You know, I don’t often write about Moldovan politics. There are a number of reasons for this, the biggest one being that I still don’t feel completely confident about exactly what’s going on. Moldova may be a small country, but it is… very different, and often what you see on the news is just the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, I couldn’t resist writing about … Continue reading A Cat Named Shura
Many, many years ago in Romania, I had to open a bank account for reasons that I can’t remember right now. Everything was going fine until the bank employee asked me for my profession. I tried to explain that I work from home over the internet, something that wasn’t really well understood at the time. I didn’t quite understand why I needed to declare my … Continue reading Gospodar, Gospodina
Over the years, many people have asked me why I never became a “real” journalist, meaning why I never agreed to work for a government/company’s propaganda outlet. The short answer is that I don’t want to work with idiots like Rich Smith: Why Is the US Selling Billions of Dollars of Missiles to Romania? From the Romanian border to the Russian naval base at Sevastopol … Continue reading A Motley Fool Indeed
My friend Matt recently published an excellent primer on weddings in Romania (and Moldova), and it reminded me of one of the weirdest episodes of television ever broadcast in the United States. Way back in 1985, at a time when Romanians were suffering from severe energy and food shortages in an effort to pay back IMF bankers, over in America, a soap opera about silly … Continue reading The Moldavian Wedding Massacre
I think one of my favorite things about the Republic of Moldova is that it has the tiniest tourism sector of any country that I’ve been to in my entire life. It’s almost spooky how few “tourist attractions” there are or people who come here to see them. To give you an idea of the difference, last year in Romania, there were 2.47 million foreign … Continue reading Off the Beaten Path
All Things Romania 