Moldova: Village life a drop back in time in the least visited country in Europe
(This is the second in a series on Moldova, Romania and Transnistria)
BUTUCENI, Moldova – My GPS was failing me and that’s not a good thing in the middle of rural Moldova.
I was walking up the narrow main road of Butuceni, a tiny village of 240 people whose main road wasn’t paved until a year ago. I was looking for a place called Butuceni Eco-Resort, my lodging where I hoped to kick back and do nothing in the rural solitude of old Eastern Europe.
My GPS led me to a stone structure with an Eco-Resort sign but it looked long abandoned. The gate was open but the rooms were empty. No staff was around. Curiously, a key was in a door.
This couldn’t be it. I called. The woman answering said in good English to keep walking and enter the restaurant.
I continued up the street. In about 200 meters, I saw the same sign on a similar structure. Again, the rooms were empty. Two maids were folding sheets and through hand language, they indicated I should keep walking.
Near the end of the village, I finally saw a restaurant sign and walked in. I saw elaborately decorated tables with a woman cutting cheese and bread on a long table under a straw canopy. Moldovan women hustled around with heaving plates of meatballs and dumplings, bowls of stews and borscht. The air smelled of roasting sausages.
This was the place. At least, I hoped it was. My hunger grew with each breath. On every trip, I take a day or two to drop out and watch that world go by. Over 16 days this month through Slavic countries, Butuceni (pronounced boo-too-CHEN) was mine.
I could not have personally ordered a better escape. My room, in the second building, faced a grassy courtyard with a hammock. Next to my room was a spa complete with a piping-hot Jacuzzi, steaming sauna and cold pool. A posse of kittens roamed the grounds and hopped on my lap and fell asleep before I could alert authorities.
Paradise in rural Moldova? Moldova, the least-visited country in Europe? The poorest country in Europe after war-torn Ukraine?
“After the socialism, there was nothing.”
The owner
Speaking to me was Anatolie Botnaru, the Eco-Resort owner who, at 60 years old, has seen Moldova go from a backwater republic of the Soviet Union to a hip destination for savvy travelers. It has a thriving wine scene, a capital sprung to life and little places like Anatolie’s Eco-Resort preserving Moldova’s authentic rural past.
But Moldova remains Europe’s redheaded economic stepchild. It is caught, geographically and psychologically, between neighboring Romania, which it was part of until after World War II, and Russia with 4 percent of Moldova’s population identifying as Russian and against Moldova joining the European Union.
Moldova’s West-leaning president is in a bitter re-election battle with a Russia-leaning, former prosecutor who many fear will increase the corruption plaguing this country of 3 million people.
Reading in my hammock, a kitten asleep on my lap, Moldova’s turbulent past and uncertain future felt farther away than I was from the cute capital of Chisinau. I had taken a marshrutka, Moldova’s big vans that reliably and inexpensively cart people around the country, about an hour north of the capital.
The journey
Leaving the scruffy fringes of Chisinau, where the gray remains of Soviet 1980s architecture remain, we began climbing into the rolling hills heading toward the Ukraine border. Fall colors speckled the tall forests with flecks of reds and golds. Creeks meandered alongside the road.
The marshrutka dropped me off at the edge of Butuceni where a welcome center stood empty. Butuceni did not represent the kind of poor village I associated with rural Eastern Europe. Nice cars were parked in front of nice homes. I walked past roses lining the road, a pen of squawking chickens and three elderly women in colorful long dresses and traditional headscarves chatting on a bench.
“I like tradition,” Anatolie said. “I like the village, and all our culture. I love my country.”
We sat in the restaurant where I was polishing off some cherry dumplings and a nice Chardonnay from the village. A pleasant, smiling man with a round face and a full head of white hair, Anatolie visited Butuceni in 2004 to buy some of its stones in the outlying area for his garden in Chisinau.
He fell in love with the village, despite its unpaved road. He had no idea he would soon walk away with an eco resort.
“I had not a plan,” he said. “There were no tourists at the time. Sometimes people come to Chisinau from abroad. There was no tourist agency, no tour operator.”
It was only 13 years after Moldova achieved independence from the Soviet Union and everything was unstable but cheap. He had some money and thought about buying a house in the village. In the village a man said to him, “Hello, do you want to buy a home here?”
“Oh, my God!” Anatolie said. “I said yes. ‘How much?’”
“One thousand euros.”
Before he knew it, he had bought 17 buildings, including a stage where 2,000 people pour on to a big field along the River Raut to hear live opera and jazz concerts. He bought orchards of cherries and red berries and apricots. He made strawberry compote. He turned three of the buildings into his eco resort.
And he used his connections in Chisinau to get the road paved.
“It was a big scandal,” he said. “A lot of people don’t like asphalt. It’s not authentic. But this is infrastructure. Asphalt you need.”
Moldova’s recent history
Scandal and corruption have been in lockstep with Moldova ever since independence. Trying to forge its own identity, it didn’t break away from the Russian ruble and introduce the Moldovan leu until 1993. The constitution changed the name of the language to Moldovan but no one was fooled. It’s the same as Romanian.
With the USSR’s support system gone, it went through similar economic problems as the other ex-Soviet republics in the ‘90s. Moldova then became the first of those republics to have a non-reformed communist party return to power in 2001 when Vladimir Vronin was elected the nation’s third president.
While the economy has grown slowly in this century, 38 percent of Moldova’s GDP comes from emigrants sending money back from other countries. That’s the second highest in the world.
Moldova’s GDP is listed as $1,000 per capita, the lowest in Europe, but much of the economy goes unregistered due to corruption. According to Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, Moldova ranked only the 76nd cleanest among 180 countries.
“It’s lawyers. It’s bureaucrats,” Anatolie spewed. “It’s the system.It’s everywhere. If police stop you, you give. But this is small money.”
Trying to clean it all up is one Maia Sandu, an attractive 52-year-old, Harvard-educated village girl who came up through the World Bank. Anatolie lauds over her like he’s her press secretary. He calls her his friend.
She stopped by Butuceni the day I arrived during a campaign run and he showed me photos of her donning a cooking apron and hat in their kitchen. He showed photos of him speaking at one of her rallies.
“She’s very generous and democratic,” he said. “She’s very intelligent. She’s pro-Europe. She’s against corruption. She changed everything in our country. It’s not easy because there aren’t good people who could help her.
“Now she’s our gold.”
Birthday party
We walked down the road and turned into a driveway where two men sat at a table covered in overflowing bowls of food and bottles of alcohol. It was the 62nd birthday of Ion Morari, the very man who sold Anatolie his buildings 20 years ago.
We joined him and his friend, Constantine Poea, and filled shot glasses from a big liter plastic bottle of Ion’s homemade wine from the local noah grape. Ion gave me a plate covered in delicious smoked duck and brinzoaice, a yummy sweet cheese pastry.
Morari owns a transport company and he and Anatolie tried piecing together my complicated border crossing into Romania the next day. In between timetables and them contacting drivers, I asked Ion how he likes Moldova now.
“I love the Moldova style of life,” he said. “I like very much to do different things, to make money, to drive, just to have a job. In communism, you have no right to have wages. We didn’t have enough to eat. We just had a little oil. We drank tea. No coffee.”
I asked him about rumors that Russian president Vladimir Putin may go after Moldova if he ever conquers Ukraine.
“I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m afraid of the head of Russia. We live together with Russian people. I’m not afraid of Russian people. I’m afraid of the Russian power.”
Anatolie disagreed.
“Ukraine is very strong,” he said. “If there is no Ukraine, in one minute we will be finished.”
The churches
In the morning I ventured up to see Butuceni’s one tourist attraction – besides that seductive hammock. Up the hill just 200 meters from my room is the Cave Monastery. In the 13th century, Orthodox monks built a church right into the stone cliffs.
An arched door in a white stone building with a small cross led to a large room with a low stone ceiling. Candles eerily lit colorful, flowery carpets and artwork set into a copper wall. An elderly, white-bearded monk in a black cloak, wrote in a small notebook, ignoring me and two other visitors.
I climbed out the other side for a terrific view of the valley below. I passed through the huge white St. Mary’s Church, built in 1902, with the gold onion domes of the Eastern Orthodox faith. Ten women in headscarves frantically crossed themselves as they approached the altar. It was built on the site of a Celtic fortress from the 7th-2nd century B.C.
I continued along the ridge for a few hundred yards when I sat down on an embankment for the best view of my trip. Forest-covered mountains stood to my left. Farms stretched to the horizon to my right. The River Raut snaked through the middle. The sun tried breaking through clouds on a 60-degree day.
It was so quiet I could hear the birds’ wings.
The election
Today, Moldova isn’t so quiet. In Sunday’s election, Sandu failed to get the 50 percent majority needed to win. She received 38 with Alexandr Stoinoglo, the former prosecutor general who has fended off numerous corruption charges, receiving 28 percent.
Worse, 52 percent voted No on the EU referendum to 47 percent Yes. Sandu said there is “clear evidence” that criminal groups worked with foreign forces against Moldova’s EU movement to buy 300,000 votes. Fugitive tycoon Ilan Shor has been accused of meddling from his home in Russia.
Sandu called it “fraud of unprecedented scale.”
The runoff vote is Nov. 3 with democracy possibly hanging in the balance. As an American, this seems frighteningly familiar. U.S. Election Day is Nov. 5.
At some point that week I will need a hammock.
Next: Romania’s Bran Castle.
If you’re thinking of going …
How to get there: Mushrutkas leave hourly from Chisinau’s Central Bus Station for Orhei, the town nearest Butuneci. The 80-minute drive is about €3. Tell the driver you’re going to Butuneci and he’ll drop you off there.
Where to stay: Butuneci Eco-Resort, 373-69-127-175, www.pensiuneabutuceni.md, anatoliebotnaru65@gmail.com. Following a peasant country theme, it has three lodges with courtyards and central dining room and spa. €65 for a double, €55 for a single, including breakfast.
When to go: Summers in Moldova aren’t terribly hot, averaging a high in the low 80s. January is cold, 24-34. When I visited this month it was in the 50s with one major rainstorm and some drizzle.
For more information: Orheiul Vechi Cultural-Natural Reserve, Butuceni village, 373-676-11711, https://orheiulvechi.com/en/tourism/, cancelaria@orheiulvechi.com, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.