I know this isn't particularly substantive, but please bear with me. Perhaps the coolest thing I was able to bring back from my most recent trip to Chisinau was the map taxi drivers - at least Russophone taxi drivers - use to get around the city. I've seen it used before, and the cabbie I ended up buying it from told me there was a place where I could buy a copy, but since I was leaving the next day I prevailed on him to sell me his.
The map with one fell swoop eliminates all of my questions about why some cabbies in Chisinau still use Soviet-era street names. The reason, quite apparent if you look at the full-size images of the pages below (here and here), is that the map itself is replete with Soviet-era names. In all (I've reproduced below only the title page and the page showing downtown), it's a riot of names of offices and restaurants in two languages and two alphabets - exactly the sort of thing that makes Moldova such a fascinating place to visit when you have somewhere else to go home to, but can make it a challenging place to live when you don't.
The map with one fell swoop eliminates all of my questions about why some cabbies in Chisinau still use Soviet-era street names. The reason, quite apparent if you look at the full-size images of the pages below (here and here), is that the map itself is replete with Soviet-era names. In all (I've reproduced below only the title page and the page showing downtown), it's a riot of names of offices and restaurants in two languages and two alphabets - exactly the sort of thing that makes Moldova such a fascinating place to visit when you have somewhere else to go home to, but can make it a challenging place to live when you don't.
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