Moldova’s traditional bread says a lot about our culinary habits and holiday rituals. A good place to learn the ins and outs of bread is Valeni village, home of the Bread Museum. Your schooling will include which types of festive breads are served on various holidays, and what rituals each type pertains to. Among the festive breads are bagels, hoopoe, pigeons, 12 types of braided wedding bread, and eight braided breads served at Christmas, Mardi Gras, Great Sunday and other holidays.

The celebratory-breads section is just a small part of the museum’s exhibits. A lot of braided breads have colorful names — plocon, bridal hoopoe, groom braided bread, father-in-law braided bread, mother-in-law hoopoe bread, and priest braided bread for the wedding.

Beleu, Moldova’s largest lake, is on UNESCO’s list of global habitats that should be preserved for their biodiversity. Part of the Prutul de Jos reserve in southern Moldova’s Cahul district, the lake is at its most captivating when its white and yellow water lilies are flourishing. You can see them up close on a boat ride, which you can line up at the Bread Museum in Valeni village.
Another attraction is pelicans, which flock in by the thousands looking for food. A tip for pelican watchers: Stay overnight in a tent on the lakeshore so you can get good views of the birds at sunrise. After they eat, many fly to the Danube for more feasting, returning late at night.

Comrat, the de facto capital of Gagauzia, will conquer you through gastronomy first. Gagauz cuisine is rooted in their nomadic past. Two staples are lamb with herbs cooked for hours in a pot and ribs coated with a couscous paste of hot pepper and other spices. For color and tradition, you can’t beat a Gagauz wedding — so if you get a chance, by all means go to one in Comrat. A particularly exuberant part of a wedding is the celebration of a bride taking her dowry from her parents’ home to her new in-laws’. The whole village gathers on the street to mark the occasion with singing and dancing. The best time to come to Comrat is May, during the Hederlez festivities, which feature horse races and the earth shaking as Gagauz do a communal dance known as the Horo.

Known as the most colorful part of Moldova, the southwestern enclave of Gagauzia will amaze you with its energy, traditions and people. Gagauzia, which declared itself autonomous in 1995, is culturally distinct. Gagauz are closer to the Turks than Moldovans, although they are Orthodox Christians rather than Muslim. UNESCO highlighted another distinction when it declared the Gagauz language extinct, like Latin. Gagauz costumes and traditions are also different. The people even have an unusual way to celebrate Christmas. When the holiday they call Colada rolls around, Gagauz hunt wild pigs, using their spleens to make new year’s predictions and their skin to make shoes.