Days 44-45 – Chilling Out in Chișinău: Rest days in Chișinău

Days 44-45 – Chilling Out in Chișinău: Rest days in Chișinău

Tuesday February 17, 2015

Day 44 – Rest Day in Chișinău

Today was to be my first proper rest day for quite a while. My previous rest days have usually been fairly busy days full of activity followed by heavy drinking which ends up leaving you feel even more tired than beforehand! This time I needed a more relaxing day.

The location I had chosen to layabout in was Tapok Hostel near the city centre. I had visited here before on a backpacking trip last year and quite liked the cosy atmosphere of the place so I decided it would be the perfect spot for a rest with not too much activity.

Due to this there are barely any photos of Chisinau below, instead this page is mainly taken up by photos of cats (welcome to the internet!) and another animal which I had never seen before.

I had two activities for today, one was to go out and buy some food for the cycle tomorrow and the second was to find a bike shop where I could buy a new multitool… exciting stuff! Other than this though I spent the entire day lazing around the hostel. There was barely anyone about so I had the place mostly to myself. The only other company were the hostel’s cats who were supposed to stay outside but always found a way in the second a visitor opened the door. One of them always placed himself on the stool at the main desk when he found his way inside.

Later in the day I ventured out to the edge of the city walking for over an hour and a half to get to a bike shop where I could pick up a multitool. I had lost mine somewhere along the way and due to that had to try and make it along the bumpy roads into Chisinau the day previously with a front pannier rack which was about to fall off. I decided I should probably remedy that! Earlier on I had ventured to the shops to find out that the Moldovan currency was starting to crash and the shops were packed wall to wall with people buying food before it crashed any further. Other than this though the day passed very uneventfully.

All day I was still feeling drained from the last few days of cycling down through Moldova but by evening time I finally felt recharged enough to actually talk to people again. I got chatting to the only two other English speakers at the hostel, Billy from Australia and Andy from England. We decided to head for a bit of food and a few drinks in Chisinau.

We headed to a food chain called Andy’s Pizza which have restaurants in all of the big cities in Moldova. Unlike most other big food chains in the western world this one had fresh, healthy and local food. We had a good meal here and a few drinks before Billy headed off to get a bus to Constanta. Myself and Andy headed to a random basement bar and had a drink there. A Moldovan girl here wanted to test out our Russian so we gave it a go. After one beer here I was feeling a bit sick so I headed back to the hostel. I had been feeling a bit sick all day which I presume was just a factor of being so worn out. As it got later into the night it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to get back on the bike the next day. So, when Billy arrived back at the hostel due to his bus breaking down, I decided to join himself and Andy for a 3am feast and a bit more drink at a nearby restaurant before finally retiring for the night.

Day 45 – Another Rest Day in Chișinău

Today largely followed the pattern of the previous day with me not getting up to much really. I was still feeling sick so stuck to the hostel for most of the day only venturing out to print out my Turkish e-visa as this was the last rest day I had planned before reaching the Turkish border.

The only real exciting thing that happened was running into this dude outside the hostel. I didn’t even know an animal like this existed so when I opened the door of the hostel to see what looked like a dog sized rat looking back at me I got a bit of a surprise. I had to ask one of the Ukrainian guys in the hostel as to what it was but I had never heard of it before, it was a muskrat which apparently is pretty common in this part of Europe.

When I was looking it up online I came across an interesting competition called “Miss Outdoors Moldova” in which some contestants skin muskrats as part of their act. There were even specialised competitions for it, where the winning lady’s first prize was “$100 and a set of muskrat traps”!

After the excitement of seeing my first muskrat I decided I had done enough sitting on my ass for the day and went out for some food and drinks with Billy. We headed back to the old reliable, Andy’s Pizza, the food there was seriously good and I was going to miss it when I left Moldova. We took in a good few drinks here before heading to an Irish bar (one of the few open pubs we could find in Chisinau) and had a couple more here before Billy had to leave for his bus. Billy had been traveling on and off for a good few years now and was very much in the traveling mindset. It was great to chat to someone like minded. Especially considering I hadn’t held a proper conversation with anyone in English since Lviv. I could even count on one hand the number of English speakers I met between there and Chisinau. It had been broken Russian the whole way in between. So after a couple of hours of good chat and good drink we parted ways and I headed back to the hostel to try and catch up on the blog and get a few hours sleep before getting back on the bike in the morning.