Day 12 (July 17, 2019): Taking our last bite out of Moldova

PLEASE NOTE:  Write-Up and full captions will be added on Thursday. 

It seemed like we were following weddings all day long! This was the first we encountered. The bridesmaid brought a large loaf of bread for use during the marriage ceremony. 

I am fascinated by the way the Soviets built their cities. The architectural style was known as Brutalism. And that describes it quite well. This is the Romantica apartment building from the 1970s. Unlike the dime-dozen hideous rectangular blocks that represented the vast majority of Soviet apartment living, this one showed an effort to be aesthetically pleasing. 

Chisinau is known for one other 1970s apartment project: the City Gates straddle both sides of the Boulevard at the entrance to the city, not far from the airport, and have long been a symbol of Chisinau.  I was anxious to search them out, but was shocked to see how - up close - they are delapidated and quite ugly. 

So what’s this picture all about? Just to show the badly crumbling state of most of Moldova’s Soviet-built apartments from the 1950s-1970s. This particular building at least had a coat of paint on the steel balcony panels. But the state of the concrete would have rendered them unsafe in Canada a long time ago. In fact, most of the ole apartment blocks from Soviet times would be condemned if they existed in Canada. 

Village museum


Yet another wedding - at the church in the village museum




Village museum haystack



Central Park fountain


Water tower 

A retired Air Moldova (Russian-made) Tupulev Tu134 is on permanent display as you approach the airport. While waiting for our flight check-in tonopen, I took a walk over to check it out. Russian aircraft don’t inspire a sense of flight security, but they really fascinate me!


Chisinau boasts a very modern and comfortable international airport. 

Boarding our Turkish Airlines Airbus A321-NEO aircraft to Istanbul, via the rear of the plane. Seating 190 people, this is one of eight such NEO (next generation) examples Turkish Airlines owns. 

Can you believe that? On a 90-minute flight departing 10PM, Turkish provides quite the snack in Economy class. Air Canada stopped doing that over 25 years ago.


Lights of Istanbul 

Inside the indescribably massive new Istanbul airport, which opened theee months ago. The world’s largest airport, it was built to accommodate 150 million passengers a year. 

Out of sheer exhaustion we got a very futuristic room inside the airport to catch 6 hours of sleep before our onward flight to Kosovo. Looks like a room from the moon-based Hilton, as shown in “2001:  A Space Odyssey”.