In the mountains north and east of Chişinău are four exceedingly scenic monasteries: Capriăna, Condrița (who puts a diacritic on ‘t’?), Curchi, and Orheiul Vechi. My favorite is the last one, it sits on the edge of a cliff and has a cave underneath that opens to the wall of the cliff.

The weekend before Orthodox Easter is also a holiday, and people come and pray in large numbers during mass. Large means endless traffic jams of surprisingly fancy new cars in this not very rich country. I had hired a driver for the day.