Today I noticed one of those changes that is probably much more obvious when you have been away for a while. After a long period outside Moldova, I was back in Chișinău looking at the traffic and suddenly realised that something familiar was missing. The old trolleybuses had disappeared. I remembered the ageing vehicles that still carried something of the visual character of the Soviet period: functional, unmistakably old and very difficult to confuse with twenty-first-century public transport. Now I was looking around and seeing modern trolleybuses instead. I kept watching them as we drove through the city, half expecting one of the old ones to appear eventually. It did not. Modern vehicle after modern vehicle passed us, and the contrast with what I remembered was remarkable. It felt as though somebody had quietly replaced an entire generation of public transport while I was away. As first impressions go, it was a very good one. First, what exactly is a trolleybus?...