OK, so that's a bit of a high-flung post title. But I decided to answer - in a totally subjective way - the question, just for myself and not because anyone asked, "What is Chisinau like?"
For some reason, I always find this town to be refreshing and relaxing, even when it's 35+ degrees outside and the sun is stifling, as it's been for the past few days. Maybe it's just that it's such a nice break from the fast-paced bling-bling of Moscow, but as I recall I enjoyed coming here plenty back in the day when we lived in the States as well. I've been here at least once a year since 1999, although in recent years our visits have been shorter, and I've only seen Chisinau in the summer, when I've been either a student or on vacation, so that may bias me a bit.
Walking the streets, it seems like a cross between a Soviet regioinal capital and a small European city. Chisinau has a surprising sense of sprawl for a city of only around 700,000; to see all of the outlying neighborhoods - which, thanks to Soviet urban planning, consist of rows of similar or identical apartment blocks - you definitely need more than just your own two feet.
People are down-to-earth and maintain a sense of dignity about them; even though you can tell many people are struggling to get by, they go about their business without the frantic energy which is so prevalent in Moscow. You can still get away with speaking Russian to most Moldovans in Chisinau and not experience the rude response with which such an act of linguistic presumption might be met in some other former Soviet capitals. In fact, you're more likely to see local Russian-speakers being mildly rude to people who attempt to address them in Moldovan, which some of them persist in not knowing, or pretending not to know.
It's a strange detail, but one of the things that places Chisinau in Europe in my mind is the assortment of motor vehicles on the streets. The marshrutka-riding* masses of Chisinau travel in roomy Mercedes minibuses, while their middle-class brethren in Moscow are relegated to shoddy, Russian-made Gazelles, which even the Moscow authorities acknowledge are unsafe; and in Uzbekistan the marshrutki are a step below that - predominantly crumbling Soviet-era RAFiki and tiny UZDaewoo Damas contraptions.
In downtown Chisinau you'll also see the elites of the nation - and some upper-middle-class folks as well - tooling around in shiny BMW and Mercedes sedans, which are available used on the local market for prices which seem surprisingly low to anyone familiar with the American used-car market. The prices are less surprising, perhaps, when one considers the shady ways in which many of these vehicles make the journey to Moldova from their native Germany.
As for the country as a whole, it doesn't quite live up to the poster I saw at the airport a couple of years ago, which proudly proclaimed, "Moldova - the prosperous land."** It is a beautiful land, though, and rich agriculturally - rolling fields of sunflowers, apple orchards, and vineyards interspersed with forests - inhabited by beautiful people who are surprisingly friendly and hospitable, considering their historical misfortune of being located on a borderland between empires.
Walking along Blvd. Stefan cel Mare, you might overhear people speaking Turkish and even Arabic, another reminder that Moldova is on the outskirts of Europe, although you're much more likely to overhear people speaking Russian - it is the second state language, after all - and of course the native Moldovan.
If you're interested in seeing/reading more, check out the photo galleries here and here; an excerpt from the Lonely Planet's Romania & Moldova guidebook here and their Moldova page here; Wikipedia articles on Moldova and Chisinau; and the brief on Moldova from the ever-popular CIA World Factbook, which notes that 25% of working-age Moldovans are estimated to be employed outside of the country. Additional recommended reading is this blog post which is somewhat Chisinau-related. I hope to have some photos to post when I'm back in Moscow at the end of the week.
*In the Russian-speaking world, "marshrutka" is short for "marshrutnoe taksi," and refers to a minibus which runs a specific route, usually a route also served by larger city buses. Marshrutki, though, are faster than city buses, and more convenient because in many cities you can flag them down and ask them to stop anywhere along the route, not just at designated stops. They are also more expensive than regular city buses and are privately operated.
**The Moldovan boosters' attempt was at least somewhat more credible than the posters I saw at Tashkent's international airport, which trumpeted, "Uzbekistan - the Great Republic."
6 comments:
You ought to write for guide books, you know that?! :-)
The language comment you made interests me the most. "In fact, you're more likely to see local Russian-speakers being mildly rude to people who attempt to address them in Moldovan, which some of them persist in not knowing, or pretending not to know." This is actually a political statement!
To me, it means that however hard these "newly-born democracies" try to assert their indepence from Russia and march in step with the United States, their PEOPLE still have Soviet (in a good sense of the word) mentality. They still perceive Russia and other former republics as their closest allies and friends! However hard their governments are trying to make believe that they are partners with "the West", the people are still where they used to be and where they should be for the common good.
Well, they've yet to discover that their western friends don't give a rat's tail about them! Nope, neither European Union, nor the US...
Thank you for your post--I read your blog regularly and was excited to hear about your trip to Moldova. I plan on returning this winter. My experiences of Moldova have only been around Christmastime, when it is -5C and wet and snowy.
I feel the need to clarify that there is no "Moldovan" language. The term "moldavskiy" was coined by the Soviets to separate ethnic Romanians in the Moldovan SSR from those in the state of Moldova in Romania (its capital being Iaşi). You might describe the sort of Romanian spoken in Moldova as a pastiche of Russian memes and vocabulary mixed with Romanian. One of the unique aspects of the Romanian language is that it is universally understood. Someone from Baia Mare in Romania can understand someone from Chişinău, with little difficulty.
There were huge protests in 2002 against making Russian the official language--they were successful. http://yam.ro hosts quite a few photographs and stories from the protests.
Misha, of course I knew that was a political statement! But I am glad someone caught it, I tried to slip in just the one political comment and keep everything else travel-guide-like. In keeping with the apolitical spirit of my initial post, I'll refrain from commenting on your other observations, except to note that when it comes to Moldova you're right - the US has not shown nearly enough resolve in the effort to get the Russian "peacekeepers" out of Transnistria, which shows that the US (logically) is not willing to ruin its relationship with Russia in order to keep Moldova happy.
Dennis, you should definitely check out the country in the summer. I have to say that I think your statement about language is an even more political one than mine, though. I agree that Moldovan and Romanian are for the most part mutually intelligible - I often compare the difference to UK English and US English, in that there are different accents and certain words that are not mutually intelligible - and that the "Moldovan" label and concept was introduced by the Soviets with a very specific purpose. However, now that many Moldovans (from gov't officials to the folks out in the villages) themselves call their language "Moldovan," I'm certainly not going to be the one to tell them they have to call it "Romanian."
You know more about the recent history of language politics than I do, it seems - a Moldovan friend of mine told me that Russian had been given official state language status recently, and I didn't question that statement. But even if Russian doesn't have official status as a second state language, it is officially recognized as the "language of inter-ethnic communication," and all official government documents are published in both Moldovan (Romanian) and Russian.
I think your comparison between the UK and the US is a perfect fit for the differences between the Romanian spoken across Bessarabia and Romania. For example, both countries use "Do you speak English?" however, in England, proper pronunciation is referred to as SBS (Southern British Standard) or RP, Received Pronunciation.
I can only speak from my experience in a village outside of Chişinău. None of the villagers that I met spoke more Russian than a few simple phrases. Even the small chioşc clerk selling Lucky Strike and vodcă spoke Romanian.
Every now and then if you get into the right rutieră (maxi-taxi), you will find a sign that reads "Romanian only" or "No bilingualism" from a rather patriotic Moldovan.
I had the experience of being told to shut up in Russian by the same driver of the 102 route for saying the phrase ,,la semafor, vă rog" which means "at the intersection please." He was usually driving his route when we climbed on to head home for the day. When I would hand him my cinci lei and say ,,doi vă rog" (for two people at 2 lei each) he would pretend not to hear until I would say ,,dva."
Drivers (of taxis especially but of marshrutki/rutiere also) seem to be a russified professional group throughout the former Soviet Union. My experience in Moldova was that they would often want you to give them the pre-1992 street names, and this was in 1999-2000! To my delight, this allowed me to learn (from some cabbie's late-night grumbling about the new name) that Blvd. Traian (or perhaps Dacia) in Chisinau used to be called Bulevard Sovetskoi Armii. In Chisinau, though, the Russian-speaking cabbies are not always alone in doing this - I have Moldovan friends who still refer to Str. Mitropolit Banulescu-Bodoni as "Gogolya," probably because it's less of a mouthful. The linguistic frontier factor is one of the most interesting things about Moldova, and I guess we have the tolerant, laid-back Moldovan people to thank for this, for not turning Russian-speakers into a semi-oppressed class the way their counterparts in the Baltic republics have.
SpinningOne, you know, I have heard it once in a long while in Moscow - some older person will talk about Gor'kogo instead of Tverskaya - but where I'm more familiar with this situation in Russia is in St. Petersburg, because I still remember some of the street names from back when it was Leningrad. We lived there from 1984 to 1987, and no one can tell me that we lived on Malaya Morskaya St. - it will always be Ulitsa Gogolya in my memory, and it will never sound right to turn the corner on Gorokhovaya instead of Dzerzhinskogo. But of course I haven't lived in the city for longer than a month and a half since the '80's, so for me it's a bit frozen in time. People who live in cities like Chisinau all the time and don't acknowledge the new street names are a bit of a different case, I think. It is an interesting phenomenon, I wonder if it happens anywhere else in the world nowadays other than in the former Soviet Union - maybe in Eastern Europe as well.
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