Well, Moldova is my home, and I can tell a lot about this country. If you want to visit Moldova, click here.

Geography

First, some geography. Many people in the West have never heard about Moldova, others think it's in Africa or South-East Asia. Well, I've got some news for them - it's right here, in Europe. It's situated between Ukraine and Romania, to the North-West from the Black sea, and is just a few miles away from Danube (map can be found here). Its capital is called Chisinau (I don't really know how to explain the pronunciation) with a population of about 810 000 people (total population of the republic is about 4 million people). The ethnic composition includes Moldovans, Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Gagauz people (descendants of Turks), Bulgarians (very few) and others. Main resource - soils (best soils in Europe), limestone (widely used in construction here), natural gas in the south (not enough to power the whole country). The climate is mild continental, with dry summers and mild winters.

History

Historically Moldova should have become a part of Romania, but due to the strategic importance of it's geographical location it was always under constant claims by Russia and eventually became a part of what was known as the Soviet Union.

Before the 19th century there had been three fairly large countries in the Balkan-Carpathian region: Muntenia, Transylvania and Moldova, which were united in one country called Romania along with a few smaller regions. In the early 18th century a part of Moldova was made a part of Russia (called Basarabia). And that part was what is now known as the Republic of Moldova. In 1918 it was returned back and, since there was no Moldova anymore but Romania, it became a part of Romania...until 1940, when Eastern Europe was divided between the Soviet Union and Germany as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement. It was named The Soviet Socialist Republic Of Moldavia (Russian for Moldova)

Culture

Since Moldova used to be a part of Romania, it shares its language and traditions. In order to suppress any attempts to rejoin Romania and to eliminate most of the links with it, Moldova was heavily, so to speak, 'russianised'. Many native Moldovans were deported to Siberia for no reason, language was subject to 'russianisation' as well. School textbooks were printed in a language that had not existed before - Romanian words were substituted by new, effectively Russian but with Romanian suffixes and prefixes. Cyrillic alphabet was introduced to take over the Latin that had been used for the last few centuries. The language itself was renamed into Moldavian although it never really changed (it's just a dialect). This can account for the fact that the language in Moldova  is very muddled now - it's a mixture of Russian and Romanian. On August 31, 1989 Latin alphabet was reintroduced to replace the artificially imposed Cyrillic and this date is now known as the 'Limba Noastra' ('Our Language') celebration.

You can see the national stem here.

The sad truth

On many web pages you'll find words like: "Moldova is a very beautiful country, where people are kind and friendly etc. etc. etc.". OK, this is partly true, but unfortunately now it's not a very pleasant place to live in. First, according to some statistics, Moldova is the most underdeveloped country in Europe, secondly, the word goes, it's the third most corrupt country in the world. Wow, isn't it a nice place? :) The majority of the industrial sites are situated on the left bank of the Dniester river, i.e. is controlled by the breakaway Pridnestrovye. The rest are fighting hard for survival, some of them have already ceased to function (like the TV plant in Chisinau). Rural population is involved in agriculture (very close to natural type of production). In Chisinau (the only real city in the country) you might not notice the economic crisis of the country, until you try to get a job and make a living out of it. The minimal legal monthly wage is 18 lei (leu is the national currency, leu = singular, means 'lion', lei = plural, means 'lions' :) ), which equals to about £1 or $1,5. The average monthly wage is about 250-300 lei, the necessary monthly minimum is about 900 lei. The average pension is about 80 lei a month.

You can also understand that the country isn't doing well in the evenings, when one street light out of ten is lit (that's near streets). In the living areas no lights are on - you could literally break your neck, if you make a wrong step. Also periodically we have full scale energy crises. In March 2000 Russia stopped exporting natural gas to Moldova for about two weeks. And gas is used for generating electricity (a big part of it), which, it turn, is needed to heat up and pump water through the water mains. Electricity is imported from Romania and Ukraine (home production is about 40% I think). So the country is effectively dependent on other countries.

An interesting phenomenon in Moldova is that a very large proportion of national income is generated by illegal Moldovan workers in European countries, like Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and others. Naturally, it's not taken into consideration in national income accounting but the size of this income equals the yearly budget of Moldova (this budget isn't effective anyway). More economic information.

The population of Moldova tends to decrease (by over 10 000 people a year) due to emigration (Germany, Canada, Israel).

I could go on forever - there are loads of such things to tell about. But why scare you? Come and see for yourself.

Of course, there are good people in Moldova, and quite many. But they are so tired of this miserable life. We all are...