I am in the capital of Moldova, which I bet most people don’t know is Chisinau. I didn’t. Moldova is one of the least touristed places in Europe (after Liechtenstein it seems). Moldova wants you to visit. It will stamp your passport without even looking to see whether your face matches your passport photo. Moldova’s marketing one-liner is “Discover the Unexpected,” and I’ve already definitely discovered some unexpected.

I didn’t plan to visit Moldova. I was curious about it because my Bay Area friend, Tom Corr, was once here on a peacekeeping mission, and I got cheap direct flight from Tbilisi. I mention this because here’s one last thing to know about Tbilisi– the street dogs with the little ear tags live in the airport too!

Moldova is a former Soviet republic that became independent in 1991. It’s landlocked and culturally diverse — among the non-Moldovan communities here are Russians, Bulgarians, Jews and Romanians. Because Moldova was once part of Romania, its first language is Romanian and most people also speak Russian. There is a current movement to reunite Romania and Moldova, which most Moldovans seem to support, and Romanians barely support. It seems the reunification would be threatening to Russia, especially since Moldova is a candidate for EU membership. It’s complicated!

First impressions: relaxed and friendly, nice city center, unassuming, some beautiful architecture in the center. The city has a great bus system and is very walkable. Moldova is very agricultural and makes wonderful wine.

These facts were unexpected but even more unexpected was a fire! On my way to the National History Museum yesterday, I saw smoke coming from the roof of a beautiful old building. Within a few minutes, flames were 20 feet in the air and they were spreading across the entire roof.

Normally, I would have left when the fire trucks arrived, but I stayed because I was worried. The first fire truck didn’t arrive for 15 minutes after black smoke was filling the downtown sky. And the fire fighters didn’t spray any water on the building for 30 minutes.

Over the next half hour, more fire trucks dribbled in (if only they had been dribbling more water) but I never saw much firefighting. A lot of the water from the hoses didn’t seem to reach the roof and I never saw anyone spray water directly into the building.

When everything seemed almost hopeless, a perfectly-timed half hour of rain showed up. I’m sure the rain was a special gift from the gods because it hadn’t rained in Chisinau for almost two weeks and it stopped after the flames died down. I don’t know if the rain saved the building, but it makes a good end to the story. Except the real ending is the entire building was gutted.

What a morning! After that, the history museum felt awfully dull, although it would have felt dull anyway because it was just rooms full of stuff with no explanations except, for example, “Army uniform, 1917.” But I loved the Capitoline Wolf statue in front of the museum, which was a gift from Italy about 100 years ago.

Stand by — there are more unexpected discoveries to report from Moldova!