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A Visit to Moldova - Photo Album December 1998 |
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In the center of Chisinau is the... central market! We went one Saturday for a stroll; here's what we found.
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Again, your tour guides for the market will be me on the left and Chris on the right. We grew our beards really long, and didn't see any longer beards anywhere, except for the monks at the monastery (more on that on a later page!) If you look closely, you can see American labelled Pampers for sale in the background. I don't know how they got shipped there, but they're there. |
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Looking across the street to one of the two main entrances to the market. It's generally a madhouse inside. |
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Here, Chris and his Mum scope out the market. Most of the stalls don't specialize in any one good stuff, but seem to sell stuff directly out of the back of trucks. Diapers, light bulbs, wood carvings, candles, plastic thongs/flip-flops, toys, whatever. You just have to look and see what's for sale. |
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In addition to the vendor stalls, there are various houses or markethalls inside the marketplace, each specializing in various goods. Since Romanian's really close to many other Romance (or Latin-derived) languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, figuring out what's sold in each of these halls is pretty easy. Here is a pharmacy, with the farm produce building in the background. The building sign actually reads "PRODUCE AGRICOLA". |
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This is what I call the "milk and honey" food hall. Inside here, you can buy cheese, milk, and honey. If you like a treat, you can buy a piece of honeycomb, too! |
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Here we are again! Another item of note is that I was much taller than many Moldovans, even though I'm only 5'7" or 170cm: it was really noticeable on the streets, and you can really see it in this picture. Chris, at 6'2" or 188cm, towered over most of the population. In the background, you can see the roof over the produce stands. There were lots of persimmons for sale when we were there, and oranges too. Moldova's proximity to Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey lets a fair amount of warmer climate produce to be imported fairly easily. |
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Another picture of the entrance to the market. The big green sign is for the candy maker Bucaria. Yum! The big yellow sign in the upper right corner is for the money exchange window. It looked to me that apart from the market stalls, Moldovan retailing is dominated by factory-owned stores. There didn't appear to be any commercial retail market, and I suspect that the business and legal infrastructure just can't support the types of commercial retail leasing that's common in the West. |
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Outside the market, this guy runs a thriving lighter repair business out of a suitcase. He does repair Bic lighters--the type we throw away here. But he also repairs fancier lighters. |
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