The Mall

There is a mall here. Mall Dova, he he. We are not big mall dwellers but having been here three months, we decided it was about time to see what people are talking about. Yesterday we decided to visit ‘the mall’.  We are glad we walked there because it helps put things into perspective.

Seeing the homes on our walk there put the two extremes of have and have not into side-by-side contrast.  The snow and some ice made our journey an adventure in and of itself.

Ten days left until Christmas is celebrated in Moldova (January 7th) and it seems everyone is out and about on this beautiful day. The above bus was rolling in traffic with the doors open because there were so many people. Sardines. Seeing things like this are maybe why we have not attempted the buses yet.

I had to sneak this photo as cameras are not allowed and there were security guards everywhere. It is a beautiful mall with many stores and a food court with Greek, Italian and Thai sit down restaurants and a Mc, KFC, and others. After having great appetizers at the Mykonos Greek restaurant we opted for a veggie topped filler from the load-your-own baked potato nook and some surprisingly good sushi at the Wok n Roll place.

This is our cashier happily modeling the Moldovan nail style. It is the fashion to file the nails sharp, sometimes into extra sharp points. Everyone at the mall was dressed to impress and a common women’s fashion was long shirt-style mini dresses over shinny leggings and mid-calf boots.

There was an art gallery there with very impressive art from what we ascertained were two different artists. The artists’ names were not shown which is too bad because their art was fantastic.

There was a very spartan Apple store, and high fashion clothing stores, many of which were one designer label. We were looking for a pair of baby pants and found several pairs between the range of $55 to $75 for one pair of baby pants. Our budget does not allow for such squanderings. Xander is not picky about his labels but more into comfort, so from a reasonably priced store we bought him a soft and warm pair of pants, two shirts and a sweater for Chloe that was way less than one pair of pants in the other stores. I’m not one for spending tons of time at the mall but it does pay to shop around.

Chloe rode a kiddie ride at the arcade and we peeked at the bowling alley (with real AMF lanes) and looked to see what was playing at the movie theatre. Other than the poster in Russian, it felt like The States and for that I was a bit appreciative. We almost boarded a marchutka (‘maxitaxi’) but it was over crowded so we decided to walk the 1.5 km home. An accident caused a major traffic jam so we were glad we walked as we left the taxi in the dust or snow, as it were.

We enjoyed the experience more than we expected to. My favorite part of the day was on the way home when we ran into friends who were late to pick up one of their parents from the airport (due to the major traffic jam.) That quick chance meeting combined with knowing the direction back to our apartment made me feel more at home in this city than anything else has. Odd, but true.