The following are strictly personal views/observations and in no way reflect the views of the Peace Corp nor the federal government of the United States.

I have had my first experience grape harvesting. Ever since arriving in Moldova and hearing about the grapes, I have wanted to participate in the harvesting and wine making. I can assuredly say it was not quite what I had expected. I definitely had a romanticized mental image of the entire undertaking.

I am ashamed to admit that my romanticized mental image was based almost entirely on a movie, and a mediocre one at that. The movie from which I derived my notions of grape picking and wine making was the Keanu Reeves movie “A Walk in the Clouds.”

Now that I know first hand what it is like to pick grapes I can honestly say, that movie is totally full of shit. It was not particularly fun, I suppose it was a unique experience, but grape picking is back breaking work. Grapes don’t grow at eye level. They grow closer to the ground than one would expect. So you must spend half the time stooping and half the time squatting. I personally found the squat to be a preferable stance. Grapes are also not readily visible; well, some of the grapes are obvious but not all the grapes. Some of the grapes are concealed by weeds and leaves and such, and you must get all the grapes. Thus you have to go through the weeds and the grapes vine looking for the grapes. To see someone collecting grapes, most of the time you can only see their legs because from the waist up they are incased in grape vine.

Four people collecting from two and a half rows of grapes took about three hours. The only respite from stooping that during the three hours was when hauled your full bucket to the bags at the end of the row. In summation, grape picking is not nearly as cool as you might envision.

Grape picking was an interesting look into the remnants of collectivized farming; because, peoples’ grapes don’t grow near their house and they aren’t demarcated by fences or anything of that sort. No one person has an entire field of grapes instead everyone’s’ grapes are in one field across the village near the forest. Everyone just knows which rows of grapes are theirs. To illustrate, the field in which we gathered grapes, everyone had two and a half rows. The first two and half rows belong to one family, the next two and half rows another family, etc. Although, some families had more than two and a half rows; my estimation, is that those families bought or inherited another families’ two and a half. They do not work cooperatively on the growing the grapes though, what you do with your two and a half rows is your business.

The most exciting part of grape collecting was the ride back home with the grapes. Of course the field of grapes is not readily accessible from the main road. To get to the grape fields my must traverse a sizeable field which has no discernable road. You can get to the grapes in a vehicle; but, I didn’t think it was possible without a four wheel drive vehicle. But Moldovan ingenuity proved me wrong. After grape harvesting I got to experience four wheeling in a Lada.

Before I recount this experience let me acquaint you with the Lada. Envision the stereotypical soviet era four door sedan style vehicle. What you are envisioning, that is a Lada. This particular Lada I believe was manufactured sometime in the mid 80s, and instead of having the typical car floor covered in upholstery, this car had brown wood motif linoleum covering the floor and inside door panels. This particular Lada was rear wheel drive and had a trailer attached to the back bumper with tape and wire.

Now that you know the vehicle let me set the scene. Six people in the car with several empty buckets and a few bags of grapes. In the trailer, approximately, twenty five bags of grapes of various colors and varieties.

A rear wheel drive Lada gets stuck in the mud a lot. The method of dealing with this was to wedge the accelerator to the floor and the people sitting next to the doors get out and push. Once the car is freed of the mud and the wheels gain traction the car takes off, quickly. So those who were pushing must hang on and swing themselves into the car. What was truly impressive was the flair and experience with which this maneuver was performed. I was sitting next to a door; but, fortunately my door was broken and thus I did not have to get out, push and fling myself into the car before I was dragged under a back tire.

To avoid getting stuck in the mud they like to drive at top speed to utilize maximum momentum and cyntrifical force. To warn any animals, people, etc potentially in the road/field of the approaching car they play their music at top volume. The choice of music today was Russian rap. I couldn’t understand any of the words, but I don’t think this was jovial Russian rap. From the beat and tone it sounded like disgruntled rap. The kind of rap created by people who exist in a frigid climate, live with eight people in one tiny apartment and are not happy about the situation. Or it could potentially have been about the difficulties of pimping in Russia, because I am sure that it also a frustrating situation. But I digress…

So there I was in a wood motif linoleum clad Lada that was barreling through a field slinging mud, blaring Russian rap, and chock full of people and grapes. That folks is a scene straight out of a film on the International Film Channel.

If you have never experienced an IFC moment, I pity you, it’s a unique life changing event and if you want a collection of your own IFC moments come on out to Moldova, there are plenty to go around.