Noatalgia trip: a 'family' reunion in Moldova

It was the summer of 1993. I left behind undergraduate life at Leeds University to teach English in a country most people had never heard of, and to live with a family I had never met. In Chisinau, capital of Moldova, the air was heavy with the smell of wild flowers and debate over the perestroika reforms unfolding before my eyes.

The Avdeev family took me into their simple Soviet-block home and treated me as their own. Mother Natasha and father Sasha became surrogate parents while Tanya, then 10 years old and the main English speaker in the family, was an adopted sister. I remember joining Natasha in the bread queue, trips to see the emaciated animals at the zoo and summer nights spent drinking absurdly cheap red wine in the bar of the Soviet behemoth Hotel National.

Last year I went back to Chisinau armed with some old photographs and a well-thumbed letter bearing an address in the city’s Botanica suburb. I wanted to find my erstwhile host family and pose the question: which has changed more since 1993 – Moldova or me?

I started looking for the answer on Boulevard Stefan cel Mare, Chisinau’s answer to the Champs-Élysées. In 1993 I struggled to find a restaurant for lunch during my break from classes. These days the McDonald’s pavement terrace is packed. Across the road is the main post office, where I used to send telegrams home to my concerned parents. Today it’s sandwiched between a 24-hour supermarket and an internet cafe.

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The next day I was sitting in a taxi, my stomach turning somersaults. I had looked up the address of the Avdeev family and found a phone number. They were still living in the same apartment, and invited me for lunch. As the door of apartment 29 opened, I was welcomed with hugs. I’d come home.

I later learned they had borrowed the food from friends to prepare the spread of mashed potatoes, meatballs and salad they laid on for my prodigal return.

After lunch, we swapped memories and I took the chance to show off photos of my own family. I asked them how their lives had changed since my last visit.

“Chisinau looks like a European city, and the prices are European prices, but the salary is still at Soviet levels,” said now 25-year-old Tanya, bouncing three-year-old Nikolai on her knee.

“In Soviet times you needed friends to get things. Now everything is available but people don’t have money to buy.”

There were tears in my eyes when I left a few days later. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but I left safe in the knowledge that there will always be a home from home for me in Moldova.