Seen and heard around Chisinau- part 2

Oh God, many things have been hapenning, and I will never actually get to write about them... Not to mention that, paralelly to my Moldovan discovery adventure, I am also discovering great people from our summer university. As I tend never to write on blogs about people I know, I will skip all the drama and excitement, but let me say that there are some people that I definitely want to keep in touch.

Anyway, today, before leaving to Orheiul Vechi ( again!) , the kid who approached me some nights ago (the one who talked about Moldovan politics and then asked for beer) invited me to sit with him and some people at the little bar next to our dorm. I said, why not. There were three 4o to 50 year old men, a child, and a 30 year old woman. When the kid said enthusiastically that I come from Romania, Man Nr.1 replied rather annoyed :" Yeah, you all call us Russians. When we go to Romania, din rusi nu ne scoateti." I then impressed even myself ( after the six hours of sleep I got in the last 48 hours) with an eloquent explanation of how people shouldn't generalize etc etc. The kid added the famous nu exista padure fara uscaturi clause ( "there is no forest without bad wood" . My translation suffers from sleep deprivation. Please bare with me. ), by refering also to the thief incidents that hit us.

Yeah, I didn't write how Spanish Ivan's camera, Polish Kasia's cell phone, and Dutch Teelkien's cell and money were stolen, leading to a very suspicious police search, a la Caragiale or Ionesco, which concluded that our friends just wanted money from the insurance company and hid (or stole each other's) belongings. Kafkaesque and ridiculous, the police proceedings added a very bitter taste to their Moldovan experience.

Back to our Moldovan table. Man nr 2 was rather sour : "You don't wanna know what I really think of Romania." Hehe. Finally a negative tone, finally someone I've been looking for.
"You just want to buy us."
I explained that nobody in Romania would be interested in Moldova for economic reasons, considering the appaling state of Moldova's economy; the ones that support the unification do it for historical reasons. I mentioned the common heritage, medieval Moldova, Iasi, to which he commented, " the historical capital of Moldova is Tiraspol!" (!!) . The others reacted loudly, the boy even saying " Don't listen to him, he is just an uneducated fool... You see what the Soviets did to the people, they don't even know anything about their history.". Then he continued to compliment Romania, and witnessed that he felt the immediate connection to Romania, as soon as he listened to BUG Mafia ... ( A Romanian hip-hop band singing about injustice behind the grey communist buildings...). I smiled...

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Butuceni village, August 4th

Orheiul Vechi was just so different this time. Nothing of the emptiness and mystery of my first visit, when the three of us (me and the two Swedes) seemed to be the only humans around in a place full of stone, desertic features, herding cows, isolated horses, and happy ducks. Now, buses and what seemed to be a hundred people dotted the landscape. It seemed like we were in Jerusalem, with stony nature, religious air, and crowds of people. I told Olesea, the trip leader, that I've seen the cave monastery and left to the village.

Beautiful, fresh, untouched by time, Butuceni captured my heart like it did the first time. Horse carriages passed alongside me, little kids whispered when they saw me, with one starting to follow me , obsessively repeating "un leu!", "un leu". I got to beautiful house, with pottery all around the yard, and a long-haired man (Yay! finally I;m not the only one...) with a hat just out of Texas came to greet me and invite me in. He explained that all the objects in the yard were old things that kids in the village collected from ruins, old houses and such. His idea was to promote their interest in traditions, and he also asked the kids to make their own objects. The results were great: little treasures, made out of stone or pottery, and more than that, all in traditional styles. I mentioned the rural exodus to Italy and we talked about how all that people want is to leave, not caring about preserving traditions old of centuries. Indeed, this the time of the greatest transformation in Moldovan and Romanian society, with the final axe in the heart of rural civilization. What communism did not manage to destroy in 50 years, labor migration seems to do it in 5. We shall see. In any case, his idea made me very enthusiastic and I respect him greatly for finding such a nice way of bringing kids back in touch with their traditions.

Their objects were displayed in the house, together with his paintings, nice ones ( he gave me a catalogue and an autograph; apparently he had exhibits in France, Belgium, Romania and so on.), and a dozen tricolour flags. The absence of the Moldovan coat of arms made them identical to the Romanian flag, so I asked, shyly, what flags are they exactly. He answered " We all know where we come from. ".

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Trebujeni, 4th of August

An enthusiastic show and a great feast put on by the organizers at a local pensiune in Trebujeni. Another great village, stuck in time, with dusty roads, painted houses, ducks and geese, and plenty of people talking on benches in front of the fences, all curious who these foreigners were.

They welcomed us with bread and salt, which in the speech was described as " an old Moldovan tradition" ( which made me more to think at the kind of welcoming foreign guests had in Ceausescu's time in communist Romania). This Moldovan tradition was followed by the typical Moldovan dish, mamaliga. And Moldovan dances and songs. Long live Moldovan nation-building!