Photos from a January day

After receiving an enthusiastic response to the photos on my blog, I decided to take a walk on a Saturday afternoon in January, take some photos around my part of Chișinău, and then describe them. Here goes!

1 - I live in a part of the city at the bottom of Bănulescu-Bodoni street that is a combination of some high rise apartment buildings, some smaller and older ones (like mine), a hospital and related training schools and clinics, and parts of the old city that are still pretty simply constructed and quite interesting to walk through. This first photo shows a small park with a walkway in that part of the city. 2 - This old building shows a style of architecture that still exists in some places. This houses a trade school - școală de miserii - and a driving school. Every morning new drivers and their teachers drive on my street very slowly while taxis zoom around them. I have witnessed an event in which the new driver was the middle of the street (we do not have any lines on the street) while three taxis zoomed past making it a four lane road! 3 - Today was the celebration of the birthday of Moldovan and Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu. Here you see his bust in Pushkin Park with flowers. Earlier in the day this was the scene of a commemoration by many officials and some Romanian language enthusiasts. Downtown one of the banking buildings had large loudspeakers broadcasting his poetry over the noise of the traffic. 4 - This is the locked entrance to an underground Russian club where I went to hear and see a Russian jazz quintet last night. There were two rooms - one for smoking and heavy drinking, and one (behind the door with a large WC on it) where the band played. In that room there were no smokers and the drunks were told to be quiet by the other patrons! 5 - This is my apartment building and the ruined building next to it in the twilight. The ruins of the next building are slowly being dismantled using a large crane. One of the neighborhood characters is a large black dog who lives on the site and either barks or begs when I walk past.