It�s a Little Bit Russian - Little Bit Romanian 8/06
The little nation, about the size of Maryland, is today in the middle of a very real tug of war between its former mother Russia and the fattening Europe. Come January first it is making yet another bridge west by opening its boarders and doing away with the heavy visa tax it formally applied for European and American tourist.
It�s a confused nation lined between two rivers with western influences blowing out of Romania across the Prut versus the cold Russian winds coming down the Dniester finally coming together along the Kishinau streets where Latin Romanian sounds criss-cross against the hard �ski� and tsa of Slavic Russian. (The official language is Romanian but Russian is more commonly spoken)
I was touring popular Romania and seeing all of its Dracula sites, Dracula slept here castles, Dracula restaurants, Dracula newspapers, beer and wine. I desired a taste of something Russian. After dealing with the all the confusion of applying then separately purchasing a Visa at the Moldovan Consulate in Bucharest I boarded a train for Chisinau. I admit have always been a little Russophile (culturally, that is, not politically) but I think everyone who has read Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy is in some way or other� and Pushkin was here. He spent three years here and was so inspired by his experiences that he went on to produce some of his greatest works, but more of him and his Gypsy lover Zemfira later.
The museum is a good introduction to the abstract Moldovan culture which displays cases of relics from the Roman era (particularly coins) on to the archaic middle ages and into the reign of Stefan Cel Mare (Steven The Great), father of the country, who battled back the Turks unifying Moldova with its brothers on the other side of the Prut.
In 1812 it was Tzarist Russia who took control of the region between rivers and re-naming it Basarabia until 1918 when it fell back into Romanian hands. Then World War II came along and everything got shook up and Moldova East of the Prut was again ripped from brother Romania and sucked up into the drab-gray order of the Soviet Union.
Aleksandr Pushkin came in 1820 while it was still a new Russian territory and by the look of the old painting on the walls in the Pushkin Museum Kishinev back then was little more than a one-horse town. He was exiled here by the Tzar for his left of center politics but I think he was glad of it because from Moldova he began working on some of his greatest works including �Eugene Onegin� which would later bring him fame and much later be made into a film staring Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler.
The Pushkin Museum is centered around the little two room house where the author first stayed while in Kishinev. �It was a hotel back then and the best of its day, four stars,� chimes museum director Alexandra Stacanava.
�How was it the best?� I asked a little bewildered.
�A nails could pass through the wall without crumbling it,� was her reply.
Those were simple times.
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