Name: Geography Now! MOLDOVA
Uploaded: 2020-03-28T09:22:56.000Z
Duration: 12 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Hey everybody, so once again just like the last episode,

I was stupid and I booked the wrong day at the YouTube space

Basic passive voice

The audio quality is not gonna be as good, a black backdrop is totally visible.

But hey, we got some good information in this episode.

Oh and you can get one of these shirts: The blood of those who fight for the freedom

Imagine a person who speaks Russian, is Orthodox, eats borscht

and lives in a state that is slowly trying to introduce market enterprise in a partial state-run system.

Moldova is the European country with the least amount of visitors.

And even then, Monaco, a microstate gets like three times more visitors.

Because if you know me, I love diving into the obscure under-represented regions of the planet that need publicity boosts!

you're about to enter the "Bob Saget of Europe".

Most people in the world probably won't be able to tell you where Moldova is on the map.

If you can, congratulations, you're probably Moldovan.

The country is landlocked, located in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west

and Ukraine to the north, east and south.

Yes, Ukraine, even took this one mile wide quarter on the Lower Dniester national park

cutting off the closest access they COULD HAVE HAD to the Black Sea.

The country is divided into 32 districts, with the capital and largest city, Chișinău,

located in the south center of the country.

In addition, they have three municipality cities:

Chișinău itself being one, along with Bălți and Bender

as well as two strange autonomous territorial units:

Gagauzia and Transnistria, we'll talk more about these later.

The country has only one main International airport: Chișinău International

Smaller uncertified or partially certified airports can be found in places like Bălți and Mărculești.

if you consider Transnistria part of Moldova,

then the city of Tiraspol, their capital, would be the second largest one.

And speaking of which - let's just get it over with:

What exactly are those two strange autonomous guys: Transnistria and Gagauzia?

Both of these places are a little more Russian influence from the rest of Moldova

as if Moldova wasn't already Russian influence enough but to begin with but we'll talk about that later.

Gagauzia is kind of like a more truly autonomous state

in the fact that the people are culturally distinct with a Turkic Orthodox Christian background.

Its split into four separate enclaves made up of these localities that have over 50% Gagauz populations

including this small two-mile wide plot of farmland next to Carbalia.

Even though they politically disagree with Moldova

as in they've threatened that if Moldova tries to join the EU, they would opt out for independence and side with Russia.

Regardless they are actually pretty chilled. You can visit and easily take pictures.

See if you can get to one of those "Welcome to Gagauzia" signs on the road.

Transnistria on the other hand is a little more tricky.

They actually have declared independence in 1992, which has led to military conflict in the 90s.

After a ceasefire was established, they set up rules.

But today it lies in a frozen conflict zone status.

Today, they have their own government, military, police, postal system, currency, vehicle registration.

You even have to show your passport before crossing the border.

And with about a third of the population being Russian.

It's no surprise that they side with Russia and have Russian peacekeepers to maintain the border security.

Yeah, I know insert your opinion in the comments below.

You can find lots of Soviet style symbols in their streets.

In fact, they're the only state in the world that still uses the former USSR hammer and sickle in their flag.

Russia: Whoa, we started that and even we don't have that anymore.

Transnistria: Yeah, I'm just such a fan of your early work, you know!

Some notable spots of interest might include places like:

And probably the most iconic landmark: the underground wine city of

The Guinness world record largest wine collection in the world with over 120 kilometers of tunnels and corridors.

Let's talk more about resources and such in:

Now if you don't know anything about Moldova's land.

Most houses in the countryside and even some of the cities have wine cellars.

It's kind of like what saunas are to Finland.

Finland: Huh. great analogy. Yeah, I get it.

Moldova's land is mostly situated between the two longest rivers of the country:

The Prut which makes up the entire western border with Romania

but then was Transnistria a series of arbitrary lines through flat farm fields goals passed the river.

Hence, where the name Transnistria comes from, "Across the Dniester".

The country is made up of small short forested hills cut by numerous creeks and rivers.

The tallest point being only 430 meters high, Bălănești hill

and all of which are part of the Moldovan plateau

which extends into the larger Carpathian mountain chain.

The largest natural lakes would be either the Manta and the Beleu,

located right on the border with Romania.

And right at the very southernmost tip of Moldova,

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Geography Now! MOLDOVA

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