Ziua Vinului

Wine festival pictures.

My PST village, Mileștii Mici, had a booth setup for their winery.


Entrance to the festival.

A couple PCVs after a morning race in the park.

Look at me go.

Gathering before the Peace Corps 5k race started.

My host mother has been stashing grapes all over the apartment. This is the top of my dresser in my room where I found a bunch of grapes. The next day I started finding them in drawers, cabinets, and under beds. Strange...

If you have been flowing this blog, you should know that Moldova is notorious for its wine. At least they claim to be famous for it, because before moving here I had never even heard of Moldova, much less Moldovan wine. It has been told to me that during the glory days of the Soviet Union, Moldova was one of the richer Soviet blocks and that officers in the Russian army would vacation here. Let’s not get caught up on the apparent fact that “being a richer” state, technically, doesn’t mesh too well with the whole communist thing. Moldova grows a ton of grapes, more so in the center and south of the country, and the country boasts quite a few wineries. The problem now is that there is no one to sell all of their wine to. Russia was the target market, but because of an embargo that was placed on the wine, the market has deteriorated. It is quite hard to break into the European market because it is flooded with wine from France, Italy, Egypt, Greece, and Spain. Moldova has a little bit of a capital problem; no one is buying their main commodity export, and so the metaphorical well is drying up quite quickly. You can tell that once upon a time this country was productive and industrious, but now it seems that post-Soviet grayness has blanketed the landscape. So what do you do when you are sitting on a gold mine of wine that no one is buying? Throw a wine fest, duh!

This weekend marked the annual Ziua Vinului in Chișinău. It was a two day festival held at an outdoor expo that was hosted by wineries from across the country. Upon entering the main area of the festival, you were immediately surrounded by booths selling frigarui (BBQ), pastries, souveniers, and of course, wine. Free samples were given out, and for those that wanted to really splurge, bottles of wine were two dollars. I was quite impressed with the booths the wineries setup- the facades were beautiful and there was usually an area for tasting/buying wine and also a formal area where the judges would test the wine. On Saturday most of Peace Corps Moldova was there, and it wasn’t too hard to walk fifteen feet and run into someone you know. Getting started at 2pm probably wasn’t the best idea, but we had all just run a 5K race that some of the veteran volunteers hosted, and we were eager to get the party started. The last bit I remember from Saturday night was dancing the hora with a couple thousand exuberantly lubricated Moldovans, eating a hot dog with pickled carrots and mayonnaise on top, getting lost in the woods trying to find the porter potties, and riding one wicked spinner-car-festival ride. Gata.

I somehow ended up back at the festival on Sunday night. Not the brightest idea, and work has been quite miserable today, but all’s fair in the name of integration, right? I have a two week training session coming up this Sunday, and I will try to squeeze in a blog before then about something other than my glutinous weedend-ul la Ziua Vinului. Trebuie sa merg. Hai noroc!