Landlocked and bounded by Romania and Ukraine, with the ethnic divisions to prove it, Moldova has come a long way in a short time and is arguably more advanced than EU-friendly Romania in many respects.
Moldova is divided into 32 districts (Romanian: "raioane", raions), 3 municipalities (Chişinău, Bălţi, and Bender), one "autonomous territorial unit" (Gagauzia), and the territorial unit of Transnistria, the final status of which is yet unclear.
The culture of Moldova is a combination of Romanian culture and Soviet culture. The traditional Latin origins of Romanian culture reach back to the 2nd century, the period of Roman colonization in Dacia.