Orthodox Easter Holidays

This month, Moldova celebrates Orthodox Easter, or Paște, on April 12th. This holiday is one of the most important days of the year for Moldovan families and many people journey back to the villages and towns where their older family members still live. The religious services for Easter begin Saturday evening with services leading up to the lighting of candles at midnight using a flame that is brought to Moldova from Jerusalem. Services continue through the night until priests begin blessing food brought by individuals that will later be served to their family. The celebrations are full of traditions including:

• Washing your face in basin of water that has coins at the bottom is said to bring wealth and good luck.

• Hard-boiled eggs are dyed brownish red by boiling them with the skins of red or yellow onions. Family members take turns tapping an egg against another family members eggs in a competition to be the last one to have an uncracked egg.

• Salt, blessed by the priest, is often poured in the local well for good luck.

• People dress in new clothes and spend the days ahead preparing their garden, whitewashing tree trunks and making their house beautiful for spring.

The Sunday of Easter and the Monday after are holidays and most business will be closed.

The following Sunday, the 19th, is a uniquely Moldovan Holiday called Paște Blajinilor. This holiday serves as a memorial day where Moldovans go to the cemetery and visit the graves of their ancestors. The cemeteries are filled with people including many of the diaspora who have returned home for the holidays. At the grave sites are tables and benches where families share food and wine with those visiting the cemetery. Many will give a “pomana” which is a gift to remember the dead and might consist of bread, eggs, dish towels, cups and plates, or a small amount of money.

This holiday also continues on Monday the 20th and both days are official holidays. You can read a guest essay about this unique holiday from Elena Vrabie here, originally published in Moldova Matters in May 2024:

Spring is full of holidays and days off so plan accordingly:

Official holidays:

• Paște (Orthodox Easter) - Sun/Mon April 12-13

• Paște Blajinilor (Memorial Easter / Easter of the Dead) - Sun/Mon April 19-20

• Labor Day - Friday May 1 (Note: Thursday, April 30 is considered a short work day)

• Europe Day / Victory Day - Saturday May 9

• Children’s Day - Monday June 1

While the week between the two Easter holidays is very quiet, there is still a lot of activity in Moldova. Here are a few notable events.

Opera, Ballet, and Concerts

The Maria Biesu Theater has a full schedule this month with two notable events at the end of the month:

• Sparticus - This Russian ballet from 1956, based on the novel Sparticus, will be performed for one night only, April 26. Tickets are available here.

• The Marriage of Figoro - Mozart’s renowned Opera will be be performed in Italian. Tickets are available here.

Other large musical events are happening throughout the month:

• Rock Symphony - The Moldovan Youth Orchestra will perform interpretations of some of the most popular rock and alternative bands ever. Join them at the Chisinau Arena on April 4th and get your tickets here.

• Bands and Brews - On April 1st, LaBREWatory is hosting another edition of their Bands and Brews event. The event features live music and a selection of their craft beers. Tickets can be purchased at the door. For details and information on bands, visit their event page here.

• Symphony Concert - The Symphony and National Philharmonic will be perform a selection of three composers at the Palatul Republicii on April 17th. Details on the performance and tickets can be found here.

• Three Double Piano Concert - The Organ Hall presents a performance of double piano pieces by Bach and Tchekovski. This event is for one night only on April 26 and tickets can be details can be found here.

Theater and Comedy

• Asa, Buna Seara - Six comedians present the history and historical hereos of Moldova at the Chisinau Arena on April 5th. Details can be found here.

• Opera de trei parale – Bertolt Brecht’s Opera de trei parale (The Threepenny Opera) appears at Satiricus on April 24th at 18:30 as a musical-theatre work that blends crime, romance, and social satire. Details available here.

Sports

• Chisinau Half Marathon - On April 26th, Chisinau will hold the spring half marathon. This weekend is full of events including a kids marathon on the 25th. For details on the many events and registration links, visit Sporters Website here.

  • In addition, join fellow runners on April 18th at Valea Morilor Park at 9:00 am to practice for the marathon. Details here.

This section is done in partnership with the team behind Digital Nomad Moldova - the one stop shop for those considering taking advantage of Moldova’s new digital nomad visa process! Learn more on their website.

The Legends of Mărțișor

Beginning March 1st, Moldovans begin celebrating spring with the ancient traditions of Mărțișor (pronounced muhr-tsi-shor). This tradition dates back possibly as far as 8000 years ago where evidence exists of small red and white tokens being used by ancient peoples in the area. Modern Moldovans purchase small red and white thread pendants to exchange and wear to bring good luck for the year. At the end of the month, these pendants are hung on fruit trees to bring a bountiful harvest. Across the city beginning in late February, these pendants and other red and white decorations can be purchased from street vendors. Be sure to get yours before they are sold out!

But why wear red and white? There are many legends and stories explaining this tradition but most fall under two categories. In all the stories the red typically symbolizes blood and life while the white symbolizes the winter’s snow and purity.

One variation of the legend is as follows. The sun, disguised as a beautiful girl, came down to earth where she was kidnapped by an evil dragon. Without the sun, the land was covered with snow and ice. A brave hero fought the dragon and drops of his blood began melting the ice. Once the sun was free of the dragon, spring returned to the earth.

The second story involves variations on the legend of the old crone, Baba Dochia (pronounced baba dok-i-uh). Baba Dochia’s precious son Dragobete married against her wishes, a young, beautiful maiden. Baba Dochia was jealous of the girl and liked to torment her. One winter, Baba Dochia sent the girl to a stream with wool from a black sheep and told her to wash it until it was clean. The girl attempted to wash this wool without success until a being appeared from the sky and gave her a red flower and told her to touch this flower to wool. The wool magically turned red. Upon seeing the red flower and wool, Baba Dochia assumed spring had arrived and set out in her 9 coats to collect wild flowers. As she warmed up she would take off a coat and shake off the dust from the winter. This gives us the added legend of the late spring snows being connected to Baba Dochia taking off her extra coats, causing these late snows. After removing all her coats, a cold spell returned and Baba Dochia froze to death as her punishment for being so cruel to the girl.

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March Holidays and Important Dates

• Sunday March 8th - International Women’s Day - be sure to get your restaurant reservations in advance if you want to celebrate in the city.

• Sunday March 29th 03:00 AM - Daylight savings time begins in Moldova. Clocks will spring forward at 3:00 am.

Mărțișor Celebrations

For the 60th anniversary of the Martisor Music Festival, the Ministry of Culture has organized 12 days of events. A complete list of events can be found in this document published by the Ministry. Some highlights include:

• March 6th and 7th - The National Ballet “JOC” presents “The Legend of Martisor”, a extravaganza of traditional dance.

• March 9th - Irina Rimes - Popular singer Irina Rimes will perform a concert at the National Palace “Nicolae Sulac”. Information and tickets available here.

In addition to the music festival, other spring and Martisor celebrations can be seen around town.

• The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History presents a temporary exhibit show many different designs of Martisor pendants. More information is here.

Concerts and Culture

• March 14th - Adrian Ursu - The popular Moldovan singer and television host, Adrian Ursu, will perform a concert dedicated to “Mothers, Wives, and Daughters.” The show will include support from the Moldovan Chamber Orchestra as well as a complement of background dancers. Tickets are available here.

• March 15th - Spring Harmonies at the National Ballet and Opera “Maria Biesu.” This concert features a range of music billed as “From Vienna to Broadway.” Tickets and details available here.

• March 27th - “We are Romanians” - A large spectacle at the Chisinau Arena will be held featuring a long list of Romanian language performs including The National Ballet “JOC” and many singers that are locally popular. The full list of participants and tickets are here.

• March 28th - The national ballet will present the ballet - “Don Quijote”. This 150 year old ballet features vibrant costumes and lively dancing. Tickets available here.

• Through March 10th - The National Museum of History presents a photo exhibition, “The Road of War” to mark the 4th anniversary of the war in Ukraine. This exhibition shows the impact of the war through photos taken by two photo journalists. Details here.

Around Town

• Shopping Malldova - Spring Events - Throughout the month of March, the popular shopping mall “Shopping Malldova” will have events including a free Women’s Day concert on March 8th and a fashion show by local traditional clothing designer, Alina Bradu, on March 28th.

• March 5th and 19th - Drinking Liberally at the Litra Taproom - Join Drinking Liberally on first and third Thursdays from 6:30-8:30 pm. This free discussion group gives everyone a chance to talk about the events of the day and politics. Sign up for the email list here.

• March 15th - IMOM’s Trivia - The IMOM’s celebrates it’s birthday in Chisinau with a trivia game a Look’s Resto Bar. This group’s mission is to connect women from around the world. More information can be found here or on their Facebook page.

Sports

• March 14th - The Milestii Mici Wine Run - Join fellow running and wine enthusiasts for a 10k run through the cellars of Milestii Mici. Details here.

• March 27th - Moldova’s National Football team prepares for the World Cup with a match against Lithuiana’s team at the Sheriff Sports Complex in Tiraspol. Tickets and details on this and other matches can be found here. The Moldovan team will also play an away match in Cyprus on March 30th. Look for it on television or at your favorite pub.

Fun for Everyone

• The Chisinau Zoo is open daily from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm. The zoo recently shared a video of the new baby animals at the recently completed “Country Yard”. View the video here and get more information on the zoo on their website.

• The Republican Puppet Theater continues to offer a variety of shows for children of all ages. For a full list of performance dates and times, visit their official website here.

• Chisinau Circus - Beginning March 7th, every Saturday and Sunday at 12:00 pm and 4pm, the Chisinau Circus will perform their show “Waterfall of Emotions”. To see images of the show and more details, visit the Circus’s official website here.

Editorial Note: Moldova Matters is not receiving payment to share any of these events and does to endorse or make any guarantees about the event or its organizer. This new section is just that - new!! Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments and share any upcoming events that we might have missed!!

Welcome back our new “The Month Ahead” series! Once a month we’ll share a look at some of the upcoming cultural events in and around Chisinau for interested readers. This section is done in partnership with the team behind Digital Nomad Moldova - the one stop shop for those considering taking advantage of Moldova’s new digital nomad visa process! Learn more on their website.

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While Moldova endures the peak of the winter season in February, many will be looking at Moldova’s participation in the Winter Olympics in Milan. Since Moldova’s debut at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, the country has not missed a Winter Games.

Three athletes return to the Moldovan team and will represent Moldova in the Biathlon. Alina Stremous, who previously placed 10th in the 7.5 km sprint at the Beijing games in 2022, is joined by Pavel Magazeev and Maxim Makarov who also represented Moldova in the Biathlon in Beijing. Moldova also has two newcomers joining this year’s team. Representing Moldova in cross-country skiing, Iulian Luchin and Elizaveta Hlusovici join the team this year.

The Biathlon and Cross-country Skiing events are scheduled to begin on February 10th and 11th. Exact dates and times of individual participation are subject to change but you can follow the schedule on the official Milan 2026 site here. You can also keep up on the news from the Olympic team on the official site of the Moldovan Olympic Committee.

Sports

• Love Run - February 14th 10:00 - Cricova Winery invites you for a run through their “labyrinth of love” with your loved one, friends, or anyone dear to you. You can choose to run the 4k circle or double it for 8k. Participants will be greeted at the finish line with a glass of sparkling wine, snacks, music, and a surprise. Register here.

• Wine Run - March 14th - While this event happens next month, now is your last chance for a discounted registration for the Wine Run 10k in the cellars of Milestii Mici. This 10k run through the cellars of Milestii Mici finishes with a wine tasting for all participants. An optional excursion package is available for those who want to dive deeper into the wine and history of the cellars. To register and for more details visit the official site of the Wine Run.

• VR Cup - February 21-22 - If e-sports is more your pace this winter, be sure to put together your team of four to participate in the VR Cup. Teams compete in a single elimination bracket and the top teams win cash prices. For details and sign-up information, visit the official site on sporter.md here.

Valentine’s Day Events

Valentine’s Day has become a popular holiday in Moldova. While not a traditionally celebrated holiday, Moldovans more and more embrace this celebration of love. If you plan to go out to a restaurant with the one you love, be sure to make your reservations in advance. In addition to the previously mentioned Love Run, there are many other events to choose from on February 14th.

Special Events:

• Castel Mimi will host a special dinner event and menu for couples. Details here.

• Cricova, in addition to the Love Run, is hosting a special dinner event with live music. Details here.

• Symphony of Love - 7pm - This night of a celebration of love through music includes many prominent singers accompanied by the National Philharmonic. Details here.

• Love Inferno - 8pm - The Secret Show Cabaret troop will present a special celebration they advertise as being for those who want to feel power, passion and seduction in their purest form. Details here.

• Love After 30 - Stand-up Special - 8pm - Feeling a little cynical on Valentine’s Day? Join comedian Marian Madan for a look at the rules and challenges of love after 30.

Music

• Focul din Vatra - February 7th - The Organ Hall hosts a concert in memory of famed Moldovan composer and revolutionary, Ion Aldea-Teodorovici. His music and presence during the fall of the Soviet Union were considered instrumental in uniting the Moldovan people and connecting them to their heritage. This concert features some of his lesser known symphonic compositions and includes never before heard music. Tickets can be purchased at the Organ Hall box office or online here.

• Rock Symphony Orchestra - February 8th - Chisinau Arena hosts a performance of popular rock songs presented by a rock band, opera soloist, symphony, conductor, and several other musicians. Visit the Chisinau Arena site for tickets to this unique grand spectacle.

• At a Moldovan Wedding - February 11th - Moldovan weddings are famously fun events and this orchestral performance aims to explore the emotions of a real wedding. The performance features musicians and comedians that will take you through the experience of a Moldovan wedding. Tickets available here.

• MacBeth Opera - February 13th - This 150 year old operatic interpretation of the Shakespeare tragedy returns to Chisinau. The Opera will be performed in Italian with Romanian subtitles and includes a mix of Italian and Moldovan crews. More details and tickets on the Opera and Ballet site here.

• The Motans - February 14th - Chisinau Arena - Moldova Pop musicians The Motans will hold a special concert and after party. The event is billed as a “megaproduction” and expectations are high for the pop group that regularly sells out concerts. Tickets are available here.

Museums

National Art Museum - Two temporary exhibits will be closing in February at the National Art Museum.

• Closing February 8, the commemorative exhibition “ANDREI SÂRBU. Archipelagos of Silence” features key works from this Moldovan artist.

• Closing on February 15, a special exhibition of a selection of new acquisitions and donations that have been added to the Art Museums collection. Details on these exhibitions can be found on their website.

Around Town

• Taproom Trivia - Taproom by Litra (English language) - Taproom Trivia returns each Tuesday at 7:30pm. Reservations are recommended. Details here.

• Drinking Liberally - Taproom by Litra (English language) - February 5th & 19th - Drinking Liberally will continue with regular meetings on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. Join the group from 6:30p - 8:30p for lively discussion of politics and current events.

• Central Eastern European Championship Dog Show - February 6-8 - MoldExpo will be the site of this year’s Central Eastern European Dog Show championship. The main competition will occur on the 7th with some competition and winners presentation on the 8th. For more information visit their official site here or their Facebook page here.

Editorial Note: Moldova Matters is not receiving payment to share any of these events and does to endorse or make any guarantees about the event or its organizer. This new section is just that - new!! Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments and share any upcoming events that we might have missed!!

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It’s January but the holiday celebrations have not stopped. January is packed with holidays with deep meaning in Moldova. Orthodox Christmas is observed on January 7th and 8th. This celebration is usually marked with families gathering together and religious ceremonies. The 14th is the Orthodox or Old New Year and on the eve you might see carolers reciting the traditional “plugusor” and on the day people throwing seeds to bring luck and prosperity. It also coincides with Saint Vasile (Basil)’s day which all of the many men named Vasile celebrate as if it was a second birthday for them. January 20th is the Orthodox celebration of Epiphany which is full of traditions. During this time, priest will bless water sources around the country. Some people may feel it’s forbidden to wash clothes for two weeks. Others may use this celebration as an opportunity to take a dip in frigid waters to bring luck and prosperity for the year. Other traditions that might bring luck is sneezing on the eve and single women who slip on ice are expected to find a husband and get married this year.

Music

• If the soundtracks of epic films remind you of that movie magic, you have three opportunities to hear live performances of these epic compositions.

  • January 11th 6pm - An orchestral and choir performance of the songs of the Lord of the Rings trilogy performed at the "Nicolae Sulac" National Palace. Tickets available here.

  • January 18th 6pm - Following the Lord of the Rings, the National Palace “Nicolae Sulac” will host an orchestral performance of music from several legendary movies. More details and tickets are available here.

  • January 21st 7pm - Palatul Național "Nicolae Sulac" - If you are a fan of the Harry Potter films, take a magical trip to Hogwarts by Candlelight to listen to a performance of the epic soundtrack. Tickets available here.

• January 10th - Concertino - Organ Hall - If you are a fan of accordion music, don’t miss the accordion orchestra, Concertino, as they perform a concert for the release of their new album, Bolero. Tickets and details here.

January 30, 31 - Death Morozz - Iarna Rock - Fans of different genres of metal can enjoy a two day festival featuring over 10 bands from Moldova and abroad. More details and tickets available here.

Theater

• Shakespeare

  • January 9 - Teatrul Fără Nume presents a contemporary reinterpretation of Macbeth in Romanian. Details here.

  • January 23 - The theater troop at “Satricus” will perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Romanian. Details are here.

• Chirita in Provence - January 10th - Get your tickets to enjoy the very popular satirical play based on works written by the revered Romanian author Vasile Alecsandri. First performed in 1993, this play gently pokes fun at village life in Moldova and stereotypes of villagers. Tickets and details here.

• Alice in Wonderland - January 23 - Produced and performed by the Art Theater “Odean” a special performance of a stage adaptation of Alice and Wonderland will be presented. The performance is recommended for ages 7-99. Details here.

• Journal of Anne Frank - January 27 - On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Alexi Mateevici theater will present a dramatic interpretation of the Journal of Anne Frank. Details are available here.

Around Town

January 15th - Drinking Liberally - Litra Taproom - Join the Drinking Liberally family for the first ever meet-up in Moldova. This regular meeting will feature guest speakers to start the conversation but encourages political debate covering the topics of the day over drinks throughout the evening. The first topic will be “What’s Happing in America?”

Editor’s Note - Chris Flowers and David Smith will be there to try (and likely fail) to answer that question for anyone curious!

Editorial Note: Moldova Matters is not receiving payment to share any of these events and does to endorse or make any guarantees about the event or its organizer. This new section is just that - new!! Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments and share any upcoming events that we might have missed!!

Winter is coming. December 1^st is the official start of winter and Moldovans begin to think of holiday celebrations and warm drinks. Izvar, the Moldovan version of mulled wine, can be found at events and restaurants across the country or at home. If you would like to try to make this traditional drink, mix 1 liter of Moldovan red wine with 200g of sugar, half of a sliced orange, and lemon zest. Heat the mixture and add aromatic spices of your choice such as a cinnamon stick and red pepper corns. Drink this traditional drink hot and with friends or family.

Moldova is also a land rich in holidays, celebrating two Christmases and two New Years Days. Celebrate the “new style” holidays on December 25^th and January 1^st. Old style Christmas is celebrated on January 7^th and 8^th and old style New Years on the 14th. All these days except the old style New Years are official bank holidays and many business and most government institutions will be closed.

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Citywide Christmas Events

Targul de Craciun – The Christmas Fair

This year’s Christmas Fair, located at the Great National Assembly Square (across from the central Cathedral), from December 5^th through January 18^th. Throughout the next 6 weeks, you can visit this daily event, enjoy local foods and hot drinks such as izvar, shop from local producers, and ride the amusement park rides. Bring the kids to Căsuța lui Moș Crăciun, Santa Claus’s Cabin, to meet Santa and get a photo.

There are several special events happening at the fair:

• December 5, 4:30-10:00pm – Official Launch of the Targul de Craciun including concerts, presentations, and the lighting of the tree.

• December 24 – Christmas Concert – start time and list of acts TBA

• December 31 – Spetacol de Revlion – Celebrate New Years Eve with this evening full of music and entertainment. Start time and list of performers TBA.

In addition to the main fair, each sector of Chisinau will be holding local events at different locations throughout the city. More information on any of these events and updated start times and programs when released can be found here.

Christmas City

While not officially announced, workers are setting up the Christmas City event in front of the Opera and Ballet. This event typically runs from the start of December through mid January and also features food, drinks, entertainment, shopping, and rides.

Sports

• Marathon de Craciun – Christmas Marathon - December 13^th – This 3k fun run is designed for families and enthusiasts. Everyone who registers will receive a gift bag and gifts from many of the events sponsors. Register here to participate.

Music

• December 5th, 7pm - Organ Hall - The Symphonians present the music from the Harry Potter films. Tickets available here.

• December 24^th – Chisinau Arena – Eurovision stars Zdob si Zdub will perform with several other acts to celebrate the band’s 30 years of performing together. Tickets and details can be found here.

• December 24th, 6pm - Organ Hall - The Chisinau Youth Orchestra presents a Christmas Concert. Tickets available here.

• December 5th, 6:00 pm - Palatul Republicii - a performance by the Chisinau Syphony feature pieces by Dvorak and Mozart. More details can be found here.

Cultural Events

• December 6 - 10:00am – 6pm – International Women’s Club Charity Bazaar – Palatul Republicii – This annual fundraising event for the International Women’s Club gives visitors the opportunity to support the club’s charities. Embassies and diplomatic missions, along with several NGOs, will present their traditions, foods, and crafts. There will be a raffle of donated prizes, as well as food and crafts that can be purchased. More information can be found here.

• December 26-28 -The Nutcracker - Spărgătorul de nuci – Teatrul National de Opera si Balet – If the Nutcracker is part of your holiday tradition, be sure not to miss the local ballet troops’ interpretation of this classic ballet. There are many adaptations of the Nutcracker performed around the world so it is possible the local performance might be different than what you have seen in other countries. Tickets and information can be found here.

Around Town

• Every Tuesday at 7:30pm - Pub Trivia at the Litra Taproom - This popular bar trivia contest in English occurs every Tuesday. It’s recommended you make reservations to ensure your team has a table. More information can be found here.

• Every Wednesday at 7:30pm - Pub Trivia at Lakehouse Brewery on blvd Stefan cel Mare. For bar trivia in Romanian, head over to Lakehouse Brewery each Wednesday with your trivia team. More details on the event can be found here.

• December 5th, 5:30 pm - LaBrewatory - Bands + Brews - Visit this local micro brew for a beer and listen to local rock and metal bands. The lineup and details can be found here.

Editorial Note: Moldova Matters is not receiving payment to share any of these events and does to endorse or make any guarantees about the event or its organizer. This new section is just that - new!! Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments and share any upcoming events that we might have missed!!

A quick disclosure: this article is about members of my family. I’m sharing it because I think Cathy captures a rich story about Moldova’s new culinary scene, but readers should be aware of the personal connection.

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Given my lifelong roaming, you might not know of my lasting desire to feel at home wherever I go. Truth is, I’m not a traveler collecting countries. I never set out to be a stranger in a strange land.

Quite the opposite. I’m always angling to stop and stay a while, to linger, make friends, live like a local. Curiosity leads my search for the authentic. I seek out a sense of genuine warmth—a welcome that recognizes, embraces and transcends my foreignness. If I’m lucky, I reach that sweet spot wherever I go.

My latest bout of wanderlust took me to Chișinău, the capital city of Moldova. I moved there for a 9-month teaching project with the US Peace Corps Response program. Completing an intensive on-boarding program, learning my way around, beginning classes at university, and settling in twice (housing placement having taken two tries) took most of my attention for the first two months. I was still hard at work getting my balance on the cold winter night that I found myself welcomed into Casaroz, a cozy establishment only steps from my flat.

Victor

The young entrepreneur that creates this warm sense of place is Victor Savcenco. The eldest of 4 children recalls his tender years: “As a big family, a beautiful tradition that we all valued and loved was dinner. It was a time that we all loved spending together. The food we shared resonates as a core memory of happy times. I think that our childhood memories motivate us.”

Victor left his home country behind for the first time as a teenager. A foreign exchange student in high school, he stayed on to attend college in California—achieving a business degree that led him into real estate and beyond, even as far as a taco truck venture. All the while, he remembers, he was dreaming…about going home and opening a wine bar.

Homecoming

On July 17, 2025, Victor and I sit down for a chat inside Casaroz (Victor’s invention combining words in Romanian, for pink house). He remembers the date as a personal milestone. Exactly 3 years before, he had returned to Moldova.

”When I came home, I was searching for an old cellar. But then I came across this gem, this beautiful space,” he says. It always bothered Victor that a city filled with so much history, didn’t let its age show. Most of the old buildings are not as exposed as the one he chose for his bar. When he found the property, he purposefully leaned into its layers and textures. “I wanted to create a space that people would appreciate. When they come here, we invite them into a different era, a different time. They leave reality at the door and enter a world that feels far away. You might be in Spain, in a little city. You might be in Cuba,” he proposes.

Indeed, Casaroz gives off an intimate Latin vibe, with vintage mirrors, curved alcoves, curios and candles. Most of the tiered patio at the entrance is open to the sky. Inside, rooms are cast in the rosy glow of a few neon light rods. The scarred walls are painted fleshy tones, imbued with a sense of vulnerability. A small tapas menu and an inventive drink menu complete the sensory experience.

Who finds their way to Casaroz? In the beginning, he wasn’t sure, but Victor had a notion that the bar would attract people like him that travel the world. They would appreciate the bar’s hole-in-the-wall character, modeled after one he’d discovered in Barcelona. “I see those people. I know those people. They appreciate places where you can feel time,” he tells me.

Chinatown Phenom

Also top of mind for Victor was a phenomenon he’d discovered in historic Chinatowns along the West Coast and in Hawaii. Neighborhoods teaming with commerce during the day that went quiet and still in the evening. He’d noticed how interesting bars and restaurants tended to pop up in empty buildings nearby.

“So why not have a place similar to that back home?” he thought. Chișinău’s Chinatown is the Central Market. Casaroz sits on Strada Columna—from early morning, a throughway for those selling and buying gadgets and tools, shoes and clothes, fruit and vegetables. But at 6:00 PM, the market shuts down and the neighborhood empties out. “That’s when we open,” he says. “You get to enjoy the beautiful quiet street. You get to enjoy Casaroz.”

Admittedly, I’ve walked right by this modest haunt more than once. The place is mysterious at night. “People used to live here,” Victor reminds me. “We still treat it as a home. For me and my staff, the people that walk in are welcomed as house guests. We are polite, but we’re not very formal. We talk with our guests. We joke. We make friends. We share a vision we believe in.”

Julia

Victor’s sister Julia Smith has no doubt about what compels her to create in the kitchen. Growing up in a family that communed around a dining table has absolutely everything to do with her passion for hospitality and the culinary arts.

“We grew up in a home where amazing food was always on the table. There was never a boring dinner or table setting. We were surrounded by beauty, by good food, by a lot of guests that were welcomed in our house all through our childhood. So yeah, definitely—our family, my parents, are very much responsible,” she remembers.

Chef!

At the age of 17, Julia journeyed to the United States herself. She chose a 3-year degree program at American River College. Her study of restaurant management and culinary arts involved practical experience in the restaurant on site. Managers, waiters, chefs, line cooks—all were students. To graduate, she had to learn every facet of a fine dining experience. The space was in no way a Moldovan cantina (cafeteria-style eatery).

Julia returned to Chișinău with top-shelf credentials. But coming home was not the triumph she had imagined: “I was this 19-year-old kid with a culinary arts and restaurant management degree. I was sending my resume to a bunch of different restaurants. Nobody replied.” She landed her first job at Toucano’s, a popular center-city coffee shop. She hasn’t forgotten her disappointment—“They didn’t care where I studied. They didn’t need my experience. They just needed a person to work a shift.”

Someone suggested that Julia speak to the two Americans who were preparing to open Smokehouse, Moldova’s first-ever American-style barbecue restaurant, with a local partner. They were looking for an English-speaking chef. She applied for the position of kitchen helper. “Because obviously, my self-esteem was at rock bottom. They called me for an interview. When I went in and they heard my story, they asked if I would like to be the chef!” she recalls. Julia found the idea ridiculous: “You need to begin as a help, then a line cook. Then maybe you become a sous chef. If you’re very lucky, you become a chef. So, of course, I was startled, but  I turned out to be pretty okay at being in charge of the kitchen and the menus. I believe Smokehouse was a success because of the whole team. And I played a part in that.”

In 2018, Julia began guiding the culinary division of a nonprofit known as Open Gate International Moldova. She teaches cooking and builds training programs to create employment opportunities for the community they serve. Julia has trained and mentored more than 500 students, many of them women. “We had a unique advantage: being completely independent from the post-Soviet educational system,” she shares. “Our program was far better suited to the modern world and to contemporary restaurant culture.” In 2021, the NGO established a private cooking school to sustain their mission. That’s where her younger brother Gri had his first formal learning experience in the kitchen.

Dream House

A couple of years after Julia started working at Smokehouse, she found herself in conversation with David Smith, one of the owners.1 Managing the front of the house, he had often sat at the bar pounding away on his laptop. They seriously clicked. David and Julia just celebrated their seventh anniversary. Looking back, she remembers how their wedding invitation featured a unique gift registry: ”Guests were encouraged to fund a dream we’d had for years. We had started this adventure—going village by village across Moldova to find the ‘Village of the Year.’”

Their treasure hunt led them to a traditional home in an enterprising community only 45 minutes by car from Chișinău. “When we started retrofitting the house, we quickly realized this had to be more than just a dacha (Russian, for country house). The place is designed to host an experience. We could present a 7-course dinner today, host a masterclass tomorrow and team building next week. David and I are developing a culinary newsletter and planning events. I want the space to be alive, dynamic, and constantly filled with people, ideas, and creativity. In short, our kitchen will never be bored or lonely!”

Gri

As I write, Julia’s brother Gri Savcenco is conjuring the sophisticated dinners that his big sister envisioned. Gri graduated from a culinary institute in Barcelona a few months ago. The family has come together around his desire to create a Michelin-star dining experience in Moldova. Julia and David’s village house is the stage for the concept he calls Fuera (Spanish, for outside). On the night I visited, Julia was Gri’s sous-chef. David, the dishwasher. Gri’s girlfriend Valea, the server. Victor provides the wine and Gri made the cherry liqueur.

On a simmering hot summer day, I took a taxi to Pohrebea to taste for myself. David was there to greet me and give a tour of his charming hilltop home and a little wine cellar carved out of the sloping land below. Beneath the vine-covered arbor that runs the length of the terrace, I joined 8 other guests around a long table. Our perch overlooked an expanse of forest and farmland. A sliver of the Dniester River shimmered beyond the trees.

Gri invited me to sit in the chair nearest the open-air kitchen, the better to watch as each course came to life. The only vegetarian and non-Russian speaker, I would enjoy the pleasure of our chef’s personal attention all evening.

Arms outstretched, Gri welcomed us and shared his vision for the evening’s repast. As the amuse-bouche (French, for appetizer) was served, he turned to thank me for requesting a special menu (pescatarian/vegetarian). “For me, it’s a way to feel more creative, a way to exit my comfort zone,” he smiles. “For you today, we’ll make a very special combination of tastes.”

Storied and savory

From the first to the last, each dish transformed ordinary ingredients into subtle flavors. Gri’s menu was filled with “summer tastes we all know and love.” Local sunflower oil drizzled over minced homegrown tomatoes. Mamalaga (Moldovan-style polenta) translated into a crunchy fraze. A carmelized onion ringed in goat cheese foam sourced from the farm next door. Julia’s homemade sourdough focaccia with herbed butters.

Chef Gri introduces each course with a story like this one:

So let me introduce you to the Mountain River Trout. The trout comes from the mountains of Romania. With the warm weather that we are having right now in Moldova, I wish I was a fish swimming there. We pressurize it at a low temperature to not break any proteins in the meat.

The fish will still have this raw color, but the texture is amazing. It will break under a fork. And we serve it with green oil and marinated mustard seeds…I will tell you a little story about these radishes: We grate the radishes. When we take out the juice, suddenly, the radish becomes very smooth. A very cute little pink vegetable…Please enjoy, mix everything and be amazed.

After a break to take in the sunset, the dinner continued to unfold, with carp au gratin and a roasted cauliflower steak, made especially for me. Dessert floated out—brandied peaches on a cloud of crème fraiche. For the finale, Gri invited us down into the candlelit cellar for a sip of his cherry liqueur.

In the quiet darkness, Gri talked about how he came to this place. “I think family is the most important part in all of this. It’s not only that this is my sister and my brother-in-law’s house. It’s also the support that I have been given throughout my history, throughout my life. Every crazy idea I introduced to them, they understood. They are with me all the time and with their help, I get better every day.”

Find out more: Casa Roz | Fuera

My views do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government.

“Innovation is about solving real problems with the right tools and people, not about size or location,” says Dmitrii Caraguta, the co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Dlab.md, a Moldovan digital testing lab in Cahul.

While most people move to big cities to chase their dreams, a small, focused team in Cahul is quietly redefining innovation, proving that cutting-edge digital solutions can be created anywhere. Even as the rest of the world is chasing scale and speed.

“Why move to Silicon Valley when you can build something excellent right here?” Caraguta mentions this in his serene garden,180 kilometers away from Chisinau. Here, Dmitrii Caraguta and his close-knit team create AI-powered tools that help businesses across Moldova and beyond thrive.

He and his old-time friend, Alexandr Balas, founded Dlab.md, a digital laboratory to test new digital trends, less than a year ago. With their team, they’ve already delivered over 50 projects, helping companies from small startups to global giants go digital, including Red Bull, British American Tobacco, Sunrise Communications, etc.

These two projects are among the team’s proudest achievements:they created a system for a local traditional grain mill that links workers and lets the manager track materials, production, sales, and cash flow. “Before, everything was counted on spreadsheets and notebooks,” Dmitrii explains. “We’ve brought transparency to their business.” They also built a platform for a Romanian robotics academy, Robbomaster. It helps them keep track of their customers, work, and also supports their online courses.

The pandemic brought him back home

From a small garden table under the branches of a tree, surrounded by blackberries and raspberries, the air is calm and peaceful. It’s a welcoming space, where ideas flow as naturally as the garden grows.

“We listen first,” Dmitrii shares his company’s secret to success. “We want to understand what really matters to our clients. Our job is to make their work easier, faster, smarter - with tech that feels like it was made just for them.”

The pandemic pushed Dmitrii back home from Bucharest, where he worked as a planning and reporting analyst for British American Tobacco. “Everyone started working remotely,” Dmitrii recalls. “For me, it was hard. I missed my friends and speaking to people in person.” After more than 13 years abroad - in the UK, Germany and Romania - he decided to return to Moldova to be close to family and friends.

Back in Cahul, Dmitrii’s curiosity quickly turned into action, even when conditions weren’t perfect. In March 2021, he used 3D modeling in his garage to repair a pair of broken glasses - a small but telling example of his drive to find practical solutions.

Together with his friend Alexandr Balas, he went further, experimenting with IT and manufacturing. Using a 3D printer, they produced spare parts for machines and equipment and even assembled their first computer-guided manufacturing tool. These early experiments laid the foundation for what would later become Digital Lab

Today, Dlab.md helps businesses work more efficiently with services like digital optimization, automation, CRM (customer relationship management) systems, software and hardware setup, implementing complex AI-driven tools, and technical support. “We first explore the best way to fix a problem, then put it into action”, says Dmitrii.

“Here in Moldova, we try to make the business flow more comfortable for the owner.”

As a small team, they can’t handle too many clients at once, he explains. “If we spent 200 euros on marketing, we might get 10 or 20 clients, but we simply don’t have the capacity.” This word-of-mouth approach helps keep their workload manageable and their connections genuine.

Dlab.md is committed to building relationships. “We usually attend summits and events to make ourselves known,” Dmitrii emphasizes. “When we get a client, we ask for referrals and offer small bonuses like free service hours.”

As Dmitrii puts it, curiosity is their main engine. But beyond curiosity, building real relationships is just as important. That’s why Dmitrii and his team regularly participate in tech events, workshops, and meetups organized by innovation hubs.

A tech bridge between the south and the capital

One of those hubs is the Cahul-based Inotek, the first innovation center of its kind in the city that is just a short drive from his home. Launched with support from the European Union and Sweden, under the “EU4Moldova: Startup City Cahul” project.

Inotek serves as a regional engine for innovation, digital transformation, and skill-building in southern Moldova. The hub provides co-working spaces, mentoring, training programs, and networking opportunities, connecting startups, students, IT companies, and local SMEs (small or medium businesses) to the broader Startup Moldova ecosystem. For Dmitrii Caraguta, it acts as a “people accelerator,” helping him and his team build networks, skills, and collaborations beyond the capital.

At Inotek, the space feels like a place still unfolding. Flags at the entrance hint at wider horizons, as Deputy Project Director Rodica Negru mentions:

“We provide education, skills training, and opportunities in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and entrepreneurship - especially for youth, women, and rural communities. At Inotek, we believe in the power of innovation, collaboration, and community. Whether you are a student eager to explore new skills, an entrepreneur with a bold idea or an IT specialist looking to push technological boundaries, the hub is your launchpad.”

Looking ahead, Rodica sees a bright future:

“Over the next five years, Cahul is set to consolidate its role as a regional tech hub in southern Moldova, driven by a vibrant startup scene, a growing pool of IT specialists, and strong academic institutions. Its greatest strength lies in the people - talented professionals who choose to stay for the quality of life, supportive community, and the chance to grow locally.”

For Dmitrii, these connection-building spaces are vital to growth. But the Dlab.md team does not want to grow for growth’s sake, but rather, make their business more agile and efficient.

“Technology is always advancing,” Dmitrii says. “We strive to stay up to date with the latest trends. This isn’t just about Cahul, it is about all Moldova. With passion, curiosity, and community, we can build a digital future anywhere.”

Under the shade of a tree, surrounded by a quiet garden, this vision is already becoming reality - proving that true innovation comes from heart and dedication and not from location or size.

The creation of this article has been supported by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This story was written by Olga Cernea of the Journo Birds, a media team that works withnonprofits to tell human-centered stories. This story was supported by UMAEF and the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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How a tech company from Chișinău made it to Netflix, in the freediving edition.

Simpals isn’t your typical startup. It’s a 200-person lab that builds everything from underwater headsets to viral animations. In twenty years, they’ve launched over a hundred products. Most failed. A few made history. One got landlocked Moldova into a Netflix documentary about diving. “Follow free diver Johanna Nordblad in this movie as she attempts to break the world record for distance traveled under ice with one breath,” said Simpals founder Dmitri Voloshin.

There’s a punching bag shaped like a man near the kitchen. A masseuse makes regular rounds. Monkeys bounce inside a glass box, watching office life unfold. But it’s not the toys or the perks that define Simpals and its Chisinau office. It’s how the company is run.

“We’re more like a startup of startups,” says CEO Roman Știrbu. “Each team works autonomously.”

They move fast, test constantly, and scrap what doesn’t work. “Speed matters more than certainty,” Știrbu says. And if logic doesn’t settle a debate? “Sometimes the best argument wins. Sometimes the market does.”

Simpals is more than a tech company. It’s a hub of media, animation, software, hardware and sport under one roof. It runs over 30 platforms, including Moldova’s largest classifieds site (999.md) and big news portals. In its office, one person might oversee the work of half a dozen websites or record a podcast, and the other can pet a real monkey or play PlayStation during a break.

All that is constructed as an ecosystem that breathes and lives. Its animation studio produces viral VR shorts; its Garage project team builds hardware like Lobster and Sonr. Then, its sports arm, Sporter.md, organizes everything from triathlons to freediving meets. In the same office, developers, animators, and editors work side by side.

At the same time, Simpals remains closely connected to Moldova’s startup ecosystem, allowing it to monitor market shifts in real time. As a Startup Moldova board member, Știrbu shares lessons from Simpals’ tech projects with the next wave of startups.

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Lobster: The Moldovan Weight Behind World Records

At the 2013 Freediving World Championship in Belgrade, the founder of Simpals, Dmitri Voloshin, who is himself a freediver, saw elite athletes wearing makeshift collars looking like bike tires. “It looked ridiculous,” he later wrote in his blog. “Why does no one fix this?”

Why was he bothered? In brief, freediving is a sport where athletes dive underwater on a single breath, without using oxygen tanks. It requires endurance, technique, and mental control. The most important thing is that even minor equipment flaws can put performance or safety at risk.

In Chișinău, the Simpals team built five prototypes of Lobster in two months, ending up with a modular collar that improves stability and reduces drag. Versions now range from the Lobster for pools to the Squid for deep water.

“In freediving,” product manager Alexandra Dobrova notes, “word spreads fast if something fails.” That means they have to get it right every time. Dobrova called freediving athletes and instructors directly, asking for honest feedback. “That was the breakthrough. We realized they all know each other. Reputation is everything.”

Top athletes now use the Lobster in world-record dives, including Ming Jin (China) with 307 m, Goran Čolak (Croatia) with 205.97 m, Julia Kozerska (Poland) with 214 m, and Sanda Delija (Croatia) with 103 m.

Every Lobster shipment is manually checked in-house. For large orders, the entire team joins in. “We once had to send 150 units to South Korea,” Alexandra recalls, noting that their primary market is the USA.

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Sonr: A Voice in the Water

Sonr is an underwater communication system developed by Simpals. It’s a bone-conduction headset that lets coaches talk to swimmers in real time, even while they’re underwater. The team originally built it for athletes, assuming they’d want music or motivation during long swims.

“But swimmers weren’t the ones struggling,” says Știrbu. “Coaches were.” The real issue was shouting across the pool, wasting time, and wrecking vocal cords.

So the Simpals’ team shifted focus. Sonr Coach became a bone-conduction headset for real-time feedback, with one coach speaking to many swimmers. The sound travels through the skull and skips the eardrums. But coaches don’t hold the purse strings.

“You have to go through the facility, the federation, sometimes even the ministry,” Știrbu says. “It’s a slow sell.” Simpals has a separate sales team just for targeting schools and swim clubs across Europe and North America.

The team is now testing Sonr Pro, an adaptive audio system that responds to swim style and pace. With AI-driven analysis, the device could match music tempo to movement, or suggest corrections based on real-time motion.

Every version of Sonr is tested with swimmers, safety officers, and competition judges. Today, Sonr is sold on Amazon and used in over 60 countries. Athletes like European champion Barbara Pozzobon, Paralympian Andreas Onea, and NCAA coach Matt Barany have tested it. Ukraine’s team calls it “clear and powerful,” while coaches in Dubai say it ended the shouting. …

For Simpals, Sonr wasn’t just a product line. It was a proving ground for hardware, for export, and for what Moldova can build next. “As an entrepreneur, you don’t make five-year plans anymore,” Știrbu says. “You test a hypothesis. If it holds, you go deeper.”

“We try not to fall in love with ideas,” Știrbu continues. Inside the product teams, this attitude works across generations. “We deliberately mix young people with veterans,” Știrbu adds. “One has speed, the other has wisdom. We ask: did you test it? Did users ask for this? If not, we stop. That’s our form of radical honesty.”

The Simpals’ team now spans over 200 people, with hubs in Moldova and Romania, and remote contributors across Europe. But the center of gravity remains Chișinău. “We’ve launched over a hundred products in two decades,” Știrbu says. “What matters is that we always keep exploring.”

Before relocating to Moldova and founding ArtDock in 2022, Gibinski was running his business in Ukraine, surrounded by family and friends. Then, in a single moment, everything changed. “It was shocking,” he recalls. “I was living near Kyiv airport when the first explosions started at 4 a.m. on February 23, 2022. I never imagined a real war could happen.”

They gathered only the essentials and set out toward the Polish border. With hearts heavy, they waited in Poland, hoping the war would end. But it became clear it wouldn’t.

A friend suggested relocating to Moldova, a country with a growing IT sector and supportive policies for tech startups.

It didn’t take long for Dimitr to settle in Chișinău and open ArtDock. What started as a team of eight in Ukraine has now grown to 47 colleagues: Ukrainians, Belarusians, Moldovans and Russians. “MITP gives stability and predictability,” he says about Moldova Innovation Technology Park. “The taxation system we get through MITP makes forecasting much easier. I know future salaries, costs and extra taxes, without worrying that rules might suddenly change.”

On his desk, small figurines from the video games the team created are lined up. As Dimitr talks about his games, his face lights up. Each project takes up to six months, from concept and design to coding and testing. Catching the audience’s attention from the start is crucial. “People have no patience now. If a game doesn’t catch them from the start, they move on.”

Their first game, SOS OPS, launched in November 2023. It’s a cooperative action game where players team up to save the city. It quickly found its audience, with roughly 150,000 players so far.

Then came Penguin Helper, a 3D adventure full of humor and chaos. Next up is Pao Pao, a culinary game where players run a restaurant and manage orders solo or with friends.

ArtDock’s evolving game Lootbound challenges players with turn-based tactics, clever strategy, and careful resource management.

Since its founding, ArtDock has helped showcase Moldova’s potential in the gaming world. The team won the People’s Choice Award at Nordic Game 2025 and participated in a series of international exhibitions this year: in the Netherlands, China, Germany and Japan.

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Moldova’s gaming scene is growing

ArtDock isn’t alone. In Chișinău, new studios keep popping up, testing how far Moldova’s game industry can go. One of them, TroFilm Group, has teamed up with EGOVERSE Limited from Hong Kong to build a AAA video game, the kind usually made by big international studios.

Local teams are now scanning real-world objects and sets with photogrammetry to create lifelike 3D worlds. It’s tough work, as producer Trofim Gutanu shared. The team had to train fast, but proved they can deliver at a global level.

Moldova’s creative sector is evolving fast. Since 2022, four Moldovan universities have launched Bachelor’s programs in Game Design, Animation and Multimedia Production.

These projects show what’s changing: Moldova’s not just coding or outsourcing anymore. It’s creating.

And it may not just be fun, but also very profitable. Globally, the games market is expected to generate $188.8 billion by the end of 2025, a 3.4% year-on-year increase, and by 2028, it is projected to reach $206.5 billion.

Building talent, building trust

For Dimitr, success isn’t just about games. It’s about people. “People, people, people. That’s our first, second, and third priority,” he says. “Every single person here really loves games.”

Hiring hasn’t been easy. “To gather these 47 professionals under one roof, we went through maybe 500 interviews, 5,000 CVs,” he laughs. Hiring and training new students takes about a year before they’re fully productive.

Every player’s comment matters. “Even if you find a mistake or something that could be improved, we’ll be grateful if you tell us,” says Dimitr. “We read them all.”

To him, it’s about understanding the community and creating an environment where players and creators grow together.

He hopes Moldova will soon become a regional gaming hub, much like Finland once did with Angry Birds. “The industry here is still at the beginning,” he says, “but it has everything it needs to succeed.”

This story was written by Olga Cernea of the Journo Birds, a media team that works with nonprofits to tell human-centered stories. This story was supported by UMAEF.

In his first years of being a student at Nicolae Testemițanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Mihai Dascăl lived two lives: hospital shifts by day, coding at night. “My handwriting is awful, even I can’t read it,” he laughs. “So I built a website to type up my notes.”

That first site still lingers online. It was just a survival tool for exams, but something sparked. By 2011, between emergency shifts at National Prehospital Emergency Medical Center in Chișinău and hours behind a pharmacy counter, he was already blending medicine with code. After graduating from med school, he briefly wandered into neurosurgery.

A few years later, he founded CorLab Tech, a software company that builds digital products with a focus on healthcare and data-driven systems, where he now serves as CTO. The company now counts twenty people scattered across Moldova and beyond, all working remotely. Corlab joined the Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP) from the start, mainly for its single 7% tax, considered a major advantage. For Mihai Dascăl, it’s what gives Moldovan tech companies a fighting chance to stay competitive.

They’ve created the cancer registry for the Oncologic Hospital in Chișinău, and - their proudest project - changed how Moldovans receive their medicine, using an online system eRețeta.

“We picked health on purpose,” Mihai says simply. “It’s my weakness, wanting to help the medical system”. He talks about it with pride, but also weariness of someone who had seen the system “from both sides of the barricade”, as he calls it. Rushing to treat patients as a doctor and struggling to decipher prescriptions as a pharmacist.

So when the National Health Insurance Company announced a public tender for an electronic prescription system, he didn’t hesitate. “My master’s thesis was on e-prescriptions. I knew this was where I could really make a difference.”

“A day before launching, the system crashed.”

His team designed eRețeta, a platform where doctors can issue compensated prescriptions, pharmacists can see and dispense them and the insurance company can track everything in real time. eRețeta is currently used only for prescriptions that are partially covered by the state.

The night before launch, it almost collapsed. The national signing platform MSign - the gateway for logging in - suddenly crashed. “We were all in a room together, staring at the screens,” Mihai recalls. “We were supposed to go live the next morning, and suddenly, no one could even sign a prescription.”

For two tense hours, engineers from all sides scrambled to bring it back. Just before midnight, the lights turned green.

CorLab spent about seven to eleven months building eRețeta. To ensure it could survive in real life, they tested it with doctors and pharmacists in Hîncești, one of the largest districts in Moldova, before rolling it out nationwide. In April 2023, eRețeta went live.

290,000 prescriptions a month, now digital

Overnight, with only a few narrow exceptions, Moldova switched off paper prescriptions for compensated medication. And, to everyone’s astonishment, nothing crashed. Now the World Health Organization funds further development. “It’s not really maintenance, it’s active development,” Mihai says.

According to the National Health Insurance Company, the eRețeta platform is currently used in 1,400 contracted medical institutions and over 1,600 pharmacies nationwide. Each month, over 170,000 patients benefit from subsidized medicines, with nearly 290,000 electronic prescriptions issued and dispensed.

“Before eRețeta, prescribing and dispensing were manual and error-prone. Doctors couldn’t track a patient’s prescription history, pharmacists faced transcription errors, and reporting was often late and incomplete. Digitalization solved these problems and allowed real-time monitoring of public funds,” explains Silvia Munteanu, head of the National Health Insurance Company’s communication service. Dascăl notes that the shift also erased an invisible but massive cost for the government: nearly two million lei per year!

From pilot apps to a digital health system

This is just the beginning of a new era. The Moldovan Government has approved the National Program for Digitalization and Innovation in Health 2025–2030, which mandates the Ministry of Health and the National Health Insurance Company to develop an integrated digital ecosystem - from telemedicine to electronic health records - enabling clinicians to access patient histories across institutions and providing real-time oversight of public spending on medicines and services. That policy push explains why companies like CorLab are now pitching beyond single applications and toward interoperable national platforms.

It’s clear that for Mihai Dascăl, these platforms aren’t just code or contracts. To him, they’re the invisible rails the medical system runs on, and he wants them steady and reliable. There when people need them. Not abstract users, but real families. Families like his own, arriving at the hospital in the morning with a sick child, hoping the system will simply work.

This story was written by Patricia Mihaila of the Journo Birds, a media team that works withnonprofits to tell human-centered stories. This story was supported by UMAEF.

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Cybersecurity protection often starts only after the damage is done. But on Moldovan startup wants to change that.

At a peaceful café tucked inside a Chișinău park, life feels safe. But invisible threats are everywhere. Aliona Levca, the founder of the Pinky CyberSafe startup, sees them clearly. She sips a lemonade and tells us that almost any company in any country risks being attacked. She just met some of them, wearing a Pinky-branded T-shirt.

“There is no such thing as being safe online,” she notes. “If something is connected to a website and can be accessed by a client, it can be accessed by a hacker.”

Moldova builds security for everyone

Aliona Levca knows what it feels like to clean up after a cyberattack. Before founding Pinky CyberSafe, she worked for years abroad and served as a risk consultant for major Moldovan companies. She’s seen how much companies lose in time, reputation, and money because they think cybersecurity is for later.

“The biggest problem is that companies treat cybersecurity as something optional. Especially small ones. What you see in the media is about big companies, but small ones are easy targets. They’re low-hanging fruit,” explains Aliona, referring to the fact that not everyone knows what minimum protection1 looks like.

A couple of years ago, Aliona began building Pinky CyberSafe startup: an automated platform that scans company infrastructure, detects vulnerabilities, and immediately suggests how to fix them in simple language.

It’s like your virtual Chief Information Security Officer, as Aliona puts it.

Her idea inspired others. Pinky CyberSafe was selected for the EU-backed EmpoWomen program, a competitive deep-tech accelerator supporting women-led startups across Europe. It’s now positioning itself as a go-to cybersecurity tool for small businesses in any country.

Also in Moldova, women make up around 43% of the ICT workforce (Information and Communications Technology). It is a figure well above many regional averages. Alongside with that, national programs like the 30 million MDL Women’s Entrepreneurship Support Programme are helping boost female-led startups like Pinky.

To Prevent Before Defending

Moldova’s private sector is still new to cybersecurity. Some companies might not even notice or report attacks. Most of Pinky’s current users are small and medium enterprises that don’t have in-house security teams or IT staff. After scanning a website or online service, it generates a custom report with severity rankings, suggested actions, and diagrams explaining each vulnerability. “It’s not about scaring people. It’s about making it easy to act,” Aliona says confidently. “For a company here in Moldova, we stopped their enormous losses in just five minutes.”

Thus, the scanning engine runs continuously. Clients receive automatic alerts when new issues arise. In the future, Pinky plans to add smart decoys,“honeypots”, fake targets that attract hackers and keep them away from real company data. “We want to make honeypots easy, self-deployed, no technical knowledge needed,” Aliona says.

From software to strategy

The systematic attitude in cybersecurity was exactly what a Romanian software entrepreneur, Marius Dumitrașcu, sought to empower in Moldova. With nearly two decades of experience, Marius is a Managing Director at Codwer, a global tech company. Now, he is also the Head of Research and Training at CyberCor, Moldova’s national cybersecurity institute. CyberCor launched Moldova’s first national educational cyber platform at CyberCon in 2024. Its students are already representing Moldova in international training programs, including a summer school in Estonia alongside peers from the U.S. and Singapore.

“I arrived without a laptop, without plans to work,” Dumitrașcu confesses. “Just to relax with friends,” he recalls. But the people, the pace, and the underused potential pulled him in. He began teaching at the Technical University of Moldova and saw a gap: students needed more hands-on training in cybersecurity.

“They knew how to answer theoretical questions, but not what to do when a ransomware alert popped up on a live system. But the core governmental infrastructure in Moldova is great. Moldova has one of the best digitalization programs in the government. I’d say it’s above Estonian,” says Marius. Thus, the mismatch between curriculum and crisis became one of CyberCor’s core missions.

“Instead of theory, we let students touch the wires;” Marius points out.

How does Moldova defend itself?

In a country where much of the digital security infrastructure is still emerging, solutions like Pinky and initiatives like CyberCor are doing more than patching technical gaps. They are shaping public perception and are part of a bigger picture.

Moldova’s cyber defense isn’t just up to volunteers and startups.

In 2023, the country passed its first cybersecurity law and set up a new agency to protect key systems. The E-Governance Agency runs the government’s online services.

“You can move fast here. You have access to people. If you have a good idea, and you’re serious, things happen,” notes Aliona Levca.

Still, the system remains fragile, but not unprepared. As Marius Dumitrașcu puts it: “We’re dealing with a space that wasn’t taken seriously for a long time. Things are changing slowly. In terms of digitalization, Moldova is one step ahead of other countries in the region.”

Aliona notes increased interest from public institutions. “There’s openness. Sometimes the bureaucracy is slow, but people are listening.”

Despite challenges, Aliona emphasizes the importance of this phase in Moldova’s evolution. “We’re in that in-between moment. Not a blank page anymore, but not a full one either. It’s an opportunity to do it right before habits form, before things get rigid.”

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Moldova’s art scene is bursting with experiments that merge creativity and technology. From Racketa’s virtual production stages to Norm.create’s AI-driven branding, there’s a prominent wave for storytelling and design in this European country.

In a XIX century building in central Chișinău, the founder of Racketa Production, Ștefan Nahaba, raises a tablet, scans a QR code, and shows how history becomes alive. On the monitor, prehistoric animals appear to walk straight into the room. That is an experiment in augmented reality that Racketa Production built for the Ethnographic Museum of Moldova. Ștefan laughs as he explains how kids chase the digital creatures through museum halls.

“It’s like Pokémon Go, but with our history,” he says. “We wanted education to feel like a game.” And that is not the only way in which Moldovans have started to play along and compete in the creative field.

Creative Soil of Moldova

Ștefan Nahaba’s path into production began with studying film directing at the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in Chișinău and working in small studios on cruise ships, producing and editing video content onboard. In 2015, he returned home and launched Racketa, at first a conventional production company. But the turning point came when he created an in-house research and development division (R&D arm). “That’s my playground,” he says. “We redefined ourselves as a creative-tech company.”

Now, Racketa’s office is known as the first in Moldova to run virtual production, the technique popularized by the TV-series The Mandalorian. By tracking a camera in real time through a 3D environment, they could capture a finished scene directly in-camera, instead of waiting weeks for post-production. “It changes everything,” Nahaba explains. “You save time and money, and the actors see the world they’re supposed to be in.”

The company serves clients in the USA, UK, Norway, Romania, Japan, and Dubai, with more than 100 campaigns completed. Their projects include an AR app for Moldova’s National Museum and a 2D animation campaign for a private aviation brand.

Behind Racketa’s creative experiments lies a business culture shaped by international clients. Many projects arrive as white-label or NDA assignments, meaning the studio cannot publicly showcase them. One standout case, however, was a 2D animation campaign for a company that sells private jets. “When the agency showed our work to their client, they told us the client cried out of happiness,” Nahaba recalls.

What impressed these clients, Nahaba says, was not only the visuals but the discipline. “You can’t work with us if you don’t respect copyright chains or deadlines,” he explains, while in the background of his office, his colleagues discuss one more international project that Stefan cannot name. “Even if we know a delivery isn’t due for another week, international partners will insist: no, the deadline is still the deadline. That taught us a lot about how different markets work.”

The same commitment drives Racketa’s community work. The studio founded Fix It In Post, Moldova’s first post-production conference in Chisinau. For the very first edition, it was attended by screenwriter and film producer Jonathan Nolan, brother of director Christopher Nolan.

This way, Nahaba notes that the future is not only about technologies but also about people. Racketa Production runs student pitching sessions, encouraging young creatives to present projects instead of chasing diplomas. “We tell them: build portfolios, not paperwork,” he says. “The industry needs skills, ideas, and products, not just certificates. If we stay only in outsourcing, we’ll never grow an industry. Our experiments (AR guides, virtual sets) are about testing what could become products,” Nahaba explains.

The first AI branding in Moldova

Across town at Artcor, Moldova’s creative hub, two young designers, Radion and Rodion, tell a different but connected story. Both studied at the Technical University of Moldova, one in architecture, the other in interior design. For years, they freelanced separately. Then, almost by accident, they pooled resources, renting the same office to save on accounting. “We just wanted to split the cost of a bookkeeper,” Rodion laughs. “That’s how our company Norm.create was born.”

Norm.create is a small studio of two founders and a few collaborators based at Artcor in Chișinău. Since 2021, they have delivered dozens branding and design projects for clients such as Moldova Pride, DAS Expo, Smart Factory, LUME Neobistro, and Cudra Jewelry.

At first, they even thought about launching a design school, but continued with design gigs. Then, as the global AI boom of 2023–24 hit, they found themselves among its first local adopters. A big step was already taken in 2023, as they created the visuals for the Moldovan Brands Runway event with its “Future In Transit” theme.

“It was probably the first brand identity here made 90% with AI,” Rodion recalls. The theme was futuristic, with clothing designers and musicians also using AI in the event. Norm.create generated visuals, animated assets, and even a robotic-sounding soundtrack.

From then on, AI became part of their daily process. They use ChatGPT for texts, MidJourney and Runway for visuals, and integrated AI plugins in Figma. “One project today can involve Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, and AI tools all at once. It’s just another layer,” says Radion.

How to create an ecosystem and inspire

Still, the founders of Norm.create reject the idea that AI replaces design. “AI doesn’t make a logo. It doesn’t do branding,” says Rodion. “It’s like Photoshop or Figma, just another tool. The real skill now is creativity. If you have ideas, AI lets you bring them to life. If you don’t, it gives you nothing.”

Radion also taught at Moldova State University, introducing journalism students to the basics of graphic design as part of the “Professions of the Future Programme.” He argues that AI has changed priorities in the studio. “You can teach someone to use AI tools in two days,” Rodion says. “But you can’t teach creativity so quickly. That’s what matters now.”

One of Norm.create’s favorite examples is a collaboration with PearlCode, a Moldovan jewelry brand whose symbol is a frog. Norm.create generated an AI frog skin, using real species as references, and built a surreal campaign around it. “It’s something you couldn’t do in reality,” Rodion says. “That’s the kind of creativity AI unlocks.”

The stories of Racketa Production and Norm.create converge on a single theme: in Moldova, creative studios behave like startups. They build R&D teams, test prototypes, and make it abroad as well as locally.

Both companies thrive in the ecosystem created by Moldova Innovation Technology Park, which offers a flat 7% tax and simplified rules. “It helped us a lot, because it’s not only for IT companies, and it allowed us to pay salaries with no stress,” Radion says, referring to the fact that for a small studio, the main value is simplified administration.

Over the years, Moldova’s creative industry has produced several players with global recognition.

Simpals Animation Studio is one of the country’s oldest creative companies, and has launched over a hundred projects: from animations and VR experiments to gadgets for freedivers. bully! entertainment, the American studio behind 300+ projects for NASA, Disney, Adidas Japan, Volkswagen, Audi, and the UN, has been operating in Chișinău for more than 10 years now. It recently filmed a teaser with the Moldovan National Opera, testing XR workflows with Unreal Engine. And finally, Crunchyroll’s Chișinău office is the third-largest after San Francisco and Dallas in the USA, developing technology infrastructure for one of the world’s top anime streaming platforms.

This mosaic shows a bigger picture: Moldova may not have the scale of Berlin or Warsaw, but it has built a creative hub where animation, film, AI, XR, and many more collide.

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When an allergy left my eyes red, swollen, and stinging, I refused to wait days for an appointment. Instead, I turned to a Moldovan telemedicine app and received a treatment plan within hours.

It was a late‑May morning, one of those days when you already feel the summer heat rising, planting in you great expectations, when I woke up with red, swollen, stinging eyes. Allergic reaction? Definitely, though I looked more like I’d partied all week. Knowing I had a friend who suffered from ragweed allergy every year, I asked her to recommend a specialist.

I Googled her name and the first result was Doctorchat, a Moldovan telemedicine platform launched five years ago. Rather than wait three days in‑office, rubbing my eyes nonstop and watching the downfall of my self‑esteem, I opted for the app, detailed my symptoms, treatments, skincare routine, and sent three gruesome eye selfies. Three hours later, I had a complete set of instructions.

Doctorchat is run by a three-person team offering an alternative to traditional care. Today, about 200 doctors use Doctorchat, none of whom needed convincing to join, since the digital format didn’t scare them.

It started with simple chat consultations. Now you can also book video calls or in-person visits. But all options, even the written ones, are handled by licensed specialists. Once you choose a doctor, they are available for 24 hours to answer follow-ups.

Real doctors treat real cases, even from abroad

Emilia Stici, a gynecologist‑endocrinologist with over 30 years of experience, has been on Doctorchat almost since its launch. “My consultation on the platform is identical to what I offer in the clinic,” she says. “Usually, 30 minutes is enough to answer all questions and give recommendations.”

I was surprised to learn that many of her cases are urgent, with heavy bleeding or acute inflammation, and often involve women from the Moldovan diaspora in places like the UK or Ireland, where healthcare access might be difficult and language barriers persist.

Doctorchat began with an idea during the pandemic. Veaceslav Culev is a man over forty, far from the stereotypical image of an IT entrepreneur, and that’s no coincidence. By training, he’s a physician. After graduating, he joined a German-Italian pharmaceutical company, where working with healthcare professionals at every level helped him build the network for his later video‑chat platform.

“The pandemic changed our daily lives, and that’s when I thought of facilitating access to medical services. I started this project with my savings, then received support from individuals and organizations like Mozaic1 and a public institution, supporting Moldovan small businesses,” Culev recalls.

Doctorchat is just one example of how digital health is developing in Moldova. Other projects include Selftalk, a self-therapy app focused on managing stress and anxiety through guided audio sessions, and Easyplan, a cloud-based software designed to streamline dental practice operations, where Culev also serves as CEO. At this stage in Moldova, around 10% of startups are in the field of digital health.

Digital health is growing, but still fragile

This rise in HealthTech mirrors global trends. In 2020, the World Health Organization adopted its Global Strategy on Digital Health for 2020–2025 to improve health outcomes through technology. At home, a strategic alliance between the Moldovan Association of ICT Companies and the Nicolae Testemițanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, supported by Technovator and Startup Moldova, has driven the annual Digital Health Forum and nurtured this active ecosystem. Being included on the ECHAlliance platform not only acknowledges these advances but also connects Moldova to a global network of HealthTech leaders.

Yet, according to Mihai Dascăl, President of the We4Health Association, professor, innovator, with a background in medicine, the Ministry’s commitment to digitalizing healthcare is still not strongly felt, even though it officially supports the idea. He does acknowledge, however, that integrating the e‑retete system2 for which he was the technical architect, is a major improvement for Moldova’s healthcare services. Together with the National Health Insurance Company, his team built a system now used by doctors and pharmacists across the country.

On the other hand, support from Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP) and Startup Moldova is more visible, though not without gaps. “Startup Moldova has done an excellent job of guiding and funding early‑stage initiatives,” Dascăl notes, “but this field is very specific. It needs an organization fully dedicated to this vertical, one that understands the life cycle of a medical startup,” Dascăl explains. “As for MITP, it supports HealthTech startups focused on software or IT development, but there’s a limitation: only companies whose main activity falls under specific IT-related codes can become residents. This makes it difficult for startups that rely on non-programmer specialists — like biologists or clinical engineers — to fully benefit from the program”

Linking European and post-Soviet medical traditions

According to Culev, the 30 percent client return rate gives Doctorchat the confidence to roll out business‑to‑business services, integrate AI tools, and grow the Romanian version of the platform. He believes Moldova has the potential to link European and post-Soviet medical traditions, thanks to its highly skilled doctors.

Building on that vision of local expertise and innovation, Dascăl emphasizes that Moldova’s medical community already has the skills and drive needed. “We have talented people with a lot of potential,” he notes, explaining that a structured framework is missing. He proposes a centralized hub where startups, academic institutions, and the Ministry of Health can collaborate efficiently.

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When a British fintech outgrew its home market, it found more than developers in Moldova: a culture of ambition and curiosity that reshaped the company’s future.

When Darren Wooding first set foot in Chișinău, he didn’t expect it to win him over. He was running a company, Key IVR, a British fintech firm, specializing in secure payments. The company provides a platform that helps businesses to take card payments securely, whether through call centers, automated phone lines, or self-service links, ensuring sensitive financial data never reaches the wrong hands.

How Moldova became more than a business solution

As the company grew, it turned to Moldova, drawn by the country’s energetic tech talent and collaborative culture. What began with a small team of developers has evolved into a thriving cross-border operation, where UK and Moldovan colleagues work as one to deliver secure payment solutions to clients worldwide.

Darren wanted to scale fast. Outsourcing to Moldova seemed like the practical solution six years ago. But then something unexpected happened: Moldova grew on him.

“The work ethic is kind of why we set up here,” admits Darren, the founder and CEO of Key IVR. The company, founded in 2008 in Doncaster, UK, came to Moldova six years ago through an agency and then decided to stay. “There’s drive and energy in Moldova - that’s what we fell in love with”, he recalls.

The beginnings in Chișinău were almost cinematic. Searching for a country manager, Darren interviewed a candidate who didn’t just show up with a résumé - he had already booked office viewings for that same afternoon, assuming he would get the job. “That’s the culture we love,” Darren laughs. “He wanted it so much that he’d invested the time before we even said yes.”

Key IVR joined Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP) from the beginning, drawn not only by the simplified 7% flat tax but also by the sense of community the Park creates. It keeps their residents informed, connects them, and constantly pushes them to improve. Darren sees it as a place where businesses can take root and talent can grow.

Last year, the Park counted over 2,100 resident companies, together generating about 5% of Moldova’s GDP. Roughly one in eight companies from MITP is backed by foreign or mixed capital, from countries such as Romania, Germany, Ukraine, the USA, and the UK, like Key IVR.

“We didn’t come here to cut costs”

Darren is quick to push back on the old stereotype that companies come to Moldova for cheaper labor. For him, it was never about saving money but about the people he met and the culture he discovered. “We didn’t come to Moldova to cut costs. We came because of the people - the energy, the curiosity, the drive to keep learning.”

The spacious Moldovan office has about 23 employees, compared to 36 in the South Yorkshire city. The two offices are closely connected. “We don’t allow anyone to say ‘it’s them,’” Darren insists. “We’re one team.” To make that real, Key IVR set up a permanent video feed between the offices. Not a Zoom call - just a quiet window into daily life. “Someone’s having coffee, someone’s chatting. It makes us feel like one space,” says Inga Galben, the HR manager, who joined the team back in 2021.

In the middle of August, though, the Chișinău office is almost empty - people are on vacation or working from home.

But passion alone doesn’t carry a company across borders. Darren had to learn the nuts and bolts of Moldovan business life. “The legislation is weighted more toward the employee. That was something I wasn’t used to in the UK,” he admits, while Inga knowingly smiles from her corner.

Data protection brought another twist: because Moldova isn’t in the EU, some clients won’t allow their information to cross the border. “Those accounts must stay UK-based. It’s just something you have to be aware of,” Darren explains.

Then the war in neighboring Ukraine raised harder questions. “We were asked what our continuity plans were, how we’d protect the team.” But over time, concerns have eased. Darren says Moldova is more recognized internationally now.

Of code, wine, and motorbikes

Like Moldovan wine, in six years the Chișinău office has matured and grown stronger. Over time, pay levels have nearly equalized with the UK. “We give them opportunities to move into different areas - from commercial to technical, from support to project management. That helps us keep the talent,” says Inga. As an HR manager, she knows how hard it can be to keep people in a shifting environment like Moldova, marked by migration and economic instability.

Technology is changing, too. Key IVR is weaving AI into its systems. They are testing voice bots - not quite ready yet, Darren says, but close. “That is going to change call centers dramatically. I’m not sure there are many areas AI isn’t touching right now.”

The long-term horizon points west. The US is a huge growth market for them. Still, he is clear about Moldova’s strong place in the company’s story.

For Darren, this isn’t just professional - it’s personal. He’s learning Romanian, Moldova’s official language, he talks fondly about Moldovan food and wine (“It surprised me that almost everybody knows how to make wine here”), and he doesn’t shy away from embracing the country’s rhythms.

The motorbike is his signature gesture. This year, he rode across seven countries just to get to the office in Chișinău. Once here, he uses it to wander further - into monasteries tucked in the hills, down winding roads through vineyards, and across Moldova’s countryside that he clearly relishes discovering on two wheels. He’s less fond of Moldova’s hot summers, though - admitting it’s taken him years to get used to the heat.

To his colleagues, that’s more than eccentricity. “This is the confirmation, the commitment,” one joked. “He even brought his bike here - that means he’s serious,” Inga laughs.

The fondness shows up in smaller details, too. On the office table where we talked sat a familiar Moldovan treat: Bucuria chocolates, which Darren cheerfully admits he never leaves the country without. “My colleagues always make sure the team in Doncaster gets their sweets,” he smiles.

As a small boy, every day, Veaceslav Burlacu would diagonally cross the wheat fields with his father. In the burning sun and pouring rain. That’s how “real farmers” monitored their fields and determined when it was time to harvest. “We measured the crops with the ruler!” he recalls smiling.

Now, after taking over the farm, Svirol Agro, with his brother Vitalie Burlacu, he stands in the middle of the same fields. But he no longer checks them with his feet. It takes him a minute to see everything he needs to know on a screen.

Veaceslav is one of the pioneers in digitalizing Moldova’s fields. But this change didn’t come easily.

In 2018, he started using a digital farm app developed by the local company AGXEL. For this, he received support from Digital Impact Program, a program led by Startup Moldova and backed by the European Union and Sweden. This initiative provided mentorship and non-reimbursable funding of up to €40,000 to help southern Moldovan businesses adopt innovation and digital transformation of business processes.

Through the Digital Impact Program, Svirol Agro equipped its tractors, combines, trucks, and cars with GPS trackers, sensors, and digital fuel meters - laying the foundation for full farm digitalization.

Veaceslav dared to go digital when few believed it mattered. 

It took time to convince the older generation that there is no need for rulers and notebooks anymore. But recently, a growing number of farmers are curious about digital solutions. It’s transforming the sector! 

And Veaceslav Burlacu has proved that it’s worth it.

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Doubled salaries in a few years

In only a few seasons, Veaceslav’s team has felt the impact of going digital. Their paychecks more than doubled, now exceeding 40,000 MDL per month during peak season - a clear sign that success in the fields is shared with the people who make it happen.

Digitalization gave him full control of his farm. Satellite images now show crop health and readiness, helping him see which fields need care or are ready to harvest. Even from a distance, he can monitor field work, reducing losses and boosting transparency. What once took hours on paper, now takes minutes on a screen.

Real-time fuel and operations control allows Veaceslav to optimize usage and cut unnecessary costs. “Whether you want it or not, we have to make life easier and digitalize our processes. Fuel control, tractor work monitoring, task checks, and warehouse entries - these tools save us precious time,” he says. 

On a hot summer day, Veaceslav was driving and excitedly showing on his screen how satellite crop monitoring lets him assess crop health and harvest readiness.

“Look, every two days I can see how the crops are developing. Here’s the road, and this strip of sunflowers was sown later, so it’s at a smaller growth stage. From the edges, the field might look perfect, but inside, someone could damage a part of your crops - and without these images, you wouldn’t even know.”

Today, Veaceslav leads one of Moldova’s largest alfalfa farms, cultivating over 630 hectares with plans to expand further. His company’s revenues have grown impressively - from around €500,000 in 2017 to an estimated €2,5 million in 2025. His company exports high-quality alfalfa seeds to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Romania. In addition to alfalfa, the company also cultivates cereal and oilseed crops such as wheat, barley, corn, sunflower, and legumes - providing seed and feed production to both domestic and export markets.

People work smarter, business runs smoother

Veaceslav Burlacu tried other paths, too. 

“I was in France, where a farmer without heirs wanted me to take over his 60-hectare orchard,” he recalls. His brother Vitalie Burlacu was invited to work in the plant protection industry in the US.

But they decided to return to Moldova. “Love for family and working together for a common goal is what truly matters,” Veaceslav mentions.

They started with cultivating tomatoes and peppers, but soon moved to other crops. Veaceslav advises other farmers to experiment more: “Don’t just grow wheat, corn, or sunflowers. Testing other crops helps to avoid dependence and opens new opportunities.”

Determined to innovate, Veaceslav embraced the idea that traditional farming methods alone wouldn’t guarantee success. “Nature changes, and if you want to be successful in business, you have to change too.”

For Veaceslav, digitalization is more than technology; it’s a game of strategy and discovery. “A farmer is like a player,” he says with a smile. “You need to see the opportunities at your feet, use the tools you have, and make smart moves if you want to win - because in farming, as in life, the right decisions today shape your future.”

He leads by proving that technology brings transparency, boosts efficiency, and drives success - setting a powerful example for others.

“Don’t be afraid to start,” he says. “Begin small, go step by step, and you’ll see the results.”

Veaceslav’s mindset shift is not just a personal milestone – it reflects a challenge faced by farmers worldwide. Even with new technologies emerging, agriculture remains deeply rooted in tradition and often resistant to change. Agriculture worldwide faces a persistent dilemma - as agricultural technology expert Vitalie Buzu, CEO and a Founder of GreenO2, an AgriTech and climatetech startup, explains:

“We always identify the trends, but we never get the timing right.”

After two decades of innovation, farming is still very much driven by people, Vitalie explains. He points out three big challenges: farmers are naturally cautious and slow to try new tools; land is divided into many small, scattered farms, which makes automation tough; and over the last 25 years, Europe has lost about 30% of its farmers because younger generations prefer city life over “mud and boots.”

“Agriculture is entering a decisive decade,” says Vitalie Buzu. “Super-digitalization, artificial intelligence, and robotization will reshape farming - but only where land is consolidated and farmers are ready to adapt.”

AI helps farmers make better decisions, like what to plant, when to fertilize, and how to protect crops. In places where young people are leaving farming, AI can fill gaps in knowledge and support. But because soil and weather conditions vary even within small areas, AI needs local information to provide accurate advice.

Automation is changing how work gets done on farms, with driverless tractors and drones helping small teams manage large areas more efficiently. However, finding skilled tech workers to maintain these machines remains difficult, which can slow progress. At the same time, climate change is pushing farmers in southern Moldova and Romania to move away from traditional corn, opting instead for drought-resistant crops and farming methods that improve soil health. Since small farms often can’t afford expensive equipment, many are being absorbed by larger, technology-driven operations as older farmers retire. As a result, big investors are buying farmland, betting on a future where farming is fully automated and managed on a large scale.

What Moldova Must Do

Buzu stresses that Moldova must urgently adopt digital solutions, improve financial support, and create knowledge-sharing platforms to help farmers adapt.

“If we don’t act now, Moldova’s agriculture risks falling behind.”

He envisions a future where Moldovan field data feeds AI systems to offer tailored advice, helping farmers grow smarter, more flexible, and drought-resilient crops. Achieving this requires investment in technology, education, and a shift in mindset beyond traditional farming habits.

“Digitalization and regenerative agriculture are the keys to survival,” he says. “Farming today is like playing chess - you need to anticipate, plan, and use the right tools at the right time.”

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Planable, Moldova’s standout social media startup, featured in Forbes, was acquired by SE Ranking, a global tech company trusted by over a million businesses, agencies, and SEO professionals since 2013.

Back in 2017, three young adults from Moldova were selected for one of the world’s leading accelerators, Techstars in London. Only ten out of thousands have this chance. They had a strong drive to make things happen and grow their company, Planable. Since then, they have been featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and their company has over 7000 clients worldwide, including Lamborghini, Mastercard, and the United Nations. And this week, it was acquired by SE Ranking, a global SEO and digital marketing platform. SE Ranking serves over one million users in 150+ countries.

This marks a big step for a growing Moldovan startup. How did they get here?

Frustration over social media management

In 2016, Moldovan graduates Xenia Muntean and Nicu Gudumac met in a student organization called BEST. And their third, soon-to-be-third-co-founder, Vlad Caluș? “Who didn’t know Vlad? He was everywhere!” Xenia exclaims joyfully. Having worked in social media marketing agencies, both Xenia and Nicu knew juggling clients’ brands was a nightmare: schedules in Excel, designs in PowerPoint, analytics as screenshots, and manual uploads on each network.

That frustration sparked an idea: build a platform that would streamline and simplify agencies’ work. “Spherik, a Romanian accelerator that connects startups, noticed us and gave us a small investment,” Xenia explains. The three Moldovans, Xenia, Nicu, and Vlad, became a team. Soon, Romanian marketing expert Miruna Dragomir joined the team, giving structure and direction to their efforts.

Since then, Planable has evolved into a collaborative platform for social media teams, where content is drafted, commented on, approved, and refined in real time. It helps social media managers juggle multiple clients at once. As their revenue began to increase, they finally understood they were on to something big. It was far from a straightforward path, Xenia admits, “Often, it felt like we succeeded despite everything.” There were long stretches with no clients and no marketing budget, followed by campaigns that landed just five customers. Nicu remembers when their first subscriber paid for a plan. “He slid his card in and paid $180. I realized people were actually willing to pay for this!”

Today, their team has grown to more than 40 people across offices in Moldova and Romania.

Frugality and drive from Eastern Europe

Over the past few years, Moldova’s startup ecosystem has grown from a small community into a dynamic network. According to Startup Moldova, there are now over 250 Moldovan startups, mostly at pre-seed and seed stages. In 2024, they raised around $7.9 million in equity funding. As Startup Moldova CEO Olga Melniciuc notes, “Startup is no longer a buzzword. It’s a concept drawing people of all ages and backgrounds.”

Through the screen of a video call, I watch Xenia and Nicu interact with such genuine joy, laughing, joking, and sharing inside jokes, that it’s clear they’re not just business partners but close friends. It’s hard not to be in awe of the energy they radiate, a kind of connection that feels rare, especially in a journey as intense and uncertain as building a company. I'm trying to understand what made the difference for them. What traits turned this into a success story without a prestigious degree or powerful connections. With a radiant look in their eyes, they both give me the same list of factors: strong discipline, strict work ethic, the ability to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. And lastly, the knack for finding resources even when none seem available.

“My mother always had side jobs, mural painting in homes or kindergartens, all sorts of crafts she tried to monetize,” says Xenia. She never had free time, always on the go. “That inspired me and gave me values that later helped grow Planable,”. She learnt to be resourceful, more creative, build big out of nothing, and be frugal. Following in her mother’s footsteps, in her free time, Xenia renovates an interwar villa in Bucharest, determined to return it to its former glory.

A new chapter, same team

At Techstars, mentors warned them that teams often end up splitting. But Xenia, Nicu and Vlad, united by their shared principles, never fell apart. This has possibly been their biggest success. “Transparency and the respect we share for each other, have always been the foundation of our team,” Nicu explains. “It’s hard to succeed in a startup world, but coming from Moldova, it’s even harder. Maybe that thought kept us together and united.”

Although the company is merging with SE Ranking, the Chișinău and Bucharest teams will stay in place. The founders felt it was time to go further and bigger, especially as AI reshapes digital marketing, and after weighing several offers they chose SE Ranking because the products, roadmaps and values align. The founders will remain involved and the leadership team intact. Together, the two companies will fuse Planable’s social-media management platform with SE Ranking’s SEO tools into a single, complementary offering. The founders hope Planable’s story will inspire other Moldovan entrepreneurs and open doors to new investors.

As Moldova’s startup ecosystem becomes ever more integrated into Europe’s innovation landscape, Startup Moldova CEO Olga Melniciuc notes, “With the right mix of smart policy, access to capital, and international collaboration, we believe the next breakout success stories like Planable will become the rule rather than the exception.” 

Though the Planable founders are already immersed in post-acquisition plans and haven’t paused to celebrate, they’ve vowed to honor the moment with the teams in both countries. After all, more than the product or the exit itself, it’s the alignment, integrity, and loyalty of these three co-founders that propelled Planable forward. In a crowded tech arena, that human bond stands out as their most precious competitive edge.

While Silicon Valley may still get the headlines, in Chișinău’s modest offices, founders are building AI-native products with global ambitions.

Oleg and Lilia Chetrean didn’t set out to join the AI race. They just wanted to fix customer service at Lilia’s clothing stores. Now, from a modest space in the suburb of Buiucani, their startup aichat.md, launched in 2024, builds autonomous agents for customer communication and support on websites, social media, and even 999.md, the most visited online shopping platform in Moldova.

aichat.md operates with a team of ten people. Oleg and Lilia give me a tour through their dim yet spacious office. Programmers are sitting behind multiple screens, tapping on keyboards and chatting with each other.

It all started with frustration over clumsy support systems and a curiosity sparked by ChatGPT. “We knew what businesses needed in terms of customer support. The aichat.md idea came from our direct need," Lilia explains. Oleg's energetic presence seems to complement Lilia's calm and composed demeanor. They shut down their other ventures and went all in.

90% of their clients are local

Initially, Moldovan business owners were hesitant to adopt artificial intelligence for business optimization, but Oleg has seen it change in the past year and a half. “Now, business owners  are coming back to us saying, 'Okay, I'm ready," Oleg says jokingly. 

A subscription business model startup, aichat.md claims to replace ten customer service employees. They serve over 75 businesses, and over 90 percent of them are local. A key feature is the agent's ability to identify when it can't resolve an issue. It then calls for human intervention.

Oleg has noticed that the Moldovan entrepreneurs tend to either be too hesitant to use AI or expect too much from it, like “read their minds”.

AI is as essential as accounting

Oleg admits that they should have turned to potential investors early on. "When we had already spent all our bootstrapped money, we realized that it could have been done more easily."

Aligning with its commitment to empower local entrepreneurs to create innovative technologies, Startup Moldova has brought aichat.md into its network. Having already raised some funding, aichat.md is now in their Investment Readiness Program, where they're busy getting all their materials in order, perfecting their pitch, and mapping out their customer outreach strategy.

At Startup Moldova Summit 2025, Oleg connected with Raido Pikkar, an Estonian angel investor and serial entrepreneur, who saw a significant scaling potential in aichat.md. He's actively following its progress and supporting it.

Pikkar says the company is "a great example of how a small country can move fast and experiment without bureaucratic drag or institutional inertia." He keeps a close eye on Oleg and the Moldovan business climate. "Moldova is interesting because it combines solid technical talent with the ability to build products beyond borders - often faster and cheaper than in Western Europe," he concludes.

In July 2025, aichat.md competed against 250 other startups at the Sevan Startup Summit pitch competition in Armenia. After a demanding week of work with mentors and investors, they pitched  the aichat.md solution and won second place along with a significant cash prize. aichat.md was also accepted to EBRD StarVenture Program, winning 50,000 EUR in business support services from local and international experts. 

Oleg envisages a big future for their startup. He wants their service to be as essential for companies as accounting. In the end, they all need customer support. 

The first chatbot creators

aichat.md is part of a growing wave of AI support startups in Moldova. FineGuide, founded by Liviu Maftuleac and his brother Corneliu Maftuleac, a veteran in the local IT industry, officially launched its product in March 2024. This venture was a response to a shift in Moldova's tech landscape. International companies are moving away from outsourcing IT from Moldova, a common trend until recent years. This has brought a financial hit to local IT freelancers and companies. "We were the first in Moldova to launch an AI bot," Liviu claims.

FineGuide aims to provide “a holistic platform” that integrates various communication channels - text, voice, AI, and human agents - to create an efficient customer support experience. FineGuide’s system is designed to offer conversation analysis, providing feedback and identifying areas for improvement for both AI and human interactions. He emphasizes, "There isn't just one chatbot; there are several that analyze each other's responses and identify the best answer."

FineGuide currently employs five people and collaborates with various local entities, including state institutions like the Cadastral Agency, a governmental real‑estate cadastre registry. Liviu notes that local clients, despite having less purchasing power, provide invaluable feedback that helps FineGuide improve its product. 

Either use AI or fall behind?

Regarding the controversial aspects of AI, such as its environmental impact and people losing jobs, Oleg believes AI itself will provide solutions. He argues that AI's efficiency in other sectors will ultimately outweigh its energy consumption, citing advancements in cooling systems for large data centers.

The Chetreans are passionate advocates for AI's transformative power, even acknowledging its impact on traditional job roles. They believe that those who don't adapt and utilize AI will inevitably fall behind. 

Ultimately, their vision extends beyond their own company; it encompasses a desire to elevate Moldova's standing in the global tech arena. As Lilia passionately articulates, "To make a global business that we can grow and that represents us not only here in Moldova, but to show that from Moldova we can create something truly useful. To show that Moldova can do it too."

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What if farms didn’t need land, and salad grew like software: clean, fast, and modular? In Moldova, agriculture doesn’t have to move forward. It can go upward.

A few kilometers outside Moldova’s capital, there’s a place filled with LEDs, futuristic trays, and clear plants. Inside this vertical ranch, the founder of the City Farm startup, Dmitrii Albot, grows premium basil under artificial light. He checks the roots, bites into a leaf, and tells us how his country can use its agricultural potential.

New Wave of Agriculture

Before stepping into the main room of the farm, Dmitrii hands us protective glasses. “The light tires your eyes after a while,” he says, putting them on and looking more like a rockstar than a farmer. The place slightly hums. The towering shelves shine on products rooted not in soil but in sponge-like blocks and nutrient solutions.

Dmitrii doesn’t come to his farm every day since he put everything on rails and delegated the responsibilities. These days, he has just come back from a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat and is focused on expansion, logistics, and software. But he still knows the cycle of every plant, every tray, every gram of substrate. When we ask him to pick a plant for the camera, he doesn’t hesitate. “It’s safe,” he says, biting into a basil leaf. “We don’t use pesticides. Never needed to.”

Dmitrii remembers seeing his mother putting market-bought lettuce in a glass of water as a little boy. “I later realized that’s what people want, something that’s alive, not just fresh.”

CityFarm now operates in more than a dozen locations, with each site bringing in around €10,000 in monthly profit even with high energy costs. “The biggest cost is electricity,” Dmitrii says. “If we go fully solar, this model becomes almost unstoppable.”

Moldovans don’t need to follow social media trends for green tech ideas. Almost everyone in Moldova is connected to the soil in the most literal sense. Agriculture has long been central to Moldova’s economy, with the sector accounting for 7.6% of GDP in 2023 and 45% of national exports, mostly to the EU. Key export markets include Romania, Italy, and Germany, with significant year-on-year growth in oilseeds, fruits, and wine. 

Now, Dmitrii grows lettuce in trays using water systems that move nutrients around without dirt. In a conventional greenhouse, this type of lettuce might take 50 to 60 days to grow. Here, they grow twice as fast. “Because we control everything,” Dmitrii explains.

Europeans are returning to their roots. Literally

Across Europe, a similar mindset is taking hold. A recent trend report from Nutrition Hub and EIT Food describes a movement called “Terrapy”. It is a return to home-grown, conscious food practices. Whether baking, fermenting, or planting seeds in a tray, people are rediscovering food. 

Dmitrii Albot wants to normalise the new way of growing food. And what better place to start than schools? In Gagauzia, the autonomous sector of Moldova, his team gave children plants that don’t normally grow in Moldova and asked them to take care of them.

“Healthy soil means healthy people,” that’s according to Milda Kraużlis, sustainability and agriculture advisor at EIT Food, a European food innovation community, She sees green technologies not as isolated products, but as interlinked answers to the same question: how to grow better, with less harm.

Growing Future

Dmitrii Albot isn’t alone. Across Moldova, other startups are rethinking farming.

GreenO2 is officially based in Switzerland but rooted in Moldova and founded by a Moldovan, Vitalie Buzu. The company builds digital infrastructure for fields with a system that uses satellite data and AI to monitor soil health, predict carbon output, and guide farmers in how, when, and where to plant. The platform now runs in over 30 countries, covering millions of hectares. In 2024, they raised $1.3 million to expand.

Solvi, another Moldova-born company, sees the field from above. Their drones scan test plots and crops with near-millimeter precision. Using their PlantAI system, they reduce weeks of manual crop inspection to a few hours by counting leaves, evaluating zones, and mapping potential losses. In the US, they’ve partnered with the company Intelinair to bring this tech to corn and soybean producers.

City Farm grows, GreenO2 maps, and Solvi measures. Companies like these are often independent limbs of a living ecosystem. All three mentioned are catalyzed by Startup Moldova. The foundation led by Olga Melniciuc helps founders access new opportunities and scale internationally.

“The demand for fresh herbs and greens is here,” said Vasile Pojoga from the Federation of Agricultural Producers of Moldova at the HortiTech conference. “A lot of it is still filled by imports.” 

But energy remains a bottleneck. As DERJANT founder Zinaida Plamadeala warned at the same conference, even solar panels cover only 40–45% of her farm’s needs. “You have to plan for that from day one how you’ll power the whole system.” 

None of this works without a framework. Milda Kraużlis puts it simply: “Don’t copy. Take the best parts of different systems, and build your own.”

Moldova has done just that. Local startups show people have learned to scale and compete. 

Dmitrii scrolls through real-time updates on his phone. “This is today.” Each line tracks a shelf, a product, a missing item, or a task. “We’re creating our software, City Farm OS. We started with those telegram bots, so I can see everything that's happening in each store.” It will assign work, monitor speed, and track every plant, every shelf. 

“You put the system in place,” Dmitrii concludes. “Then you let things grow.”

In Chișinău, Moldova’s capital city, spring and summer months are for reveling outdoors—filled with joyous singing and dancing, eating and drinking. It’s impossible to keep track of all the festivals that draw crowds to the city center, nearby villages, and vineyards. Celebrations of youth, family, Romanian culture, art and craft, food and wine animate the capital’s Great National Assembly Square for days on end.

Assembly Square is a commanding platform for many civic observances, too. In a recent editorial on Agora.MD, local journalist Diana Guja reminds us that the Square is “the sacred space” where Moldovan history is made, where citizens have stood tall, demanding their right to the Romanian language, to independence, to freedom. Established on June 23, 1990, Sovereignty Day marks the adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty, the first step toward establishing the Republic of Moldova. Since 2006, Moldova has celebrated Europe Day on May 9 to herald the country's progress towards European integration and its partnership with the European Union. These holidays regale achievements of the past and hopes for the future with flags and fanfare, speeches, musical performances, and educational displays.

Darker times in Moldovan history do not go unnoticed. Every year, in early July, the city’s sunny mood shifts when two rusted train cars appear on the Square. Their silent shadow signals a month of reflection that begins on July 6, with a day of mourning for the loss and hardships wrought by mass deportations orchestrated during the Soviet Socialist Regime (SSR) from 1940 to 1951, in the territory that is now the Republic of Moldova. In 2025, the memorial rally marked 76 years of remembrance.

With some trepidation, I decided to school myself in what I knew would be a heart-wrenching history. I went to see for myself how the deportation story is preserved and shared. The 15-minute walk from my flat to the Square left me drenched in sweat, overwhelmed by the oppressive July heat. I stepped up into the half-light inside the train cars to study "Soviet Terror in the Moldovan SSR: Scale, Victims, and Perpetrators." The exhibition remembers when tens of thousands of Moldovans (historically known as Bessarabians) were forcibly taken to Siberia and Kazakhstan in three waves of deportations. Inaugurated in 2023, the annual display is housed in boxcars identical to those used for the exile operation. Photographs, documents, books, and other artifacts chronicle the lives of deportees and describe how their displacement was planned and carried out.

Deportation Operation

Moldovans forced to leave their homeland were condemned by the SSR for being “wealthy,” or accused of collaborating with “the fascists,” expressing radical views, belonging to “bourgeois” political parties or illegal religious sects.

Deportation was a calculated covert scheme. Beginning in the early morning hours, two or three armed soldiers and a security worker were to knock on a window or door of the properties where the accused resided. Taking each household by surprise, they gave orders with sudden brevity: “In a quarter of an hour, be ready!” Families were loaded onto trucks or carts and taken to the nearest train station. In the first deportation, families were allowed to take only few belongings with them.

In the deportation of 1941, family members were separated into three groups: heads of families, young people over 18, and women with small children and the elderly. They boarded freight cars, 70-100 people each, without water or food. The journey to their destinations took two to three weeks. In the mid-summer heat, they lacked sufficient drinking water. They were given only salted fish to eat. More than a few did not survive the trip. Deportees were given work assignments. Heads of families were taken to the forced labor camps known as “gulags.” Women, children, and the elderly were sent to Siberia or Kazakhstan to work in the forestry industry, on state farms, and in craft cooperatives.

The 1949 and 1951 deportations were referred to as “resettlements.” Families were allowed to stay together. Permitted to take personal belongings and tools, they were better equipped to build new lives far from home.

Three Waves of Loss

June 13, 1941—The first deportations began at 2:30am on June 13, 1941.

July 6-7, 1949—The second mass deportation displaced the largest number of Bessarabians. The operation began at 2am on July 6 and lasted until 8pm on July 7, 1949.

April 1, 1951—The final deportation took place between 4am and 8pm on April 1, 1951. This time, the target was a religious group, members of the illegal anti-Soviet sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses and their families.

The Train of Pain

From the Square, a 40-minute walk took me to the train station where deportations took place. In the station square stands a permanent monument created by Moldova-born artist Iurie Platon. Inaugurated on August 23, 2013, the bronze sculpture stands 3 meters high and 12 meters long on an inclined platform. The form depicts a line of dark gray figures moving uphill as one—families huddle together, men and women holding babies, small children clinging to their parents. Behind them trail the wagons that brought them to the point of departure.

One Family’s Story

My friend Marina shared her family’s story of loss and love.

Her future grandfather, Afanasy Yakovlevich Dubalar, was 8 years old when he and his family were deported in the early morning hours of June 13, 1941. Sound asleep in their home in the village of Parkany, they heard a knock on the door and a voice commanding them to “Wake up!” In the darkness, Afanasy climbed into the back of a truck with his parents, 2 brothers, and 2 sisters. They were taken to the train station in Florești. Accused of being ‘wealthy,’ the family was allowed to bring no belongings. Their land, house, and livestock became property of the Soviet Socialist Republic. In the decade that followed, their home would serve as headquarters for SSR administrators charged with overseeing the village they left behind.

At the train station, family members were separated. Afanasy’s father stood on the platform with other men selected for transport to a gulag in Siberia. His mother hurriedly gave his father a sheepskin to comfort him on his journey. Somehow, he hid it under his shirt. What went on in the gulag where he had been sent was kept secret. Only a few whispers about ‘the man with the sheepskin’ reached his wife’s ear. She learned that her husband was devastated without his family, and that, with no clear hope for the future, he had begun refusing to eat. What became of Afanasy’s father is yet unknown.

Like most children exiled to Siberia, Afanasy and his siblings were raised by their mother. They grew up loved and cared for, despite times of extreme need, fear, hunger, and cold. In 1956, Afanasy met and fell in love with his future wife Ana. In 1957, Afanasy and Ana, along with Afanasy’s brothers and sister Lidia, returned to Moldova. Repatriated citizens, they were able to reclaim their childhood home, raise their own families, and watch their grandchildren earn advanced degrees in medicine and education. To this day, Marina’s sister continues to search for news of their missing grandfather.

Moldova’s Legacy of Creative Resistance

Last December, my Romanian language instructor told me of Moldova’s yearly mourning of the mass deportations that took place during the Soviet Socialist era. Deportations, she said, had taken away many of the country’s brightest thought leaders. The subject had come up as I was discovering ponderous evidence of legendary artists and writers on my urban walkabouts. Streets, squares, and cultural venues are named after poet laureate Mihai Eminescu. Moldova is celebrating Eminescu’s genius for the entire year in 2025. At the central cemetery, I’ve come upon mountains of flowers and candles at the gravesites of composer Eugen Doga and poet Grigore Vieru—both vocal advocates for Moldovan identity. An exhibition at the Museum of Romanian Literature introduced me to the life and work of Leonida Lari, a feminist writer in the resistance movement that led to Moldova’s sovereignty on August 31, 1991. Independence Day is the next big holiday! You can read Leonida Lari’s story HERE.

My views do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Peace Corps or the U.S. government.

To read more from The Cathy Byrd, check out her Substack newsletter here.

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The first global animation awards and recognition are coming to Moldova, where self-taught cutting-edge creators are paving the future.

At a creative and educational hub, Mediacor in the heart of Moldova, the stage lights were already set. Video creators from the award-winning American creative studio bully! entertainment adjusted tracking markers and camera angles.

They were preparing to film a teaser with the Moldovan National Opera dancers against a green screen. Even though the world already knows Moldovan talent, this Swan Lake ballet is their first large-scale project for the local audience.

“We’ve worked on over 300 projects across the world,” said Carlson Bull, bully!’s calm and confident founder, overseeing the production on the set. Founded in 2006, bully! worked with NASA, Adidas Japan, Disney, Volkswagen, Audi and the United Nations. “Now, we’re building from Moldova and for Moldova,” said Bull.

He had flown in for a week-long work trip in Chișinău. “The fact that we’re here is not a fluke,” he added. “It’s about proximity to quality talent, cost-efficiency and people who are ready to try things differently.”

Oleg Condrea, one of bully!’s former employees, is the perfect example of this. He is an animation writer-director and a teacher at a local university, and has already made a name for himself far beyond Moldova’s borders.

Condrea has twice been awarded Best Short Drama Screenplay at the Cannes Art Awards: first in 2024 for Tangled Tails, then again in 2025 for Echoes of the Ringing Bells. The latter won top prizes at festivals in Berlin and London.

This year, he won first place at the New York Big Apple Fest. But it overlapped with Cannes. “Can you imagine refusing this?” he recalled the frustration.

Even though bully!’s team is multinational, their growing core is in Chișinău. Here, in Moldova, the company is testing real-time XR (Extended Reality) workflows, which means combining physical and digital elements in the same scene. They use Unreal Engine, a tool originally built for video games, to design rich, animated environments. 

Part of what makes this shift possible is infrastructure like the Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP). Through a 7% flat tax and streamlined business registration, MITP has become a magnet for creative and tech companies alike. In a sector where agility defines success, Moldova’s digital-first policies are making a difference. Studios can benefit from the MITP’s simplified legal framework, which enables hybrid teams to work across borders without the usual bureaucratic drag. 

Trained through trial and error

Before the accolades, Oleg Condrea was already shaping Moldova’s animation culture. A graduate of Ion Creangă University, where he now teaches visual storytelling and creative writing, Condrea is both a practitioner and a pedagogue.

Until recently, formal animation education in Moldova barely existed. “It was like the Wild West,” recalls Condrea. Even at art universities, students learned color theory and composition, but not animation. “There were no real technical foundations. You had to pirate books and patch together your own curriculum.” 

Condrea and his peers trained through trial and error, working at early local studios like Simpals, where they learned by animating frame by frame during the day and reading theory at night. “We grew by necessity. We didn’t animate for school, we animated to survive.”

The landscape didn’t change overnight. According to Oleg Condrea, Moldova’s animation scene began to take shape around 2010–2012, when early studios like Frimu Films and Simpals started producing animation projects that would attract more international companies. “Most of today’s professionals trace their roots back to that period,” Oleg said. 

Moldova now has four universities offering degrees in animation, game design, and multimedia. In 2025, Condrea´s department graduated its first cohort fully trained in both 2D and 3D animation. “We’re seeing the first real wave of professionals hit the market,” Condrea says, full of hope.

Part of this growth stems from development agencies from the US, Sweden, and the UK, which have supported the training of local animators. Through initiatives like Future Professions and Mediacor’s teacher-training schemes, Condrea not only taught students but also trained university faculty: “We were building a curriculum from scratch.” These efforts turned Moldova into a rare case where external aid aligned with internal momentum. “It wasn’t just about funding. The timing was right. We were ready.”

Even now, Moldova’s creative education system stands apart. “My students are already more advanced than my generation ever was,” Condrea says. He credits the internet, affordable tools, and cultural cross-pollination of the region, as well as multilingual talent. “They don’t just know how to draw. They understand engines, interaction, and aesthetics. That’s something we had to invent for ourselves.” 

Between Condrea’s ascent and bully!’s investment, Moldova’s animation sector is no longer peripheral. It’s becoming a lab, a stage for global creative production. 

Scaling without losing the plot

For Carlson Bull, working in Moldova isn’t about saving money. It’s about finding fresh ideas in a place that thinks differently. The Moldovan team often surprises him with ideas different from those in the US. 

For NASA, bully! created an XR graphic novel that lets users walk on the Moon and explore space tech in AR. They also built a game-like platform where students help plan future moon missions by tackling challenges like recycling and resource use.

While bully! remains headquartered in Baltimore, USA, its growing Moldovan team develops layouts, UX, rigging, animation, tech art, compositing, and scene development. “The quality of people we’ve met here is exceptional,” Bull noted. “Many of them already have global experience or instincts, and if they don’t, we help build them.”

"The future of animation belongs to the endlessly curious, to the artists who fuse imagination with evolving technology, who treat every frame as a playground for learning and creativity, and whose greatest tool is the courage to keep exploring." says Chinnam Joy Martin from bully! who is teaching animation in a Moldovan Future Professions Project.

In the different parts of Moldova’s capital, but in the same field, Oleg Condrea and bully! represent two sides of the same evolution. It is a local-to-global shift that doesn’t ask Moldova to imitate anyone, but to expand its storytelling language. 

Moldova’s creative potential must be cultivated with intention. “There’s no shortcut to building a scene,” Condrea warns. “You need mentorship, funding, and freedom to fail.” Bull echoes the sentiment: “What’s happening in Moldova is exciting. And it needs more infrastructure alongside the excitement.”

Moldova’s streaming outward, connecting talent, tools, and audiences across borders. While infrastructure is building up, the stories and the people telling them are already world-class.