Red Sox in Russian

Well this trip was surprisingly easy. All of my flights were on time and I didn't have any problems at all. The Chisinau airport is wayyyy smaller than the one in Portland. It took me all of 10 minutes to get off the plane, go through customs, get my luggage, exchange my money, and get in a taxi. There were only 3 other planes hanging out at the airport when we arrived. Two were Air Moldova and one was Turkish Airlines. Having read about sex trafficking from Moldova to Turkey and how many Turkish men come to Chisinau for Moldovan prostitutes, the presence of Turkish Air and the hundreds of signs I saw on the way to the city center for travel to Turkey (and the absence of any advertisements for tourism to other countries) struck me a little bit.

Anyway, my initial impression of Chisinau on the drive from the airport was that this place feels very, very familiar. It reminds me a lot of Vladimir or any other cities of the former Soviet Union. It's already apparent though that it is a pretty green city, just like I'd been told. Even flying into the airport we could see lots of bodies of water and vast expanses of forests and fields. I'm looking forward to checking out all the parks.

I got to my apartment about half an hour earlier than I expected, so I sat outside on a bench to wait for the lady to show up to give me my keys and everything. I could tell right away that I'm in a really safe place. There were a bunch of 8-10 year olds hanging out nearby and I was happy to hear them speaking Russian. I wasn't really sure what language I would hear more in Chisinau. Moldovan (basically the same as Romanian) and Russian are both official languages and I know that most people are fluent in both, but I thought that the majority would speak Romanian all the time with the exception of the ethnic Russians who don't speak any Romanian. So I expected to be able to get by with just my knowledge of Russian, but was worried that if I hung out with Moldovans my age they would always talk to each other in Romanian and have to switch for my sake or something like that and have it be an inconvenience. I don't think that's the case. Every single person I saw around the apartment during that time was speaking Russian, and to my eyes anyway they didn't look like ethnic Russians. Also, I would say that about half the signs I saw were written in Russian, and on cable TV the vast majority of the channels are in Russian rather than Romanian.

Speaking of cable tv, I checked out all the 70 or so channels I have and 2 of them were broadcasting some Red Sox game. That really surprised me. None of the channels are in English, but they do have quite a few American broadcasts dubbed in Russian.

Oh also, I saw some of the stray dogs that are supposedly all over the city but these ones at least definitely looked completely harmless and not quite as mangy as the dogs in Moscow.

That's all I have to report for now. Here are a few pictures of my apartment. Just like my apartment in Vladimir this kitchen has one of those gas stoves that you have to light with a match and that kind of terrifies me but other than that everything looks good and the place is in great condition. It even comes with 4 coffee mugs that are decorated with American flags and say "God Bless America." So yeah, I feel right at home.