Back in 2020, when all this pandemic shit show started, and we were living in strict quarantine, I was extremely bored. Well, of course, I was. Who wouldn’t be? Then, I came up with the idea to ask my fellow travelers, on one Facebook group, if there was any place where they wouldn’t go back ever again and explain why. Because I had one precise place in my head. It was Chisinau.
The results
I expected to hear some bad stories about how someone was robbed, lost, or sick abroad. Or maybe their expectations were too high, and they were deeply disappointed with what they saw. Of course, it’s not the county’s fault, but some bad experiences from a foreign country might obscure its beauty. As I like to say, most things in life are subjective, and people judge things based on their own previous experiences.
I had to set a tone; therefore, I uploaded a picture from Chisinau with a “Never again” stamp. Maybe it was a bit too harsh, but this is how I felt back then. Of course, I got attacked by an army of the internet’s best and brightest who claimed that I’m simply spoiled, incapable of appreciating things, and every place on this Earth is worth visiting a second time. But I also heard stories that I was hoping for. Someone thought Paris was highly overrated. Someone wouldn’t like to go back to Turkey, although it is one of the summer capitals in Europe. In the end, my little survey showed how different all of us are and that the same place resonates differently for separate individuals.
So, why not Chisinau?
A bit of historical context
Moldova as a sovereign state was established just in 1991. Before this, it was a territory thrown like a hot potato from one country to another. It belonged to the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire. It also was a part of Romania and eventually ended up in Soviet Russia. As a Lithuanian, I can affirm that it was never a good thing to be part of the former Soviet Union.
A year before its independence, a Moldovan region called Transnistria proclaimed its own “state” which isn’t recognized internationally until this day. It is also a painful topic for locals because that region accumulated the majority of the county’s industry. Officially it is better not to travel to Transnistria. However, many people still do this. Based on available public resources, this place hasn’t changed much since 1990.
So here we have another agricultural post-soviet country that struggled to apply market economy, where the level of corruption used to be (is?) high. On top of that, Moldova suffered from a few strong earthquakes. As a result, we have one of the poorest, one of the least visited countries in Europe.
First impressions
One clever person once said that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That is more applicable for job seekers, but this quote also fits here. We arrived at Moldova’s capital Chisinau from Minsk – another not very inspiring European city and the first impression exiting the airport terminal was dull: old trolleybuses, probably older than I was at that time, operating in an unappealing environment, and us having to battle extreme heat.
But here’s another quote, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Therefore, I decided to try not to jump to conclusions too early. We needed to reach the city center somehow. We got in one of these old trolleybuses that had to take us not too far from our hotel. Once we hopped off the overstuffed trolleybus, we still had to ask for directions to reach our hotel. The problem was that no one talked to us in English. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I needed to brush my old rusty-dusty Russian skills. Luckily, that helped us a lot.
Walking towards our destination, I observed the surroundings carefully. I couldn’t believe that our hotel was near the city center because it definitely didn’t feel like it. You know, a city center is supposed to be beautiful, right? Instead, it felt like walking in any busy Lithuanian town in the early ’90s. Street vendors with a cigarette in their mouths were directly staring at us. When you pull a suitcase, no other additional explanation is needed. I risk being considered a snob, but I couldn’t help it and scanned the apparel street vendors offered to buy. Even clothes looked like they were somehow transported in a time machine from the early 2000s.
“Sightseeing” in Chisinau
Finally, we reached “Berd’s” hotel. I have to admit, it undoubtedly stood out in that soulless scenery of grey buildings. It looked like a magician took it from somewhere else and placed it in Chisinau. Luckily, the hotel’s exterior matched its interior. The staff was great, our room as well.
We settled in and went to the reception to get a tourist map. A smiling lady gave it to us, and we opened it. There were less than 10 touristy places marked on the map, and the majority of them were government buildings. I had a bad feeling that Chisinau’s poor cover matched its content.
We started our self-guided city tour with the main highlight – the Nativity Cathedral, which was…okay. It was built in a neoclassical style, which in its nature isn’t highly decorative. Right next to the cathedral, there is Triumphal Arch. The Russian empire built it in 1840 to commemorate its victory against the Ottoman Empire.
Then we simply walked around trying not to trip over uneven pavement and wavy sidewalk tiles. They had to update their infrastructure urgently. And these ugly gigantic buildings which supposed to be beautiful but turned out to be typical examples of Soviet architectural “taste.”
We made quite a big loop in Chisinau. Strolling down a street towards the “Eternity” memorial complex, I was thinking about…trees. They not just provided shade but also made this place less depressing. Like trying to cover the city’s already cracking facade.
Milestii Mici winery
The upcoming day was promising. We got up early and had an excellent breakfast at Berd’s hotel (keep in mind that I ordered a very delicious omelet). Then we waited for our private transfer to Milestii Mici winery. Alcohol makes everything nicer. The winery was located just 15 kilometers away from the hotel. I was excited to go outside city limits – maybe the countryside would like more beautiful.
And yet, it wasn’t. At least not that part we were driving. A road to one of the leading country’s touristy attractions was patched like homeless’s clothes. It felt like driving on roof tiles. The driver wasn’t speaking English, and I was hoping he would not take us to harvest our kidneys.
Irony aside, this part of our trip was undoubtedly the best one. The winery was huge. Can you believe that we were driving in cars through an extensive network of underground wine cellars? That was crazy. Our tour guide told us a lot about the wine culture in Moldova. We learned that people can rent a slot in their cellar and keep a minimum of 200 bottles of Moldovan wine. Because their wine is ridiculously cheap, that’s actually a good deal. The only problem is that I get a headache instantly from it.
After our tour, we also had a tasting dinner with a local folk band that approached each table and tried to converse with tourists and earn some tips. After a few glasses of wine, talking to them in Russian wasn’t so difficult after all.
In the end, we stopped at their wine shop. We looked around and were a bit confused. Are these prices in euros (already targeting tourists) or in their local currency (Moldovan leu)? I asked this, and the lady assured us that prices were in leu. Well, that was a game-changer. A bottle of 1992 red wine cost less than 5 eur back then. I told you that prices were crazy low.
Food poisoning
When we got back from the winery, I started to feel sick. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but it had something to do with my stomach. I began to vomit, hoping that later I’d feel better. On the following day in Chisinau, we planned to rent a car and go further away, into the actual countryside, to look for some lovely sceneries. I wanted to get better as soon as possible; therefore, Tyler went to a nearby pharmacy to get some medicine for me. He was lucky a customer spoke a little bit in English because the pharmacist didn’t speak English at all.
The evening drew by, but I didn’t feel any better. Medicine didn’t work, and I felt like shit. Deep in my heart (and stomach), I knew that we were not going anywhere the following day, and I was right.
The upcoming morning Tyler went to have breakfast alone. He got the same tasty omelet that I ordered the morning before. I assured him it was good. After breakfast, he returned to our hotel room, and both of us spent all day there.
The next day we had separate flights. I had an early morning flight back to Vilnius with a layover in Kyiv. Tyler had to go back straight to Sicily. It was hard to imagine how I was going to handle this trip. Indeed, it was awful. Thanks to all saints, I didn’t puke on board. I had a four-hour layover in Kyiv and went straight to the nearest seats that didn’t have armrests. I set my alarm and slept like this for 3 hours. Once I got back to Vilnius, my first stop was the pharmacy.
The same evening I got bad news from Tyler. He was also vomiting, and then I finally understood what caused the food poisoning. We ate the same foods almost all the time, except when we had breakfast in the hotel. I got food poisoning a day after I ate that damn omelet, and Tyler got his a day later, exactly when he ate the same thing. No proof of course, but that was too big of a coincidence.
Why I would never go back to Chisinau in a nutshell
At first, I titled this article “Why I would never go back to Moldova,” but I understood that that wasn’t true at the end of this story. I would gladly go back to Moldova but not to Chisinau. I saw some stunning monasteries and countryside sceneries that we, unfortunately, missed. But I still hold my opinion that I’ve seen everything I needed in Chisinau, and the only place I would visit there is the international airport.
