Fish and Farmer in Cahul

I just got back from my first visit to a friend’s site. I was hanging out with my friend Maggie in Cahul, which is a southern city on the boarder with Romania. Its population is about 20,000, so much bigger than my raion, but not close to the size of the biggest cities in Moldova (Chișinău’s population is about 794,800).

It was so nice to see what another site looks like. I could see a huge difference in the kind of lifestyle you can have Cahul as opposed to Criuleni, but I could also see so many similarities. The general feel and flow of things are the same. The big difference is just that everything is bigger. There are many more stores and shops. The piața is large enough to find anything there that you need or want. There are many restaurants to choice to dine at (Criuleni only has one restaurant, but it’s very expensive). The grocery stores have a much larger selection.

It took a 3-hour bus ride from the southern part of Chișinău to get to Cahul and then another 45 minutes to get to the center of Chișinău. With pain of travel and the easy access to one’s necessities, I can understand why most PCVs who live in Cahul rarely travel to Chișinău. But regardless of the annoyance of travel, I really enjoyed seeing another site and visiting a friend. I will definitely be visiting more sites in the future.