This September I was delighted to find out, that a group of activists residing in Chisinau opened a squat called Centro 73. The “official” opening party was held on 25'th of September, and received quite a bit of media coverage by some local TV stations, news websites etc. I wanted to learn more about this project, so I decided to ask some of the people directly involved in the opening of this place.
1. Tell us a few words about the project. How did it all start? How/why did you get involved?
Rosa: It's hard to only say a few words about the project. I guess it started with three guys getting interested in squatting, looking for buildings and finding this one. This was when I got in, I'm a volunteer from Germany and after my first week in Moldova I heard a rumour about a squat. From that moment I was searching for it desperately and I got to know Anatolie (who had already heard about my interest in the project) who offered me to take me there. So I went and I loved it. Soon after we had a big clean up and due to the insecurity about whether the building would stay or not we decided to quickly have a public opening. And this is where the whole socio-cultural centre thing started. We started to have regular meetings, organize events, etc. I got involved and was (and am) so interested in this, because this is what I believe in and what I like doing, because I think there can't be enough free spaces in a city to help people develop their minds and thoughts independently from the usual every-day influences, from commercialism from prejudices from discrimination.
Christina: I wasn’t there yet when it all started. I came to Chisinau a couple of weeks after the place was taken over and given new life already. I heard about it on my 2nd day and knew that that’s the place where I really needed to go as soon as possible. So I did. And I took my Moldovan friend, who had heard about it but hadn’t been there, right along. That was Friday. And Saturday was a party there. And Sunday they made food… and Monday I already started to participate in the weekly meetings and participating in organizing stuff.
