Economy
Road vignette for Moldova can be purchased online starting from February 20th
On February 13th, the Transportation Ministry of Moldova together with E-Government Center, Customs Office, Finance Ministry and MAIB announced that road vignette will be available online for purchase
Starting from February 20th, the drivers who own a foreign-registered car will be able to pay the road tax for Moldova online through Mpay system, besides the usual payment at the Customs Office and bank. Thus, the drivers will be able to plan their trips easier.
The vignette cost for Moldova depends on the period of stay: 7 days- 4 euros, 15 days- 8 euros, 30 days- 16 euros, 90 days- 45 euros, 180 days- 85 euros.
From eight in the morning till noon, every Thursday and Sunday, people lay their merchandise on the main street of Dubăsarii Vechi. Even if there is a market place on one side of the road, behind a fence, with many suitable stands, very few merchants use them. They prefer to park their vans in front of the gates and open the back doors to the street. They sell tomatoes, eggplants, beans, fish, second hand trousers, hay bales, cooking discs, auto parts, pink dresses bought decades ago in Moscow with a hundred dollars and sold today with one hundred lei. Not only locals sell at the market, merchants come from the entire region, from Corjova to Tiraspol.
Once people start gathering their stuff and the village is no longer engulfed in the turmoil of the market, you can go on and visit the village. The locals ride their bikes in a hurry and the old ladies are having a chat sitting on the benches next to the fences of their yards. In front of the mayor’s hall a few workers are spreading and leveling the gravel on the road.
An Nistru, careless about the tumult of the village, continues its way to the sea. It is always there, adorned with autumn colours. Besides the river, other places in the village attract tourists: the mansion of Nicolae Donici, the tomb of the Donici-Macri family and the secular oaks grove “Pohorela”.
Mansion of Nicolae Donici
Nicolae Donici was born in 1874. Because he became an orphan at the age of eight, he was put under the care of his aunt, Elena Lisacovschi.
After he studied astronomy in Odessa, in 1908 Nicolae Donici returns home and near his mansion builds the first observatory in Bessarabia. He continues his scientific research in Dubăsarii Vechi until June 1940 when USSR demanded from Romania to evacuate its civil administration and troops from the territory. It was then when Donici was constrained to leave the country. He came back in 1941 and found his mansion and observatory destroyed. Three years later, Donici leaves Moldova forever and moves to France.
For a long time the mansion was administered by the local kolkhoz, which changed its aspect, covering the facade with tiles and building and annex. Still, on the right back wall of the mansion you can still see the old plaster made out of “eggs, lime and sand”, as explained by the vice mayor of the village, Constantin Macarenco.
At the mansion you can also find the ornamented “stairway to heaven”. It is an outside metallic stairway used by Nicolae Donici to climb up to his laboratory so he wouldn’t disturb the inhabitants of the house when doing his nocturnal observations. You can still see this stairway today. What is interesting about it is that it was designed to change the angle of the steps during winter time in order to prevent slipping.
The bust of Nicolae Donici stands tall in front of the mansions. It was installed recently, after the previous one was stolen and sold for scrap.
Macri-Donici Family Tomb
If you go to Dubăsarii Vechi, you must visit the tomb built in the second half of the 19th century. What makes is unique is its history and decorative elements.
After the death of his father, Nicolae Donici and his mother, Limonia, move to his aunt. Four years later, his mother becomes ill with typhus and is isolated in a separate room in order to prevent the spreading of the infection. But because Nicolae misses his mother very much, his aunt breaks the rules and cracks the door of the isolated room so he could see his mother from a distance. But soon after, Limonia dies. She was only 35 years old.
Her embalmed body was placed in the tomb built in the yeard of the church in Dubăsarii Vechi founded by Nicolae Macri, the grandfather of the scientist from his mother’s side, who fled to Bessarabia from Greece. The tomb was built by the master Tuzini after the sketch by Alexandru Bernardazzi.
Two oil lamps were always lit in the tomb. And inside the hermetically sealed glass coffin you could see “a young woman with a pale, delicate face, almost looking alive. She wore a white coronet, and on her finger – a little ring”, according to the authors of the research “The youthful enthusiasm and the bold dream of the astrophysicist Nicolae Donici, founder of a scientific citadel on Nistru river”. During the soviet period, the tomb was vandalized and the coffin incinerated. But the structure and its decorative elements are still there.
“Pohorela” secular oaks grove
The grove is located in the Northern part of the village. There are over 130 secular trees. The strongest ones are more than 1,5 m in diameter. Some of the oaks are more than a century old, and others are believed to be even 300 years old.
Legends say that this forest was used by the tatars as camp site when they were coming to invade the local villages. One nigh, the villagers burnt the camp, thus burning the forest as well. “Pogorela” in Russian means “burned” and, through generations, this word became “Pohorela”. The grove is also called “Pogoreloe”, “Pohorila”.
The name of the village comes also from oaks, in Russian – „dub” [дуб]. According to the vice mayor Constantin Cacarenco, people from the village were using dubases, small boats made from oak trunks, and dubăsar was the person who was steering them.
Usually, the vice mayor of the village, Constantin Macarenco, is conducting the tours to tourists and officials from different countries or from Chișinău, to partners and people interested in investing in the village. But local authorities are not able to organize tours for all tourists. “The mayor’s hall can’t perform economic activities”, explains the vice mayor, adding that there need to be other methods for developing local tourism.
Once you get to Dubăsarii Vechi, you will notice that the water in Nistru flows slower than in the North of the country and that its banks are closer to each other. This difference is due to the Dubăsari hydropower plant. But fishermen consider it an advantage – the narrowing of the river is an indicator of its depth. In other words, the river is deeper and it means that there can be more fish. If you want to fish here, you should know that experienced fishermen from the village mentioned a few deeper pits where larger fish might be habitating. It’s important to “feed” the place and have a water resistant tent in case you want to spend a few days here. You can find food in the village, Dubăsarii Vechi is famous for growing tasty vegetables.
Produced with the financial support of the European Union within the “Support to Confidence Building Measures” project, implemented by UNDP. The opinions expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the official position of the EU or UNDP.
Reading Time: 9 minutesShe enters the house in a hurry and arranges the corner of the entrance mat. She leaves her purse and other items on the kitchen chair and starts washing the dishes. Then she goes to the second floor, changes the sheets on the beds, arranges the trinkets on the table, draws the curtains and opens the windows to aerate the room. From the window you can see the Nistru river, its banks covered with fresh vegetation. The woman sees to her tasks. She vacuums, she cleans the floors and starts all over again on the first floor.
Then she moves to the old house next door. Nobody was accommodated in this house yet, as everyone prefers “euro” repairs, as Lucia, the 52 years old administrator of the guest house, explains. But she doesn’t let the dust settle on the furniture and always has the rooms ready to accommodate guests.
The House of the Boyar is a guest house in the village of Vîșcăuți, Orhei, and can accommodate up to 8 persons. It is part of an eco-cultural touristic project “Bronze Half-moon” (“Semiluna de bronz”), which aims at attracting tourists in rural regions, offering them authentic experience, but it also promotes social entrepreneurship.
Besides involving the locals by creating jobs, the project also offers the opportunity and necessary support for the villagers to sell their products and services. Also, the profit is reinvested in the locality and its development. For example, now they work on developing a touristic trail through the forests of Vîșcăuți with all the necessary infrastructure, which will benefit the visitors of the village, as well as the locals.
Lucia quickly sweeps in the yard and takes out the trash. She managed to tidy up in just about two hours. A group of tourists just left and another one is coming. Lucia Frunză took off her apron and is ready to welcome the guests. “They come from Chișinău, they come from everywhere,” she says in a hurry.
Lucia remembers when she received a group of 18 people. At their request, she cooked them plăcinte, pot roast and mămăligă. But she decided to make them a surprise and prepared some mulled wine. “As a bonus. I have a special recipe. I add black pepper, sugar, lemon, oranges and a little vanilla. These give the wine such an arooomaaa.”
She is a very good cook. And one of her secrets is a special knife, which she carries with her from home to the guest house and back. It’s a cleaver with a wavy pattern blade, so when she cuts produce, it has jagged edges. When she makes soup, she cuts the potatoes, the carrots, the meat and the onion – she slices everything with it. Once she brought a bowl of soup to uncle Colea. “Oh, this soup with farfalle is so good, it’s like at a restaurant!,” recalls Lucia amused about the impression she made on the neighbor.
The meadow and the cave
Gheorghe and Ludmila Frunză live down the road from the guest house. When Lucia has too much on her plate, the old couple helps her out with cooking or with laundry. He is 74 years old, and she is 70. In summertime, the couple spends their second youth in Vîșcăuți. In winter, when it’s cold, they go back to Chișinău.
Gheorghe was born here, and he knows all the surroundings like his five fingers. He knows how to reach the Boyar’s Cave two ways: one is more difficult and the other one easier.
If you are in good shape and have the courage, you can reach the Boyar’s Cave through the ravine. But Gheorghe’s legs can’t keep up with this trail as he used to. The pathway to the cave goes between two rocky hills. You will step on the slippery rocks, washed by the cold water of the springs. You will climb the trees so thick, you can’t embrace with both hands, knocked down by the summer rain.
You will slowly advance towards the cave located up the hill, where you’ll see the Cornelian cherry dogwood full of hard-to-reach red berries, which local people pick for making compote. If you try and yell between the two rocky hills, your voice will not travel far. You will have no use of modern technologies, and your phone will only be good for taking pictures. Here you can breathe fresh cold air, while embraced by the silence dictated only by the murmur of the water.
Once you reach the cave, you need a lantern. On the walls you can see “V+M=LOVE”, but also hanging bats – almost embraced one next to another. There are three entrances to the cave and many labyrinths. No one knows exactly what are its measurements. There are some assumptions that it’s one kilometer long. But you can’t really reach its depths, because it collapsed a long time ago.
There are many legends about the origin of the cave. Gheorghe tells us that it used to be a quarry, tons of rock being extracted for the construction of churches.
Actually, according to archives, the cave was dug by the Sandino boyar around 1900 for storing wine barrels.
Locals say that during the two world wars, the cave was used as shelter for their grandparents and great-grandparents, and that they were guarded by the soldiers stationed in Vîșcăuți.
The old couple takes us on the river bank. “If you get on the boat and sail on the river, watching the forest… It’s such a beauty!,” Gheorghe tells us with excitement. He walks slowly and looks towards Nistru, watching the swans, the forest. “The air in Vîșcăuți almost makes you drunk,” he adds. He is followed by his wife Liuda and Daniel, a boy from the neighborhood.
They want to visit the three springs. It is said that the water of each of the springs has distinctive tastes. When they get to the place, they can see tourists’ traces: campfire ash, some pieces of paper. Tourists are not uncommon in these places. Gheorghe tells us that they come with their tents and spend a couple of days here fishing. He likes spending time with them. “All of them say that this is a nice quiet place”.
Map drawn for the tourists who visit the Boyar’s House
In Vîșcăuți you can rent a boat from the locals. You can also buy homemade bread, wine and free range chicken, fresh river fish, home grown vegetables. The village also has a beach, a picnic area, a wharf and a neighborhood called “The joyful neighborhood” due to the events organized here. From time to time, people gather here and cook fish soup or barbeque, they play some music, dance and party.
“The hill of Chirița” opens a view of Nistru river and the surrounding areas. “Now everything has dried-up… But when it’s green, the flowers there are wonderful!,” says Gheorghe.
“In Rață’s music video they showed the entire village. They filmed the forest and our meadow”, recalls Gheorghe. “There is also a song – My meadow. He sang it on TV many times,” adds Ludmila.
„Over the mountain, over the river – is my meadow,
Sometimes yearly, sometimes late – I take a walk there,
Over the mountain, over the river – flowers and roses,
Over the mountain, over the river – hidden memories.”
The lyrics to the song “My meadow”, sang by Moldovan singer Ion Rață, born in Vîșcăuți, where the music video was filmed.
Since the pandemic started, Ludmila and Gheorghe appreciate life in the village even more. “When the pandemic started, everyone was so agitated and scared. When we were in Chișinău, we would see all the ambulances and police cars throughout the entire city. But when we came here, it was like coming to heaven. When you get in the yard, you don’t need the mask any longer. We are peaceful here and we see to our chores. In Chișinău we didn’t have anything to do, except sitting on the benches outside. But here we exercise, we grow vegetables, fruits, we make canned food for winter,” Ludmila explains. She appreciates the tourists visiting the village, because the people have the opportunity to sell something to them. “They really don’t have a way to sell something in the village, no means to make a living.”
The luck and the happiness to be born at the river
Because the village is located on the banks of Nistru, the river is the one dictating the life in the region: it gives people water, it gives them food, but also leisure areas. Gheorghe remembers that especially during the soviet period he would visit his relatives on the other side of the river, in the village of Harmațca. They would barbeque under the willows near the river and then cross Nistru and continue their party under the willows of Vîșcăuți.
At the guest house, while stirring the pot roast, Lucia is humming a sad song. She is absorbed by the process and lets herself caught up in the moment:
Nistru, don’t drown me,
Nistru, don’t drown me,
Shai-rai-rai-ra, Shai-rai-rai-ra.
You don’t have the money to burry me,
You don’t have the money to burry me,
Shai-rai-rai-ra, Shai-rai-rai-ra.
“I woke up to this song. I woke up with my grandparents, with my parents, with the entire village singing it, and we learned it.” She grinds some cheese on a plate, and on another she puts some parmesan – so it’ll be tastier with the mămăliga. She puts some clay plates on the table and invites the guests.
“I am very proud to be born near the river,” says Lucia. She has happy memories of her childhood, when the winters were colder and the ice on the river could reach even 1 meter in depth. “Cars and tractors, even trucks with gas tanks would cross Nistru, driving towards the Transnistrian region,” she explains.
1 434 |
1 210 |
People live in VîșcăuțiSources: BNS, 2014 |
People live in HarmațcaSources: dubossary.ru, 2013 |
Even today, the bond between the two river banks is not lost. Lucia has relatives living in the village across the river, in Harmațca. “We have brothers and sisters, we have cousins, we are all related to each other. Because it’s a whole.”
Produced with the financial support of the European Union within the “Support to Confidence Building Measures” project, implemented by UNDP. The opinions expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the official position of the EU or UNDP.
Economy
Moldova will receive a disbursement of 36 million euros as part of the the Economic Recovery Plan
Reading Time: 2 minutesThis week, the European Commission approved the disbursement of 36 million euros in grant money for the Republic of Moldova. The announcement was made by Deputy Director-General for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations at the European Commission, Katarina Mathernova, who paid an official visit to the Republic of Moldova between September 13-15, together with Managing Director for Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia, Regional cooperation and OSCE, at the European External Action Service, Michael Siebert.
The EU officials had meetings with President Maia Sandu, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Nicu Popescu, Speaker of Parliament, Igor Grosu, Prime Minister of the country, Natalia Gavrilita, as well as key representatives of Government, international financial institutions and the civil society, according to a press release issued by the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Moldova.
Beside such topics as the EU-Moldova relations and prospects, the priorities of the reform agenda of the new Moldovan Government, preparations for the Eastern Partnership Summit at the end of the year and the Transnistrian conflict settlement, the officials also discussed the EU assistance in support of reforms and the Economic Recovery Plan for Moldova, which was announced in June with a total EU support of 600 million euros over the next 3 years.
“The first measures under the Economic Recovery Plan will shortly materialize, with the expected disbursement of 36 million euros in grant money under budget support programmes to support the authorities’ efforts to fight against the consequences of the pandemic. Moldova can count on EU’s assistance on its path to reforms and to recovery, bringing tangible results to citizens,” Katarina Mathernova stated.
The plan is based on assistance provided by the European Union through various bilateral and regional instruments, aiming to mobilize the funds in the form of grants, loans, guarantees and macro-financial assistance.
“The Economic Recovery Plan for the Republic of Moldova involves much more, not just this financial support provided immediately. It must help digital transformation, strengthen infrastructure, energy efficiency, education and support small and medium-sized enterprises,” the EU official also said.
As Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita informed, “The Economic Recovery Plan and the 5 flagship initiatives for Moldova in the Eastern Partnership will directly contribute to the reform and consolidation of institutions, stimulate long-term socio-economic development, bring direct benefits to citizens, and unleash new economic opportunities through promoting the green agenda and digitization. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been hit hard by the crisis. Promoting and diversifying access to finance and reducing collateral requirements will be essential in supporting economic operators. We are grateful to the EU partners who will launch two programs to support 50 000 independent Moldovan SMEs to adapt to the new conditions.”
President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, welcomed the decision of the European Union to disburse about 745 million lei in grant money, as the official page of the President’s Office announced. “EU support comes after a long period of freezing of European assistance, caused by former governments. We managed to relaunch the political dialogue with the European Union and resume financial assistance. The Republic of Moldova is gradually regaining the trust of its strategic partners. This European support is also a signal of encouragement for the new Government team in its commitment to clean up the institutions, fight corruption and launch development programs in the country,” said Maia Sandu.
Photo: unknown
“They are not needy, but they need help”. How Moldovan volunteers try to create a safe environment for the Ukrainian refugees
Reading Time: 3 minutesAt the Government’s ground floor, the phones ring constantly, the laptop screens never reach standby. In one...
#WorldForUkraine – a map that shows the magnitude of the world’s actions against Russian aggression
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe international community and volunteers from all over te world have launched #WorldForUkraine as a platform that...
How is Moldova managing the big influx of Ukrainian refugees? The authorities’ plan, explained
Reading Time: 3 minutesFrom 24th to 28th of February, 71 359 Ukrainian citizens entered the territory of Republic of Moldova....
Russia And Ukraine At The Beginning of 2022
Reading Time: 4 minutesThis opinion piece was written by Dr. Nicholas Dima. Dr. Dima was formerly a Professor of Geography and...
The man raising children on Nistru river
Reading Time: 7 minutesOn the Nistru, near the village of Varnița, a few colored pens with blue dots in the...
The village of the first astronomer in the Republic of Moldova
Reading Time: 5 minutesFrom eight in the morning till noon, every Thursday and Sunday, people lay their merchandise on the...
The prodigal son returns and turns his grandparents’ home in a tourist attraction on Nistru river
Reading Time: 7 minutesOn the road towards the school, a well-maintained rural house catches your eye, yellow stags painted on...
FC Sheriff Tiraspol victory: can national pride go hand in hand with political separatism?
Reading Time: 4 minutesA new football club has earned a leading place in the UEFA Champions League groups and starred...
Study// What is the reaction of authorities to journalistic investigations?
Reading Time: 3 minutes“People expect logical consequences when they see cases of undeclared assets, conflicts of interest, protectionism or proof...
Secretary General of CoE called on Moldova’s state institutions to avoid constitutional crisis. Politicians took it the way they wanted.
Reading Time: 3 minutesAt the beginning of this month, Speaker of Parliament, Zinaida Greceanii, sent a letter to Secretary General...