Soba!

This is the picture of a soba I promised earlier. It's the white brick thing taking up most of the photo. The soba is the main heating source in most Moldovan houses. It usually shares a wall connecting two rooms, and the bottom part is a small oven. To heat it up, they build a fire with coal, wood, etc....in the oven, and then the bricks start to get warmer heating up the two rooms the soba is connected to. Oftentimes, there are also pipes running into other rooms, and the heat is conducted through these as well. It's actually a very efficient way to heat smaller spaces, and there's nothing like sitting against a warm soba on a freezing day like today.