Wednesday, 17 July 2013

Chisinau (Кишинёв), Moldova

After getting up in Brasov, Romania, we walked to the train station and had to wait 2 hours for the next train. It is really hard to get the information right the first time in Romania. Customer service is terrible and they are not telling you everything you need to know. You have to know how to ask the right questions to get all the information. So, 2 hours later, we took a train to Ploiesti. We then found some food and caught the night train to Chisinau, Moldova. The journey was around 12 hours. The border for Moldova is a good 3 hours process as you have to "leave" Romania, then "enter" Moldova. After all the border controls, they changed the wheels of the train wagons as Moldova uses Russian standard for the tracks. That consist of moving around all the wagons to different areas, lifting them up in the air to change the wheel assembly and reattaching all the wagons together. We got to Moldova almost on time at around 9 in the morning. Moldova's country side is beautiful and we planned a few day trips that will follow in the next posts. As for the city itself, it is a capital that has a lot of energy and not that many tourists so it was great. They also have nice parks and one of them offer free wifi so we saw lots of locals relaxing there with their phones and laptops.

Public flea market. A lot of old stuff laid out on blankets in a parking, on the walkways and on a whole street by the train station. It is possible to find anything there; from the old rusted tools to a new or old pair of shoes. Really special place.
Inside of the train station
The night train cabin
Wheel changeover process at the border
A road 20 mins from the capital. Did we miss a turn?
Driving 5 or 6 cars wide in the capital without lines makes it an adventure to rent a car
The bus "station"

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