V Day in Transnistria and first cherries

[topum]

We had fresh cherries straight from the tree of our hosts' neighbours today. First cherries in the village were ready to eat on the 5th of May this year.

We are trying to see if we could go to the self-proclaimed break-away Transnistria Republic for the V Day military parade there on the 9th. It is one of the last "Soviet Union" enclaves and we are told that the V Day celebrations there are done in true Soviet style and are very interesting to see. And I am a sucker for self-proclamed, break-away, closed, frozen in time and weird places of course. The parade in Tiraspol, the Transnistrian capital will be very pro-Russian we are told, in contrast with the official parade in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, which this year will be a joined affair with the US. Pro-Russian protests are expected in Chisinau against the participation of the US in the parade and pro-West protests are expected in Tiraspol against the Russians apparently. The grass is always greener on the other side of Nistru (the river which separates Transnistria from the rest of Moldova) it seems.

Comments

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

I bet those cherries were good. Nothing like fresh off the tree cherries. Of course I've never had fresh cherries off a tree unless you count choke cherries but those are quite bitter. I've had fresh blue berries off the bush though, they grow abundant around my dad's place, I used to go berry picking alot when I was younger.

Transnistria sounds interesting.

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

What kind of berries were those? Blackthorn?

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Ha!  I don't know we called them choke cherries.  They were tiny red cherries that grew on a tree.  They had a pit in them.  They were very bitter. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

I meant the blue ones.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Ah those.  They're blue berries.  grow on bushes around here. Tastey too and a good antioxidant apparently. They aren't cherries though no pits in them.  We also have wild strawberries, Raspberries and black berries here in the summer months. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

They are not blackthorn then if there are no pits in them. Must be something else.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

They look like this

We call them blueberries here.  You can buy them in most grocery stores too.  They usually sell them by the pint.  The wild ones taste better though and make good blueberry pie. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh, these are either blueberries or bilberries. Blueberries are native to North America, bilberries to Europe. Bilberries are sometimes referred to as blueberries in Europe. These are tasty, yes.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I've only heard of Transnistria, heard practically nothing about it.

[topum.livejournal.com]

We are not going there tomorrow but I will go there later this week and will report back.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Wow, those are early cherries! Around here it's still cherry-blossom time... But I suppose that Moldova is in that area that's full of amazing orchards..

Transnistria sounds fascinating. You are definitely educating me about these places! I just looked up whether Moldova is counted as 'Eastern Europe', and was alarmed to discover that a term that you hear used so often has such widely varying definitions!

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I live in England myself and these cherries surprised me too. They are considered a bit early here too though.

As I travel around Eastern Europe more, the term becomes almost meaningless to me. The countries it is supposed to include are really different and share very little by now. Moldova would be better described as ex-USSR I guess. I understand that there has always been quite a difference between the Eastern European countries which were part of the Soviet Union and those that weren't (even though they were "communist" too). So Moldova and Ukraine for example have a lot in common (even though Ukraine is slavic and Moldova is not) and much more so than Ukraine or Moldova have in common with, say Romania or Poland, which were part of the "commi bloc" but still not part of the SU.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I suppose Europe in general is more of a political than a geographical construct, but being largely familiar only with the western bits it's so easy to just assume that nation states are now much more fixed and inevitable than they really are...

[real-marsel.livejournal.com]

Is cherry sweet?

[topum.livejournal.com]

Quite sweet. We are told that it is an early variety and the ones that come later will be way better and sweeter. They also have a lot of sour cherry trees here.