Romania and Moldova Part I: Chisinau to Suceava

A little more than a week after my return from Lehedzyne, I planned a trip with my friend Emily to go to Romania and see the painted monasteries in Suceava. Emily is a fellow ETA, who is doing the same job I am, just in Moldova.

Suceava is in northern Romania, not far from the border with Ukraine. In fact, Vinnytsia is quite close... just about five hours by car.

(I tried to embed a map here but Google apparently can't comprehend going from Vinnytsia to Suceava by car, either ;))

Unfortunately, I don't have a car, and hiring a driver is expensive and not necessarily safe when traveling by myself. And the only bus departing from Chernivtsi to Suceava leaves at 7 am each morning, which would mean it would be necessary to spend the night in Chernivtsi. And did I mention that the only train from Vinnytsia to Chernivtsi takes 11 hours? Ridiculous. So I decided instead to fly into Chisinau, Moldova, to meet Emily, and then to take a bus from Chisinau to Suceava with her. In this way, I could also see some of Moldova. Anyway, plane tickets from Kiev to Chisinau were pretty cheap.

Well, about a week before my trip, I got an email from Air Moldova that my flight had been cancelled. They offered that I could take a plane the next day, but that would not have given me enough time. So I cancelled the tickets, and bought train tickets from Vinnytsia to Chisinau instead.

The night before my trip, I was very nervous. I'd never crossed a border by train before, and I'm always nervous before long trips anyway. It turned out that I was sharing my coupe with a woman who got off after about two hours of the ten-hour journey, meaning that for the majority of the time I had my own compartment. Everyone was so surprised that there was this lone American girl traveling by train between Ukraine and Moldova. We stopped three different times for the border crossing, but aside from being asked a few questions in Russian by the border guards, I didn't have a lot of problems.

When I arrived in Chisinau, Emily met me at the train station and then we took a taxi to the apartment where we were staying. The gentleman owning it spoke no English. As it turned out, he was actually Ukrainian, from Odess'ka Oblast (the region right next to Vinnyts'ka where I live), so he understood my terrible surzhyk and we got along fine. It's a small world.

Anyway, after a short night in Chisinau, we got up to get our bus to Suceava. As it turned out, we missed the direct bus so we had to take another that went to Iasi instead, and then continue from Iasi to Suceava. All in all the trip was about the same length-- about five hours. We checked into our hostel and still had enough time to do a little sightseeing around Suceava before we turned in, although it was pouring down rain. But we didn't let that stop us.

One of the best things about Romania-- SO MANY OLD CHURCHES.

Our rambling footsteps brought us to a park. In the park, a tremendous staircase.

Up the staircase... the ubiquitous Stefan Cel Mare, legendary prince of Moldavia who defended it valiantly against the Ottomans.

See? There's even a tableau of him killing Ottomans.

In search of the castle which supposedly would be visible from this park, we wound our way around the statue. And came across...

A Romanian cemetery!

Now this is the point in the horror movie when most intelligent people would turn around, before the storm came and it got dark and the vampires came out. So we did. But we poked around a little first.

On the way back, we came across St. John's Monastery, the first of the painted monasteries we were to see.

By the time we stopped for dinner, it was 9 pm and we were soaked through. We were the only people at the restaurant, but the food was great!

Lamb, brinza and mamaliga (sort of like banoush). Boy, did the soup and tea hit the spot after being in the rain for hours!

Then we turned in to be rested up for the next day's adventure: the main attraction of our trip, the monastery tour!!!