Concerts and Soap Operas

Friday night I attended a concert at the wonderful Sala cu Orgel (Organ Hall) in the center of Chisinau. The orchestra was a chamber orchestra from Munich, Germany. It had four first violins, four second violins, two violas, one cello, and one bass, augmented with one flute, one oboe, one horn, one bassoon, one trumpet, and one piano. The players were very young, probably all under or around thirty years of age. The stage is the perfect size for such an ensemble. The concert featured an excellent violin soloist and a concerto for trombone by a Chisinau composer.

The hall is beautiful. I found it quite stunning. The colors are white, blue, and a mauve sort of orange at the front. There are ten large pillars floor to ceiling, ten windows with beautiful blue and white curtains, ten small chandeliers and one huge one in the middle (all glass – many small pieces). The ceiling has gold trim on white, set off by the light blue walls and glass fixtures. The sound was perfect for the orchestra. I look forward to many performances in that hall during the year. It looks as though it the seats could be cleared to make it a perfect space for dancing. Two concerts next week!

Then I came back to the apartment to watch American soap operas with Romanian subtitles. I have known several people from Romania and Moldova who spoke good English and claim to have learned it mostly from watching soap operas with subtitles. At home in Wyoming I hardly every watch TV, so this was an adventure for me.

The special Moldovan twist is that many American movies on TV have actors speaking English (watch their lips…) with Russian overdubbed on the sound track and Romanian subtitles. So once again I get the full Moldovan language treatment! I think I learned to say some things we may not get around to in our language classes….

Last night I played cards with some friends. It was a game called "Who's the fool?" or something like that. Quite a good game, but I was definitely the fool. It made me realize how hard it is to learn new games with a new basic language base! The queens are "dama," the kings are "kronor," the jacks are "valet," and the ace is something I cannot remember - all in Cyrillic!