Last weekend was unusual for me as I took a trip outside of Moldova. At first I got well dressed for the winter travel. My first destination was Ungheni which is a raion center on the Romanian boarder. Of course my main purpose for being there was to help celebrate a birthday with my Peace Corps friend, Robyn (see previous post for highlights). On Saturday Robyn, Michael, and I took a quick trip into Romania, to the city of Iași. Iași (eyash) is only 25 km over the Romanian boarder which is the River Prut. We caught a hired car and crossed through the customs gate and were left off right in front of Stefan cel Mare's Palace in Iași. Unfortunately it was under renovation, so we couldn't tour the inside. We saw some very large and very old churches in this part of Iași. And they had a Hotel Moldova here in Romania. Robyn was glad she wore her serious boots because the weather was a bit misty and damp.
And as you can see they have a trolley car system here, read books about Bob Dylan, and have many wonderful buildings and monuments to see. I even noticed that they were soon to have a performance of Animal Farm by George Orwell...in Romanian of course. Among the interesting streets and shops we found a very classy pastry shop and stopped to enjoy some. I also noticed they had a McDonalds Restaurant here. A bill board was promoting "dublu" sandwiches. The dublu cheeseburger of course; but also the dublu McPuisor (that's a chicken sandwich). That's pronounced mick-poohey-shore. Well we had to cut our trip short as there was only one train back to Ungheni and that was at 1:30. We double checked our tickets and headed for home. The trip is only 12 miles, but it takes two hours because you have to be "inspected" by two sets of boarder guards. And they didn't give us funny looking foreigners an easy time of it either. Very stern looking "soldats" asked lots of detailed questions. But we Peace Corps bros made it back safe and sound, back to sweet home Moldova.
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