Country 75: I am going to Moldova!

Buna ziua and Здравствуйте! A quick post from me, I've just booked my next trip and I'm off to Moldova and Romania in November. I'll be gone for just six days and I'll be starting my trip in Chisinau, but also visiting Tiraspol and Orheiul Vechi whilst in Moldova. I shall then be getting the train over the border to Iasi in Romania before flying back from there - Iasi is the second biggest city in Romania. I've done Bucharest the capital and biggest city as well as Brasov, the eight largest city. Iasi will be a modern European city, in sharp contrast to Moldova, which is a former Soviet Republic and still rather poor even compared to Romania. It is actually much cheaper to fly to and from Romania than Moldova, probably as a function of supply and demand - I even contemplated flying in and out of Iasi but decided that I wanted to save time by starting my trip in Chisinau rather than Iasi. One of the aspects of this trip that would be fascinating for me is the languages used: in Romania, they speak Romanian (obviously) and in Moldova, they speak both Romanian and Russian - Romanian is the official language but given that it was a part of the USSR, it is still very Russian speaking. After Romanian, it is the most spoken language in Moldova. Then in the region of Transnistria it is Russian only, very little Romanian and certainly no English at all. Given that Romanian is a romance language closely related to Italian, I can read it quite well but speaking it is always a challenge - I can just about construct basic sentences in Romanian to communicate but I would often struggle to understand the replies. Ironically, I have had a lot more practice using my Russian over the years but since it is a Slavic language, it is a lot harder for an English speaker like me to master than say a language like Romanian, especially since I already speak French, Spanish and Italian. So I am off to Chisinau on the morning of the 17th November and flying back from Iasi on the evening of the 22nd November, that's a Friday to a Wednesday. I've not travelled since my trip to Denmark as some work trips that were supposed to happen fell through and I thought, sod it, I am just going to book an amazing exotic holiday and go somewhere new. One of my travel goals this year was to visit a new country I have never been to before and so I have done that twice now: first I went to Serbia in June and now I shall be going to Moldova in November. Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading!