We spent our last night in Romania south of Botoșani, in front of the new Zosin monastery. In the evening we could hear the monks singing, in the morning we got an incredible concert of their bells – every European cathedral should be jealous.
The next day we were on our way to the border to Moldova.
The border police was friendly, we needed the Covid vaccination for the first time, they looked into some of our storage compartments and wished us a nice stay in Moldova. We could change money directly at the border, but didn’t get a sim card for the Wifi.
Our first stop was at the town of Balti, where we were getting a Moldovan sim card, so we would be connected to the world. We paid about 1,30 Euro for 10 GB for 2 weeks!!
When we turned onto a road without tarmac for the first time, we thought it was under construction. Soon we realised, that there are many parts, especially in the north, without tarmac, and there isn’t any to be expected soon. The gravel wasn’t too bad, after we found the right travelling speed. Roads with tarmac patchwork with a lot of potholes were worse, as you always had to navigate around them.
Our destination in the north was Rudi, a little village, which has one of the measurement points of the Struve geodetic arch, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage.
The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820 km, which yielded the first accurate measurement of a meridian arc.
We had visited the monument for the Struve Geodetic Arc point in Hammerfest the year before – see our post from Hammerfest. So we had decided we needed to find this point in Moldova now too.
We had a great first day in Moldova and were looking forward to more impressions of this country – more on our next post!