Now things got really strange. I won't give the "why," only the "what" and the "how." Anya had to return to Odessa, so I stayed another night in Krakow waiting on a flight, which I missed. I then spent another week in Krakow after Anya made it home to Odessa (and she also missed a connecting flight taking a bus back to Prague). Eventually (this is the strange part), I paid an at first very incredulous taxi driver in Krakow a thousand bucks to drive me to Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova, and very close to Odessa. There, I met up with Anya again. After Chisinau I returned to Austin, Texas for a couple of months and then we took up our Euro travels in earnest again. But that's getting ahead of things.
About Chisinau: It's the capital city of Moldova, about 500,000 people and where most of the money is in the country. Moldova is notoriously poor. It (Moldova) was part of Romania in the early part of the 20th century, then predictably was swallowed up into the Soviet Union after 1940 or so. The language Moldovan is a derivative of Romanian and is still spoken (Anya can speak it a little bit, as her father is Moldovan), but thanks to the influence of Soviet Russia the Russian language is very popular, and knowing Russian is almost a prerequisite for being understood there. Chisinau is about four hours bus ride from Odessa, and Moldova in general is now closely associated with Ukraine. If you can get over the distinctive Soviet feel (and this applies to Easter Europe generally), it's quite a nice place to visit. Here's Chisinau in photos...
This Tucano Coffee shop become our go-to place for hanging out. It feels like a Western coffee shop. Like a Starbucks or a Peets or a Caribou etc.
This is my kick-ass Polish driver that drove 24 hours straight from Krakow to Moldova, without sleep. I kept in touch with him for a while on Facebook, before I deleted my account.
This guy solemnly promises to read, in the library behind him.
I believe this was a "functional" photo to retrieve my car (actually then it must have been in a later visit, as I didn't have a car in 2017 there). The sign says "autoklutschi" in Russian, which means "car keys" in English. Don't know. As I have precious few photos of Chisinau I'm posting it.
A very cool mom and pop cafe we discovered late at night. The owner was an eccentric, and delightful to gab with.
Same place.
Black mask. Turkish I think. You'll discover that there's a lot of connection to Turkey in this part of the world. Makes sense. Think Ottoman Empire and the proximity of current day Turkey across the Black Sea. Turks pepper the night clubs in Odessa during the summer tourist months. They're a boisterous fun loving lot, especially for nominally being Muslim.
That's not Russian nor obviously English. Not sure. Moldovan or Romanian. I don't know what it says and I suspect given the absence of any interest otherwise it was another "functional" photo to keep track of something while there. And... that's it. Many photos have been lost! Moving on now to... hmm. I went back to Austin, Texas via Munich and then returned by flying from Austin to Boston to London to Moscow, Russia for the night (wonderful), then to Tivat on the coast of Montenegro. Where the story begins I don't know yet.