topum

You may remember our struggles with the brilliant local road builders here (if you don't here they are).

I refused to accept what some people told me was "the reality here" and was certain that I could fight this until we got proper roads everywhere the local road building authorities still owed them to us. I also did not want to mention this at one of our regular meetings with the vice minister even though I was told that that would "solve everything in a minute". I believe that building a couple of short roads by the organisation which was created precisely for this very purpose should not involve a vice minister.

At some point, when we exhausted most of our options with little result, one of the locals told me (rounding his eyes a lot) that I "should see HER".

SHE, I was told, was one of the vice mayors of the nearby town. And even though usually it would not make much sense to see a vice mayor for this thing (because of the messed up way of how the reporting lines work here), I was told that she was definitely the solution because "she is the only one who does things right away" (oh boy that's a quality hard to come by here) and "everyone is afraid of her, regardless of whether they report to her or not, nobody wants her to get on their asses because she is scary".

I made an appointment. The hall in front of her office was crowded, a lot of people were waiting to see her. The scary woman turned out to be in her early forties, still extremely attractive and with a very feline body language and a surprisingly plunging neckline for a vice mayor during office hours (and a chest worthy of that neckline). She started making calls while we were still telling our story to her and was quickly put through to the guy who caused all the mess with the roads for us. She talked to him for about a minute very quietly and with a smile but the eyes of the locals who I was with did this:



I asked one of the locals what did she say to the guy and was told that she ended the conversation with "If you do not stop playing your bloody games, which I am very tired of by now right away, I will tear your asshole into a German cross."

Wow.

- A German cross?
- That means "a swastika".

Wow.

She then walked out from behind of her desk to shake hands with us and it turned out that she was wearing I-don't-know-how-many-but-a-lot-inch black shiny heels with red soles.

Wow.

This was one of the very rare occasions when I enjoyed dealing with seemingly a very dominant woman, I am generally very much not a fan.

I asked the locals if they thought it would move now and if the guy would even care given that she was not his boss really and so far he was able to resist all possible pressures from the mayor's office and did not care much. The locals told me "Yeah, it will be completely different now that she agreed to get involved. Nobody wants to mess with her. If you fuck up and she gets on your ass, it is going to feel like one of those heels in your balls. She will find a way to screw you. And this pissed her off." They also told me that she had four kids and that her husband was a cult professor at the local college who was super popular with and respected by the students and was super soft and polite and a complete opposite of his warrior wife.

The very next day I was coming back to the village from a couple of meetings in the capital and was stunned by the flurry of road building activity that was happening.



The super problematic guy himself was there, managing it all and was all smiles when he saw me and asked me to stop for a quick chat and we shook hands and he was completely different from how he was before.

And the roads are done and they are perfect.

What used to be a solid green wall is now just a see-through fence:

Yes, both of them.

More weddings all over the world here.

In Benderi, Transnistria, Moldova.

The groom surprised the bride with their wedding ride, which he put together himself at this wedding in Tiraspol, Transnistria.

As the patron of Europe region of World Health Organization (WHO), Crown Princess Mary of Denmark will pay a three days visit to Moldova between the dates of November 23-25, 2016 together with Europe Regional Director of WHO, Dr. Zuzsanna Jakab for the purpose of focusing on regional issues related to mother and child health.



Together with Moldovian Minister of Health, Ruxanda Glavan, Crown Princess Mary will attend a meeting at the building of Ministry of Health on November 23, Wednesday. The Crown Princess will attend a dinner with Ruxanda Glavan at Castel Mimi Restaurant in the evening (we went to the opening of Castel Mimi).

Crown Princess Mary will visit Public Health Institute on November 24, Thursday and attend a meeting with doctor who are specialized in mother and child health and antimicrobial resistance. Afterwards, the Crown Princess will visit UN Country Office, Mother and Child Institute, Medicine and Pharmacy State University. Crown Princess Mary will visit a child vaccination health center on November 25, Friday.

In Moldova

In Moldova

So if Brexit and now the results of the world's most important election were not enough to make Vladimir Putin ecstatic, the world's least important election (I talked about it here) has just ended with the pro-Russian candidate beating the pro-EU candidate solidly (by ten percent of the votes). Igor Dodon (I took a picture of him here) is the president-elect of Moldova. He ran under the "Re-establish and strengthen our relations with Russia" slogan.

Well if that is not enough, then in Bulgaria, an actual EU member, the pro-Russian air force commander general Rumen Radev is now winning the election too.



And if that is not enough too, in Ukraine the very famous heavily pro-US former president of Georgia (a huge Putin's adversary) who was appointed by the new pro-west Ukrainian president the mayor of Odessa has resigned with much noise and heavy condemnations towards the Ukrainian new pro-west government, accusing it of corruption and everything else basically.

Seriously, it could not get better for Vladimir Putin. I bet he has the tears of the US protesters and media collected for him by the undercover KGB agents and flown to Moscow on fighter jets for him to bath in in his gold bath tub probably designed by the same Italian designer to the rich who gold leafed Donald Trump's penthouse.



We fucked up. Many people seem to have stopped voting for our message all over the world. I think I could agree with Seth MacFarlane quite a bit:



As much as I find the protests going on in the US ridiculous, I could still be this guy right now (the only protester in NYC who made sense to me):

I am still using this Norwegian VOSS bottle as my water bottle and have been throughout my stay here. I left it in many places and lost it in the forest many times but it has "VOSS Artesian Water from Norway" on it and everyone in all the neighbouring villages knows that it is mine by now and it is always returned to me when found. I forgot it at the edge of the forest this time too, it was still there when I came back for it.

A piece of the school's fence at one of the nearby towns was old and ugly so the kids did this to it: