Wine day

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It was national wine day here in Moldova today. A huge street party in the capital and other locations with a lot of drinking. I wonder if I will ever be sober again. Moldovans are telling me that nobody will now until after the New Year. But we do need to work.

Everyone at the party was very friendly. After I split from our hosts for fifteen minutes I ended up with this:



Some people just gave this straw bag to me all of a sudden and some other people who were selling their stuff there just put some of it in the bag. I ended up with two bottles of wine (1993 vintage), a huge bottle of brandy, a huge 500g dark chocolate bar, some huge unripe tomatoes and a quince (actually two I think). Nobody wanted to take any money for this, they just laughed and gave this to me, it was nice but very strange. When our hosts found me already with this bag they were quite surprised as well but then they thought that the people who gave this to me must have been from one of the villages not far from ours and they knew me / about me and the work we have been doing in the village.

I still managed to drop in for the opening of the coworking opened here in the capital with Norway's Ministry's of Foreign Affairs support last week between the weddings. I will invest a little bit in one of the local startups here before I go just for fun and to support the initiative. But I must sober up for that. And we do need to get back to work.

Comments

[topum.livejournal.com]

I have never seen anyone as obsessed with wine as these guys here. They are not nearly as refined as the French are about it (nor is their wine), yes but they might beat the French on passion. Every family in the village where we are staying grows their own grapes and makes their own wine. Barrels are everywhere, the smell of grapes and wine envelopes the village whispering "go on, have a sip" to everyone 24/7. And they do, oh boy, they do, proudly claiming the number one spot in alcohol consumption per head in the world. And tiny as they are, they are the 21st largest wine producer in the world and home to the world's largest wine cellar stretching 200 km and filled with nearly 2 million bottles of wine (largest wine collection in the world according to Guinness). We visited it, you have to drive in underground and then navigate through Chardonnay Street, Cabernet Street, etc in your car. Some people get carried out from their "wine tasting and dinner", they are a generous bunch here.