A week of vacation

I am going to post some photos from the past week and give each a caption. As always, I am never sure what is going to happen day to day in my life in Chișinău. This week was full of delightful surprises.

I attended a paște (Easter) celebration at a Romanian orthodox church that lasted all Saturday night. For me it was a moving and beautiful time of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This photo was taken at about 4 a.m. and shows families with candles preparing to eat the special foods they have brought to celebrate.

On Sunday, after about three hours of sleep, I took the bus to a nearby village to participate in the music making to celebrate Easter at a Baptist church. The first photo shows the sign at the front of the church that celebrates the Biblical idea that God is Love. One of the wonderful pastors from the church plays a seven stringed Russian style guitar. He was imprisoned for two years under Soviet rule for refusing to close his church and now obviously loves being alive to enjoy every day.

On Tuesday my great friends Bob and Beth and I rented a car to drive to Giurgiulești in the farthest southern tip of Moldova, where the Prut River joins the Danube as it makes its way out into the Danube Delta and eventually the Black Sea. Being a smart American I documented the missing tail light, broken bumper, and other scrapes and scratches with a photo before we left. The rental company never mentioned anything and I think they were just happy to get the car back after our trip on the crazy Moldovan highways. We encountered wonderful families with great home made food and wine, and great music.

I took these two photos in the center of Chișinău today. The first one shows one of my favorite city attractions - the old trolleibuses. The city received a lot of brand new buses this week with assistance from many international agencies from both Russia and Western Europe. This is one of the old buses which I love so much, and you can see that sometimes the doors do not open and need the passengers to give some assistance.
The second photo shows the way many Moldovans read the newspapers. They are posted in these display cases in one of the city parks each day.

Today was a day for remembering lost loved ones. The first photo shows wreaths and flowers for sale at one of the large cemeteries in Chișinău. The second photo shows the main entrance to that cemetery with many thousands of visitors and a police presence to help maintain an orderly process of coming and going.

The last photo shows the front of one of the special buses lined up to take people to the largest cemetery in Chișinău. As I waited for my bus to Cricova I saw dozens of these buses headed for the cimitrul Sf. Lazăr, described by a friend at that stop as the "doina" buses - for remembrance and sadness.