Cherry Season

This morning, my landlord, Nikolai came by to pick up the rent and with him he brought a big bag of cherries from his garden. One of the things that I love about Moldova is that everyone has a small garden with fruits and vegetables, or grandparents in a village with fruits and vegetables, and when it is season, you have a constant supply of homegrown fresh fruits and vegetables. And now it is cherry season, and so I have eaten cherries every day for the past two weeks.

Otherwise, I have worked a lot in this past week. But Friday, I finalized my chapter to the last report that I am contributing to this spring. I have basically been involved in the writing of three larger documents and though very interesting, it has been extremely time consuming. So when I sent off the e-mail with my draft chapter to my supervisor in Kyiv, it felt like when I was in school and turned in my last exam for the year and was going on summer holiday. So this week, I am planning on just hanging out on outdoor restaurants and watching the European Cup after six o’clock in the evenings.

Modern Bedouins

If the last post looked a bit strange, it is because I wrote and posted it from my cell phone. Very convenient but since I do not have access to font choices, etc, it is a bit of a mismatch with the other postings. Let’s see if I can solve it. If so, I can become one of those maniac bloggers that posts new texts three to four times per day! Or modern Bedouins as the Economist refers to them in the article Nomads at Last, from April 10, 2008: Young (I am at least still semi young…) people with digital gadgets that are hanging out at cafés with wireless connections, drinking caffe latte and blogging.

It turned out that Saturday afternoon could get even better than coffee and reading in the sun. After a few hours of reading my not so interesting book, I went for lunch at my favorite outdoor terrace Pani Pit. There I met Michael and Andreas from Austria, so I joined them for lunch. After the lunch, I met up with Swedish Lars for an afternoon beer at another outdoor terrace by one of the lakes in the Botanica park. The day ended with dinner and a song session in Lars’ apartment. So it was a day with only foreigners, but oh so nice to speak Swedish for a few hours for the first time in a month!

On the Air in Russian?

The other day, our Information Officer Elena was contacted by someone from the Russian unit of the UN Radio, who wanted to make an interview about the World Development Report Presentation here in Moldova. Elena was not here during the event, so she was kind enough to suggest that they interviewed me, Ms. Åsa Giertz, who according to her e-mail “is Swedish but speaks Russian”. Needless to say, I will not do the interview, but I am glad that some of my colleagues have such high expectations of me. Or perhaps it was just a hint that it is really time that I learn Moldova’s two main languages properly…

(But at least I can spell my name in Cyrillic: Оса Йерц, phonetically)

Russian After a Night Out

Yesterday, I left the office record early (I am trying to prove to myself that I am not a workaholic and that I only work a lot when I actually have to) and was looking forward to a quiet night at home with a book (“Mig äger ingen” by Åsa Lindeborg). However, the chapters that I was reading were sad to the point that tears started falling from my eyes and so when an acquaintance of mine called and told me that she had had a disastrous day and wondered if I wanted to come out and grab a bite, I decided that it was probably a good idea to get away from that book for a while.

It ended up being an early, tea evening on one of Chisinau’s nicest terraces, and so I got back well before midnight to both my book and my bed. As I was supposed to attend the conference on investigative journalism to combat corruption this morning, which didn’t start until 9:30, I was looking forward to sleep in a bit longer.

Five minutes after I had gotten home, I heard three men having a smoke and discussing loudly in Russian outside my house. After they had finished their cigarettes, they went inside to one of my neighbors’. The houses are fairly old and the walls are like paper. After a bit of remodeling during the Soviet Union, we now live three families in a building that I think initially was intended for one family, which means that our front doors are only a few meters apart.

Around 04:00 am, I woke up again, this time by these men being on their way home. They were extremely drunk and took several detours, banging on people’s doors, shouting and arguing. It felt like forever before they left. When I was lying there in bed, listening to them outside, I was mostly mad about the fact that I was SO close to getting eight hours of sleep. But I also realized that there are few languages that make people sound as drunk as when they speak Russian after a few drinks. Or is it just that Russian rarely have just a few drinks when they go out?

Monday Morning

So, I am back in the office after a weekend of (guess what?) NO WORK!!! I should actually have worked because I had something that I should have finished, but I decided to just ignore it. I haven’t had one day off since first week of May and I haven’t had a two-day weekend since I was in Rome in mid April. Started to fee like Michael Douglas in Falling Down and thought that it was time that I did something else than just sitting in the office, otherwise I would probably loose it. So I spent most of my weekend reading books and having pick-nicks with friends in parks. The weather has been great this last week and I really needed to just hang out in the sun for a while. The rest of the weekend was mostly me-time. I even bailed on a concert just to have some time to myself. Seems like the need for that gets greater each year and I become more and more of a loner, but hopefully it is just a habit and not a personality change.

This week, I have another field trip planned with Melanie (my boss) to the wetlands in Hînceşt. – love getting out in the countryside! And then tomorrow, I going to a meeting arranged by NGOs on how to strengthen the civil society’s monitoring capacity here in Moldova. Super interesting!

Not Always so Far Away

Even though I am in Europe, I sometimes feel quite far away from home (wherever that is, but not really here right now) and I really miss my friends and family. And then there are times when I feel closer. Friends with blogs are great, because then I get regular updates on what they are doing without them having to write to me every other day. Seeing friends in the media is another thing that makes me feel not so far away. Especially one is a real “linslus” and today, I could read about his favorite places in Stockholm and what he consumes of just about everything. Fun since I don’t get to see him more than a few times a year and we tend to talk about other things than his for the moment least favorite color and his preferred product at the pharmacy.

My weekend will for sure involve some work but I am also going hiking along the river Răut, in what is probably the most beautiful landscape in Moldova. With a little luck, I might pos some photos here on Monday…  

Two Blogs on Moldova

I have just found a new, funny blog about Chisinau and life here in the eyes of a foreigner. As the person in question is leaving Moldova for good one of these days, I suspect that the blog will seize to exist fairly soon. So do check it out!

http://chisinaukuriren.blogspot.com/

And for those of you who are Swedish speaking, check out the blog of Almost-Moldovan-Lars, who is now on his fifth year here in Moldova. Especially his last text on queues in Moldova is quite funny. Please read the comment that I posted on his blog also, as he actually forgot one very common form of queuing here.

http://larsbokander.wordpress.com/

Ok, back to my report writing now…

A Tiring Ending of the Week

So it is 1 pm on Saturday and I am in the office since two hours, working on a report. Since I have put in 13-15 hours of work per day this week, I had hoped I would be done by now but it has taken longer than expected. When this one is done, there are two more to go, plus a number of reports that I need to comment on. What can I say, it is the end of the fiscal year… Am I the only one in our office today? Not exactly. Too many of my colleagues are here, including of course the team leader for the report that I am working on now. People sometimes seem to question the fact that we work so much, but I think that if you are not prepared to work hard and sacrifice certain things in your personal life (such as time to watch TV or Saturday afternoon shopping), you shouldn’t work for an International Organizations. It is not just any job, it is a job that comes with a lot of responsibilities and duties. There is only one thing though; the other day, my colleague told me that despite only sleeping about 6 hours per night, he is never tired. I wish I was more like that!

But it has not just been work this week. Yesterday, there was a big art event in one of the large exhibition halls in Chisinau, where most of Moldova’s most prominent artists showed their work. Apart from mingling a lot (there were mostly the diplomatic missions there) and drinking free wine, I actually bought my first painting ever. And tonight, I am invited to celebrate the Norwegian Independence Day (the independence from Sweden) at a colleagues’ house. But it will not be a late evening since I will for sure be here in the office tomorrow again.

The world is upside down

We have a hail-storm here in Chisinau and it is 26 centigrades and sunny in Stockholm. But they are on the other hand predicting an abnormally hot summer here in Moldova, so I guess we should be happy about the water. And the Ministry of Agriculture has assured us over and over about the efficiency of their anti-hail rocket system that they have in place (no, this is no science fiction novel form the 1950s), so the farmers should relax and not fear for their crops.

Personally, I am locked up in my office since a few days, trying to finish a number of reports and analytical papers. But it is Sunday after all and so I am soon off for coffee break with Felicia, a former colleague of mine from the Ministry of Agriculture, in whom I have found someone equally interested in agricultural economics.

Tonight, I am going for dinner with a few friends at Chisinau’s Gondolen. Yes, all my Stockholm friends, we have one here too. Perhaps not equally luxurious or with the same view, but after 18 months here, I am not so picky…