Yesterday the new Word Made Flesh Moldova team took David Chronic, Liz Ivkovich, Phileena and me to visit Cricova, the underground wine city and vineyard in Chişinău, Moldova. It is among the most beautiful vineyards and wine bodegas Phileena and I have ever visited.
The tour ended at a long table in an exquisite dining room where we experienced a 5 flight tasting of some of Cricova’s great wines.
As we left the vineyard we drove to one of the little distribution shops to pick up a few bottles to take with us. After buying some reds, I took my bags (two bottles in each bag, one bag in each hand) and started looking around for a bathroom.
The shop owner told me to go outside and follow the sidewalk around to the back of the building.
It was snowing, snowing a lot. The sidewalk made of polished stone and was super duper slippery. As I walked past the front of a building beside the wine shop, I slipped and fell. Hard.
Laying there in the snow on my back, I immediately felt pain shooting from my tailbone into the rest of my body. I looked over and the bag of bottles in my right hand was fine, but one of the bottles in the bag on my left had broken leaving a big red wine stain in the bright white, fresh snow.
Still laying in the snow, with snow flakes falling on my face, I was unsure if I would be able to get up. Suddenly I felt the strong pull of a large Moldovan security guard tugging at the back of my coat collar. Twice my size, she just about lifted me up with one arm and then dragged me into the building where she worked. I limped to a seat and sort of moaned a soft, “oooohhhhh.”
I still had to use the bathroom and tried asking her where it was. Obviously not understanding any of my gestures for bathroom (sort of hard keeping them decent) I finally motioned like I needed to wash my hands. She brought me to a small restroom and left me.
When I limped back into the lobby of the building, I noticed a trail of spilled wine from the door to where I had been seated. Waiting for me was another woman in a white nurse/doctor’s jacket. She grabbed my left arm and started moving it to see if it was okay. I tried to tell her my arm was okay, and then pointed to my behind and said that my tailbone was in a tremendous amount of pain.
Before I knew what happened, she spun me around and pulled my jeans (and boxers) down to the middle of my butt crack and started poking around. WHAT!? The blond security guard, twice my size, stood there witnessing the inspection. I seriously should have worn a belt yesterday…
Apparently everything “checked out” and then they sat me down again in the lobby.
I tried to get up and leave, but the security guard wouldn’t let me go. Again I protested, “I think I’m fine,” and tried getting up again only to be asked to stay seated.
Finally David Chronic, who had noticed the large red patch of snow and the dribbled trail of wine into the building, walked through the door. In Romanian he spoke with the security guard and then turned around to leave, I was like, “Dave, can I go too?”
He headed back the way I had originally come and as I followed him felt the firm tug of the security guard pulling at the back of my coat again—she wouldn’t let me go the way I came but made me take a less snowy path.
Moldova… I do love it here even though I got my pants pulled down.
And today I am pretty banged up. Sore wrist, sore elbow and my tailbone still hurts.
