Whew, am I still alive? Apparently so :) Thank goodness! As you might have heard, I now have a job here in Moldova, and I’ve been having some real adventures. It is literally surreal to be back in an office environment after more than a decade of being a freelancer and working from home. I’m still super busy trying to balance my official job with … Continue reading The Iron Grip of Moldova
The other day, an attractive young woman in a dress and heels handed me an envelope. When I looked inside, I saw it was stuffed full of euros and (Moldovan) lei. What’s this? Am I being paid by Russian gangsters, the CIA, or some other nefarious group? Nah. The truth is that I now have a “real” job, one that is the most illegitimate bunch … Continue reading Adventures in Legitimacy
Chişinău has a lot of opportunities for people with my perversion. Of the abandoned buildings I visited, only one—the circus—was inaccessible, largely because there were aggressive stray dogs roaming and snarling around the perimeter. The others were fairly easy to enter and well worth it. The synagogue within the Jewish necropolis was unlike anything I’d seen before. I’d never been inside any synagogue, let alone one with beautiful arches and … Continue reading Abandonment Issues: Chişinău Edition
Yesterday here in the Republic of Moldova it was Independence Day. I was too busy working to attend any of the celebrations but I did see a rather anemic five-minute firework display from my balcony in the evening. It turns out that the pathetic light show pretty much sums up the state of democracy around here. I’ve already written before about how George Soros is … Continue reading The Price of Democracy
Oh mercy me. Look, I get it that a lot of people in the Republic of Moldova feel very Romanian, and want to get a lot closer to Romania, maybe even to the point of joining the two countries together as one country. But that’s no excuse for this level of fantasy historical revisionism. Note: the link goes to an English-language blog of an American … Continue reading Agitprop Redux
All Things Romania 