People go to Chisinău, and that’s kinda it, and it’s really not representative of Moldova as a whole.
You cross the border from Romania, and you’re immediately struck by the road turning to cobbles, and the modern street lamps turning into gas lamps. Ox carts bearing peasants in home-sewn clothes trundle by under their burden of hay. A rusted old lada serves as a roadside goose coop. Wattle and daub houses stoop by the dusty road, old men in flat caps sat on a bench by the roses climbing the crumbling wall. It’s like the most remote and rural corners of Transylvania, and then some - it’s still 1924 out there.
The cities - unremarkable, Soviet slop with the usual fistful of monuments and bits of history - but the countryside is the most authentic time warp I have experienced in Europe, and I have been to most of Europe.
Gas lamps? Ox carts (did you mean donkey or horse)? Home-sewn clothes?
I'm not sure what year you visited, but none of these are common. At least that's my experience of living there for 25 years and having been in most parts of Moldova.
I visited Tirana and Durrës about 5 years ago. Durrës was a pretty great place to visit with its long beach, views of the Adriatic, decent restaurants, roman & other ruins and a nice archeological museum. Certainly more touristy than Tirana, but at least back then it was mostly locals.
Oh, I didn’t say they work - but yeah, they had a good bit of money a century ago and invested in modern infrastructure - and not a jot since in an awful lot of the regions.
You cross the border from Romania, and you’re immediately struck by the road turning to cobbles, and the modern street lamps turning into gas lamps. Ox carts bearing peasants in home-sewn clothes trundle by under their burden of hay. A rusted old lada serves as a roadside goose coop. Wattle and daub houses stoop by the dusty road, old men in flat caps sat on a bench by the roses climbing the crumbling wall. It’s like the most remote and rural corners of Transylvania, and then some - it’s still 1924 out there.
The cities - unremarkable, Soviet slop with the usual fistful of monuments and bits of history - but the countryside is the most authentic time warp I have experienced in Europe, and I have been to most of Europe.