Houses in Moldova

It is really hard to find time to write up blog post as much as I would like while having language classes for four hours and education classes for three hours, (not to mention homework.) But anyway…….

One thing that I find the most fascinating about Moldova, or at least the town that I live in, is the houses. In a country that is mostly considered to be lesser developed and agricultural most of the houses appear to be much larger than I would have expected and are in various states of completion. A common denominator for most people in my town seems to be that each family has its own property and someone living overseas. As the person sends money home or as the family makes money by other means they put all of the money into improvements to their property instead of into a savings account. I have been told by Moldovans that they do this because the money fluctuates so much that it is much safer to "save'' their money in the form of a house instead of a bank account. Plus the improvements to the house do them more good than a bank account anyway.

So walking around my town you will see structures such as this…















or this….














or even amazingly nice houses such as…..































Another note is that from the houses I have seen everything is done in phases and it depends on the family what they choose to improve first. Such as the exterior or the interior of the house. I have been in a house that from the outside was nothing but concrete with no paint or exterior decoration but on the inside had what looked to be marble floors and a modern kitchen (outside the kitchen, however, there might be bare walls and concrete floors….constant work in progress.). While on the other hand some of the houses that appear to be complete from the outside might not have running water or an indoor bathroom.

And none of the houses are complete without a garden….and I was excited to know that I was able to recognize all of the plants in the garden even with my limited agricultural knowledge. In my garden they have corn, beans, potatoes, cucumbers, watermelons, cherries, strawberries, squash, cabbage, and here is the surprising one…..amazing amounts of dill. As much dill as they have potatoes. One thing they have used the dill for in my house is for a Moldovan dish called Placinta, (pronounced PLA-CHIN-TA) Which is basically a thin layer of dough covering a layer of half cheese and half dill, and Im not exaggerating about those proportions, and it is cut up and eaten very much like a pizza. While dill is not my favorite seasoning I can say that I do enjoy the placinta and might upload a recipe if I can work out the translation….