You went where??

Here’s where the fun begins.

Han Solo

With travel as with life, there is a battle within us. Each of us struggles (or doesn’t struggle) to find the curious balance between independence and security. On the road, we can create an itinerary, pre-book our lodging, run down a list of the must-sees. I think we do this because it makes us feel safe. We imagine that we can control the adventure.

I always forget that feeling safe is not why I travel. At least at first.

Ultimately, there is a point in each of my journeys when I’ve completely exhausted my safety blankets and simply walk to the station and buy a ticket to somewhere that strikes my fancy at that particular moment.

Scary? Yes.

Exhilarating? Yup.

So, having found myself at the same hotel in Bucharest without the slightest interest in Bucharest; and then finding myself in Iaşi without frankly much interest there either, my fear of the unknown finally submitted itself for an ass-whooping at the hands of my own boredom.

So, I went to the Autogar and after much wrestling with my fear and posted bus schedules, a somewhat hesitant approach to a ticket counter with the opener “Vorbiţi Engleza?” (roughly, “Y’all speak English?”), three nice Romanian ladies shrugging and giving that wandering what-the-hell-are-we-going-to-do-with-this-idiot look, and a completely unexpected display of linguistic prowess by an American (yes, that’s funny), I managed to secure for myself a four hour maxitaxi into the Republic of Moldova.

I don’t know that I’d really intended to go to Moldova, but it was a good call. Turns out I even speak some Moldovan, almost exactly as well as I speak Romanian. Who knew?

Some background, since I’m just going to take a stab here that most (both) of you don’t know much about this particular corner of the world. Republica Moldova, more or less, was the eastern part of Romania before World War II when (guess who?) the Soviets annexed it into the USSR. Remind you of anything yet? No? Go review.

Now, when I set out, it really was not my intent to tour the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Nonetheless, here we are.

As with Latvia, in the annexation of Moldova, many ethnic Romanians were deported to Siberia. Ethnic Russians were moved in to take their place. Written language was switched into the Cyrillic alphabet, and Russian became the language of commerce and advancement.

With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly formed Moldavian government’s first mandates were to revert back to the Western alphabet, and establish the limba de stat as Moldovan (er, Romanian). Oh, and adopting a national anthem that just happens to be the Romanian national anthem, and...

Fearing that this was a prelude to Romanian reunification, the ethnic Russian population, well they, well, I’ll tell you in the next post.

Oddly, reunification never happened. In fact, in 2001, Moldova freely elected a Communist government to power under Vladimir Voronin. Last year (and this also may sound familiar, but the BBC was more interested in reporting an Iranian revolution than a Moldovan one…), the Communist government was again re-elected under allegations of foul play and twitter-organized street protests by the opposition parties. The follow-up election again established near-majority support for the Communist Party.

But, since no party was able to form a ruling coalition, and since constitutional rules prohibit a third dissolution of the government within the same year, Moldova is currently under an interim government headed by pro-unificationist Mihai Ghimpu.

Ghimpu’s pro-Romanian sentiments have made him just a bit unpopular. Recently, the Moldovan populace is in an uproar over Ghimpu’s declaration of June 28 as a day of mourning for the Soviet occupation, rather than acknowledging the Soviet liberation.

Ghimpu’s popularity is at a stunning 2%. Even Al Haig had better ratings when he was president.

Say what you want about Moldova, or communism, or whatever, but this is not the story of Latvia. Certainly it seems there's no cookie-cutter approach to the disintegration of empires. And this particular story is certainly not playing out to Western expectations. Could be why we've never heard of the place?

Bottom line, Moldova is not a tourist destination for westerners. There are a few things to see, but nothing that can’t be found bigger and better in neighboring Romania. That aside, I found the place to be thoroughly fascinating, and quite the jackpot on the bus station travel Lotto. Not to mention that it's pretty high up on the not-likely-to-see-American-tourists-here scale, and that's always a good thing.