topum

The capital of Moldova seems to be obsessed with the concept of VIP. They are really into adding "VIP", "Elite", "Exclusive", "Platinum", "Gold", "Club", "Privé", etc everywhere, even where it doesn't fit at all to the point of being comical. Often it is even a combo of a number of those. I saw a place once that had both "Platinum" and "Gold" in its name at the same time. One would have thought that at least these two were mutually exclusive. Well, not in Moldova. I still predict Chisianu to remain firmly below the radar of the jet-setting glitterati crowd in the near future despite the density of all things VIP, Elite and Exclusive on the ground.

Also, it is considered really cool if the name of the establishment, whether it is a hypermarket, a car park, a hospital or a tiny market stall, is in English. A week ago I was in Chisinau with a number of locals and I drove past a "cool" interior design shop. All the advertising on its storefront was only in English. The locals could not even understand what kind of a shop it was and I had to translate it to them. I had to translate to the locals what the local shop in their capital was about. That's how cool English apparently is here. So cool that you would even sacrifice the reach of your advertising just to stay that cool.