up some lei (Moldovan, not Romanian), my next stop is a marshrutka.

Landscape at Old Orhei.

The first part of my trip takes me out into the country, to Orheiul Vechi ("Old Orhei"). To do that, I need to get a marshrutka from Chişinǎu's massive, confusing central market, which doubles as a central bus station. There's nothing resembling a departures board, and the internet says "ask around", so I do, though this is linguistically tricky: I hear more Slavic around the place than Romanian/Moldovan. After some hand gestures and a friendly man grabbing my rucksack to get my attention, I'm pointed to the marshrutka to Butuceni. This gets quite full, but nothing like the standing-only nightmares I've read about. Shortly after we've left Chişinau proper, the marshrutka stops at a roadside shop, apparently to buy a job lot of glass jars. I don't need to worry about overly anal punctuality here, it seems.

The couple opposite me on the bus are speaking German; probably tourists like me. The urban sprawl soon gives way to rolling hills and deciduous woodland, the same sort I sleepily spotted out of the train window when waking up, but gradually getting hillier. Eventually the marshrutka emerges onto a spur of land with striking views on each side, and rolls down the hill through a tree-lined avenue into the village of Trebujeni.

Old Orhei is situated on a double meander of the river Raut, making for striking limestone cliffs and valleys reminding me a little of my native Peak District. Downstream, the Raut flows into the Dniester, on the other side of which is the rather sad failed breakaway state of Transnistria, but I'm not going there (today, or on this trip). I just head to my guesthouse, where, after an enormous late lunch along with local wine, I repair to my room and conk out. I'm so tired that I sleep straight through dinner and all through the night.

Moldovan lunch.

Vila Roz is named after the roses that fill its enormous garden. The hostess, Liuba, an adorable woman with strong grandmother energy, upbraids me the next morning at breakfast for missing dinner and "going to sleep hungry" – using Google Translate, as she doesn't speak English and I don't speak Romanian or Russian. I apologize and, after another hearty meal, head out to explore the area. It's just gone nine o'clock, but it's already searingly hot, with not a cloud in the sky. I trudge slowly over the hill towards Old Orhei.

The garden at Vila Roz.

We're in the heart of Gimbutas's Old Europe here, and it's fun to imagine pre-Indo-European speakers doing what people do here now: farming, growing grapes, and just generally chilling out. Later it was in Dacia, and never systematically part of the Roman Empire. But the history of Old Orhei really gets interesting with the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions. At this time there arose here a major settlement of the Mongol Golden Horde called Şehr al-Jedid. Mosques, caravanserais, and public baths have survived from this period – the latter just outside Trebujeni on the road leading up the hill. At the top of the hill there's a fort that was built during the slightly later, and much longer-lasting, Kingdom of Moldavia. The touristic centre of Old Orhei is on the other side of this spur of land, where a fourteenth-century Orthodox monastery sits atop another rocky ridge, a network of monastery caves stretching beneath it.

It's still early. With the choice of the archaeological museum or the monastery before me, I decide to walk up to the monastery before it gets even hotter. It's a peaceful, remote place. The caves are even more remote: I tried to reach them, but after some inadvisable scrambling about on a scree slope I decided that my scrambling about on a scree slope was inadvisable and that I should head back to the main path. (Can't say that these guys weren't good at isolationism.)

Old Orhei monastery church.

Down the hill is the sleepy village of Butuceni, where I have a very cheap and tasty lunch of aubergine and meatballs at the only restaurant I can find before following the valley back round to the archaeological museum. This, unfortunately, is disappointing: just one room full of potsherds and bones with terse descriptors ("pot, 14th cent."). Time for the slog back over the hill to Trebujeni, now in the full heat of the afternoon sun. I detour to a promising-looking cafe at the top of the hill for some refreshment, but, despite the opening hours stated both on Google and on its front door, it's closed. Still, there's a viewpoint nearby, so the trek didn't go completely unrewarded.

View over the Butuceni meander from the viewpoint.

Back at Vila Roz, I glug a 1.5-litre bottle of water and prepare myself for some less energetic activities.

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: The Prietenia

Twenty-four more hours of travel. The rest of the journey on the Dacia from Transylvania through to Bucharest passed uneventfully, if scenically. For a while we were stopped at a little rural station in the Carpathian foothills, and youths were hanging out of the open train doors smoking cigarettes – something I remember from my first trip to Romania, fourteen years ago. Between Braşov and Bucharest I was on my own in the compartment. The conductor informed me that we were delayed by an hour, but I laugh in the face of this hour. I have four hours to change trains in Bucharest, and even if that didn't work out, I could hop off at Ploieşti and change trains there, since the Moldova train traverses the same stretch of track north of Bucharest before turning off to the east towards Iaşi and Chişinǎu.

The Moldova train.

But it did work out, and I'm left with three hours to kill in Bucharest. I decide against doing anything touristy, since the station, Gara de Nord, is outside the town centre and I don't want to risk it. Instead I park myself at a coffee shop and indulge in a non-caffeinated beverage, then, when my stomach grumbles, move to the station bistro for a Romanian speciality of chicken with sour cream and polenta. This leaves me plenty of time to buy a couple of pastries before the train to Moldova rolled in.

Gara de Nord isn't dead, like most of the enormous Balkan stations I got to hang about in last year. Its atmosphere is pleasingly vivacious, a riot of colour, with market stalls set up in the main thoroughfare. In the corners and around the edges a shade of grime and sweat has been dutifully if unconsciously applied by the many passers-by. All the shops take card payment; despite the grime, we're unquestionably in the twenty-first century.

Or are we? The arrival of the overnight train to Chişinǎu, the Prietenia ("friendship"), makes me reconsider. It's ancient, maybe antediluvian, an enormous chunky box of a thing. Leaning out of the back door as it reverses into the station is a man in a crisp white shirt waving a little yellow flag. The train is operated by Moldovan railways, and in every compartment window hangs patriotic Moldova branding.

Window drapes.

Inside, the train corridor has disrobed to display various solid-looking metal gizmos. The doors to the next carriage look about six inches thick. They look like they're built to withstand a nuclear blast, I think to myself – and then reflect that, if these coaches were built during the Cold War, that appearance may not be too far from the truth. There are some laminated handouts on a wooden shelf with instructions in Romanian, in Latin script, but all the older signs, embossed metal, are in Cyrillic. There's a toilet, opening directly onto the track, but no shower.

The compartment.

The compartment, which I have to myself, has a glamorous, regal feel to it. On each side is a long bench which doubles as bed, upholstered in patterned burgundy. Above each seat is a mirror, creating an infinite tunnel of light. There is a small Persian rug on the floor, making me embarrassed to be wearing shoes, so I take them off. There's no air conditioning, and with temperatures of 35 degrees outside it's stiflingly hot, causing me to worry about how I will sleep – but the window can be opened, letting in enough fresh air for it to be tolerable. On either side of the door is an old, wire coat hanger, and these jangle against the wall like wind chimes as the train powers north. Outside, the moon dangles in the air like a penny, ready to be inserted into the slot that gives this thing more juice.

Full moon.

This route skirts the Carpathians on their eastern flank. My sleep strategy isn't quite as effective as it was last night; I'd previously thought that turbulence was restricted to aeroplanes but due to my experience with eastern Romanian railways I now know otherwise. The roaring and clattering gets too much at some point, and I close the window, but by this point it's cooled down a lot. Later I'm woken again for passport control (x2, as usual in this part of the world), and I'm vaguely aware of some clanking and creaking as the carriage is switched over from standard to broad gauge, but the next time I'm properly awake is after 7am, when sun is streaming in through the gaps in the curtains. I buy a "country group 2" roaming pack and start munching my börek (breakfast of kings, sadly only found in this part of the world with any regularity). And shortly after that we're in Chişinǎu. I've spent 43 of the past 48 hours on trains, and am looking forward to some time with my feet on the ground.

Chişinǎu station.

Troutworthy's Travel Blog: Into Transylvania

Those of you who've been following my exploits closely know that I am a completionist and like setting myself silly tasks. Probably the biggest is my current mission, for which the clock is ticking: to visit all the countries of Europe before my fortieth birthday. And that's where this trip fits in.

Archita with its Saxon fortified church, seen from the train.

Only five countries remain. Three of those are not an option right now, for war-related reasons: Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. That leaves two: Cyprus – which I still might fit in before time runs out, though it's tricky without flying – and Moldova. Which is where I'm heading now, for a few days of summer relaxation.

To get to Moldova from Konstanz, you only need to change trains twice – the same as if you're going to London, or indeed many places around Stuttgart. The difference is that this trip takes forty-eight hours. The crucial first step is a somewhat unexpected one: get a local bus to Allmannsdorf and then a slightly-less-local bus across the lake to the small industrial town of Friedrichshafen. This bus goes onto a boat; the trip will be nothing if not multimodal. From there follows a somewhat implausible direct train to Vienna, which takes all day. With any luck I'll be in time to catch the sleeper to Bucharest, and from there another sleeper to Chisinau. Only two changes.

It's cool and crisp the morning I set off, perhaps the first truly chilly morning we've had all sweltering summer. I don't love boats at the moment, but I do hop off the bus in order to take in the lake breeze and survey the surroundings. Compared to this – confirmed holiday destination Lake Constance – Moldova is an unknown, a country I'd perhaps never have thought to visit if it wasn't for my completionist scheming.

I've splurged on business class for the nearly eight-hour Railjet to Vienna. It's snazzy, with big, reclinable black leather seats, waiter service, and a little reading light. Even here I can't avoid crying children or the small clique of Austrian men whose opinions everyone in the carriage Must Hear. But they fade into the background as the train makes the ascent from Feldkirch up the valley to the Arlberg.

Do you deserve this? Do I? Does anyone?

The Arlberg railway is a contradiction, simultaneously a quaint, scenic mountain line and one of Europe's trunk routes. The stretch between Bludenz and Innsbruck is a treat, and I spend much of my time staring out of the window. The highlight is the quintessentially European Trisanna bridge, over a high mountain gorge with a castle at the end of it.

After Wörgl, the train passes back into southern Bavaria for the stretch to Salzburg, and the terrain oscillates between rolling hills and plains, with the latter predominating as we approach Vienna. I stocked up on non-perishable snacks at Friedrichshafen for the sleeper portion of the trip, and don't have much time in this city (magnificent though it is in its own right), but it's enough to sit and have a lasagne and a glass of red wine at a generic Italian restaurant at the station.

Next leg of the trip is the venerable Dacia sleeper from Vienna to Bucharest, one of Europe's longest and slowest. I'm in a 3-bed sleeper compartment with a Romanian man; a Chinese man joins us at Budapest, near midnight. The compartment is basic but functional and mercifully cool. I pop an over-the-counter sleeping pill (top tip for these journeys!) and fall asleep to the smell of burning brake pads. The Hungarian and Romanian border controls in the early hours, and my Romanian friend getting out somewhere, wake me only briefly, and I get at least a semi-decent 8 hours' sleep.

Romanian Dacia sleeper car arriving in Vienna.

When I wake up in the morning the train has started to rise into the Transylvanian Carpathians. This is one great advantage of the Dacia: we don't get in until mid-afternoon, but the most beautiful part of the journey is during the day. As the train passes Sighisoara, I head down to the bar car, which has nice big windows and is well stocked with everything you need for a healthy diet.

The bar.

We pass Archita, a beautifully bucolic Transylvanian Saxon village, as I sip my instant coffee and munch on yesterday's Butterbrezel. At every station we pass, the stationmaster stands to attention in his cool hat. I really must revisit this part of the world some time soon. The train is crawling along, and on a long curve I can see that that's because we're behind a freight train. A map of European train speeds I found on Reddit tells me that the journey gets slower and slower as we head east: from an average of 141.6 km/h (Germany) to 106.8 (Austria), dropping down to 83.7 (Hungary), then 72.9 (Romania), and ultimately into the dreaded No Data (Moldova). Is Zeno's paradox about to kick in, preventing me from reaching my goal? Time will tell; but so far so good.