Grey Chisinau

 They say that it is always raining in Chisinau on Orthodox Easter. And so it did also this year. At least Thursday before Easter, and on Friday the streets were very wet here and rain was hanging in the air. When it is raining in Chisinau, which it has on alarmingly few occasions during the six months that I have been here, the city gets very grey. As a kid, I always pictured Eastern Europe very grey for some reason. It probably had to do with the sceneries in Western produced spy movies from the cold war era, many of them taking place at night time in urban areas and some of them even made in black and white. But when it rains here or gets cloudy, parts of Chisinau kind of matches this childhood image of mine. This is mostly due to the lack of painting of the houses. Despite a construction boom all around Moldova, many old houses are still in need of major renovations and new paint on the facades, and the grey limestone is very visible in the urban landscape. The houses which have been blessed with some new paint tell me, however, that Chisinau will not be so grey during rainy season in a few years. Bright, clear colors are used and each owner paints in his or her color of choice. A collogue of mine from Washington told me how she had visited a village here a while ago and commented how pretty it was that all the small houses and fences were painted in a bright grass green color, whereby one of the villagers snapped that they hadn’t had much choice because there was only one color to buy during the Soviet Union. But this has changed and hence in a few years, another Swedish Junior Professional here might write a similar article on his or her blog, giving it the title “Colorful Chisinau”