So people who have been visiting Chisinau over the past few days include: Liz and her parents who will be in Moldova for a couple of weeks, 2 Fulbright English Teaching Assistants who are based in Georgia, and 1 other Fulbright ETA and his girlfriend who are based in Azerbaijan. I went out to dinner with Liz and her parents on Thursday to a popular restaurant for tourists that has live music and serves traditional Moldovan cuisine and we happened to run into the rest of the group with another Fulbright researcher, Rod, who is studying music in Chisianu. He invited me to come visit the music school where he is studying and said he could definitely hook me up with a violin and probably find people for me to play with if I want.
On Friday night we met up again at Opa, a Greek restaurant, and it was filled with ex-pats. I saw Chi Pham, the director of LED who was at the Winrock Young Entrereneur’s Forum, and some ladies I saw at the OSCE Anti-Trafficking Coordination Meeting on Wednesday as well as some men who were clearly from the UK. We also spotted a couple of Americans across the room who turned out to be Peace Corps volunteers so they joined us to go to Bier Platz for a beer after dinner.
After Bier Platz we tried to go to a club near the National Opera Theater because someone had invited one of the Fulbright ETAs to meet her there. He asked some students on the street how to get there and it turned out they were going to the same place so we befriended them and talked for a while. One of the guys did Work and Travel in Alaska so he was excited to see Americans again. They also were only speaking Russian so that was convenient for us since none of us speak Romanian all that well. We made it to the club, but we couldn’t get in. There was “face control” which is something all of us who have been to Russia are very familiar with. It means that only men who have a lot of money and women who are dressed up like prostitutes can get in. Apparently, however, the issue here was more that you had to reply that you were attending this event on Facebook and then you would be on a list and could get in. Our new Moldovan friends tried to help us out but it was no use. They said they’d actually never seen face control happening anywhere in Chisinau so they were really bummed out and apologetic about it.
On Saturday afternoon I met up with a couple that a Wellesley alumna had suggested I meet for coffee because she said they are amazing people and would be great contacts for me here in Chisinau. She was definitely right about that. We had a really nice conversation and I will be seeing much more of them. We went to a fairly posh café and the Swedish ambassador happened to be there so I met her and another American lady that she was with as well.
After I met up with them, I went to a concert that was happening on the square outside the National Opera Theater. Zdob si Zdub, the most famous Moldovan rock band, was playing and the whole event was a political rally for one of the candidates in the election. They played a cover of a Russian rock song by Kino that I love so that made my night.
However, the night got even better. We went to this underground bar that I’ve been to a couple times to see the band Still Waters play. One of the guys in the band is the Peace Corps security officer or something like that. They played covers of songs like “Last Dance with Mary Jane” “Great Balls of Fire” and lots of blues music. Liz’s dad got to go up onstage for the second set and play the harmonica so that was really exciting too. The band was awesome and they played for 3 hours so it was a great night. It’s a small venue but most people got up and danced and it was really cool. Liz's dad on the harmonica:
Now I am sitting in the park. It is sunny and warm and there is live music. I'm going to see Swan Lake tonight with the people visiting from Azerbaijan and two Fulbright researchers. Pretty nice weekend.
Aw! Great pic! Glad you've been on such a high. How it stays up!
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