Romania re-visited. Iasi and surrounding areas

The best thing about rep. of Moldova is that it is such a small country that it is easy to cross the boarder (if your not moldovan and need a visa that is). Clemence, Marcia and I decided to go on an extended weekend to Iasi (pronounced Jash), which is the old capital of Moldova in the pre-commu years (when moldova in romania and rep. Moldova was still united before USSR).
Iasi is known as a student town, and has been nominated the "capital of modern Romania". Overall it is a really nice place. Downside - they will not accept Moldovan lei in the exchange office!!! We felt discriminated against.

We went to visit a friend of Clemence, who is originally from Iasi, and she had arranged a small roadtrip around the region Moldova. Read btw. the lines: we saw churches, monestaries and a castle now and again if we were lucky;) Dear mom, you should be proud.
The picture to the right is the entrance of one of the old castles called "blabla", where Stef. Cel Mare use to stay. That stef cel. mare dude has been all over, cause it was the same story we got everywhere.;)

This is one of the monestaries still functioning. My conclusion was: if you have to spend all day praying, you get pretty good at baking bread:)

In each monestary they had to rows of candles. One for life and one for death. Candles where 5 lei each, so many of the monestaries were very well keept.

Marcia, respecting the dress code. It was a bit hard for people not to laugh when they saw us, somehow we couldn´t really blend in.

We got a friend (slightly tipsy) and a really bad businessman: He was selling religious artifacs and his wife was selling homemade jam, but after drinking a bit to much of her amazing vina de casa, he began to give out all the things. He was very impressed with meeting foreigners, and wanted to make sure that we had a safe travel, to the extent that he gave us a glue on cross for the car.  We felt bad for the wife and ended up spending an equavalent amount of money on her homemade jam.

My friend mr " i-am-si-tired-of-seeing-churches-that-I-take-photos-of-everything-else". He was very cute. And green.

awww another church. Now in round version.

Kids either playing at the wishingwell or trying to get some money.

The view from somewhere in the montains.

"Drive-by shooting" which was really hard cause the car was going very fast.

again...

Clememce at the place we stayed for the night.

Piata! YAY.

We went up a gondola. It was amazing. It would be really cool to come back when it is winter.

One of the really nice churches, painted all around.