To explore the culture, it is not only to watch performances, visit museums, or listen to music.
It is also about noticing the things that have remained for generations, traditions that continues, songs people still know and remember, stories that are still told, and customs that somehow found their way from one generation to the next.
And after some time, you begin to understand that culture is not only found on stages or behind glass.
It is found in people.
In the way they celebrate, remember, tell stories, sing, create, and carry parts of the past with them into the present.
Culture in Moldova is not something you only find in concert halls, museums or on a festival stage.
And it is not something you just explain and then suddenly understand.
Because it ain't.
You find it in everyday life. In a song people have known since childhood, around a table when a family gathering lasts much longer than intentially planned, in traditions passed from one generation to another and in stories people still tell many years later.
For a long time, culture was not something people went somewhere to see.
It was simply there.
In the villages there was music without a stage and dancing without an audience. People sang because they knew the songs and danced because that was what you did.It was part of weddings, celebrations, holidays and evenings spent together.
And much of it is still there.Moldova has changed of course, and the culture changed with it.
Music found new audiences. Writers found new voices. Theatre, opera and ballet became another part of the cultural life, while artists and performers brought old traditions into completely different surroundings.
But the old and the new never really became two separate things.
You can hear a folk song at a family celebration and later hear something completely modern on the radio.
Traditional patterns are still used in clothing and crafts, and customs that have existed for generations continue in ordinary families.
Not necessarily because somebody decided they had to be preserved.
Some of them simply never went away.
There is something very human about Moldovan culture too.
Sometimes a song is much more than the melody. A story can stay in your mind without you really knowing why. And a performance can leave a much stronger impression than you expected.
Sometimes you just find yourself listening and watching carefully and longer. And remembering it afterwards.
Perhaps that is one of the things about culture in Moldova.
It doesn't always shout very loudly. But it has a habit of following you, where ever you might go afterwards.
Rădăcinile pot fi vechi, dar copacul continuă să crească.
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The roots may be old, but the tree still grows.
