Moldova

I stood in the small excursions office at the winery outside of Chisinau and bit my lip.  To my surprise, a tear was forming in the corner of my left eye. This woman standing just a foot away from me had just rather cheerfully informed me that the tour I thought I had booked couldn’t […]

As we approached the border to Transdniestria (a country not recognized by anyone in the world), the large man sitting next to me pulled out his passport. I looked over to see a red cover with gold letters emblazoned on it: CCCP. That is the Russian equivalent of the abbreviation for the Union of Soviet

Orheiul Vechi Monastery is probably the most popular tourist attraction in Moldova, but that doesn’t mean that getting there is necessarily easy.  While my guidebook mentioned a few buses that ran there, other sources on the internet insisted no public transportation would take me there. I asked the staff at my hostel to look into

Channeling my inner Roger Ebert, I am giving Moldova one thumb up and one thumb down. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit I may have had a very different impression of this small country squished between Romania and Ukraine if I visited at another time of year – a time when it wasn’t