Big day today!! Loading up the plane is no problem. Since we took out one seat, there is plenty of room for all the baggage. Goodbye to our family members that came to Mollis and the a very nice take off by Captain Frey. The flight itself is also very smooth and we make good speed. After 3 1/2 hours we touch down in Chisinau. The weather is quite pleasant and customs is also very easy: none at all. We meet our driver and are in the city in 20 minutes. Hotel is ok – as we have seen before in Eastern countries.

We timed our trip to Moldova for their National Day; the victory over the Nazis in 1945. There is not much going on and we just wander through the main street of Chisinau (kind of Bahnhofstrasse/5th Avenue). There are parades, speeches and concerts at several big squares that are sealed of from the traffic. Back to the hotel, work on photos and website. Dinner is in a very nice restaurant and after a nightcap at the flashy hotel bar (we are the only guests) we hit the sack.

The vibrant Moldovan capital certainly won’t win any architectural beauty awards soon. Through razed to the group by WWII and a terrible 1940 earthquake, Chisinau has arguably never lost its cosmopolitan soul or charm , despite the best efforts of the Soviet authorities who oversaw the rebuilding of the city.