On Sunday November 5, 2017, the Comrat municipality hosted Gagauzia’s largest Wine Day to date. While last year was a square affair, this year’s festival stretched past the town’s center and onto the newly-paved Pobeda Street just south of the town’s old bazaar.
The festivities included samplings of wine produced in Gagauzia and other regions of Moldova, a craft fair, dancers celebrating outside of stalls constructed to look like traditional Gagauz homes, a concert, a few pig roasts and a “food court.”
I stepped into a hive, minus the keeper’s jacket, and the chirping female hum vibrating low in the high-vaulted space was momentarily overwhelming. I was surrounded by long-skirted blossoms, the falling petals of their scarfed crowns speaking respect to God. The scent of honey would come later, when the women lit their spindly candles; and the calming smoke, cloying smoke, when the pope pendulated his thurible.
Sundry Travels 