About MoldovaAs the country is currently in the news, I want to say some things about #moldova .My wife and I had the idea in the 2010's to visit all capitals of European countries. In total we visited 48. Of all those cities, the Moldovan capital Chisinau was the strangest one.I mean "strange" not in the sense of "weird" but that we really felt like total strangers in that country, even more than in Moscow or Minsk.The language barrier was really serious. Nearly noone spoke English. I knew about that problem, so I booked a business hotel to avoid at least problems there. That was nearly in vain. Whenever we wanted something, they went and fetched the director of the hotel. Nobody else from the staff could communicate with us.I ordered meals in restaurants with Google translate. Back in 2016 this didn't work really well and I am pretty sure some restaurant staff still tells stories about that weird tourist couple.Usually the problem with "no english" in eastern europe is restricted to older people, in Moldova it affected all ages similarly.But even when there was no common language, people tried to communicate anyway. This is different from a lot of other countries, when people shy away from contact if they have no language in common.Back in 2016 the economy seemed in shambles. A lot of work being done gave off the wiff of occupational therapy. It was done in order to keep people doing something, even if it make no sense and didn't achieved anything.One part of the economy that is recovering is the wine industry. The region in which Moldova lies was historically called Bessarabia and it was famous for its wines. In fact Bessarabian wines were rated before the french ones in the time before the first world war.The wine economy suffered heavily in the communist area, but it is making a rebound. If you ever have the chance to taste Moldavian wines, try them. You will not regret it. They are hard to come by. We try it regularly, but they are very expensive here. Bottles costs 4-5 times the price we paid in the local winery.Ironically the winery was the only place where we were addressed in German. The local employee has lived in Germany and his complete plan for the future was to return there.The country was fought over in wars for several centuries. At first between the Ottoman Empire and the local principalities. Than it became a point of contention between the Russian Empire and the Ottomans. After that Romania and the USSR fought about it.The resulting split can still be felt today and heavily influences the current elections. When we were there, you could see slogans for the unification with Romania, others strongly favored Russia. A part of the country is in open rebellion against the countries government (Transnistria) and has "russian peacekeepers" station in it.As a result, two languages dominate the country: the Moldovan and the Russian language. This partially explains the lack of English as most people have two languages they need to be fluent with.The Moldovan language is very similar to the Romanian one. When we used Google translate in 2016, the Moldovan language was not supported and we selected Romanian as output. That worked sufficently.Though strange, I really liked Moldova. I have seen only a small part of it, but I hope it will find integration into Europe. The Ukraine conflict is overshadowing everything. If the Ukraine falls, everyone expect the Russian forcibly trying to integrate Moldova as well.That is at the core of the current election and may explain why Moscow is reportedly spending 100s of millions dollars to influence those.
