For better deals on gifts and flowers, better hotel or apartment rates, and less hyped up information about your lady's country - check out the websites FROM her country.
How do you do that?
Simple.
Go to Google and hit the icon for an "Advanced Search". Among the options toward the bottom on right you are asked if you want web pages with a particular extension. On that line type ".ru" for Russia. ".md" fo Moldova. (I think Ukraine is) ".ua" for Ukraine.
Then do your search.
Of course some of the web pages that come up - you won't be able to read - but most will be in English. And there are deals there that get lost in a conventional Google search.
Okay - that will do a search for the word "flowers" (Russian websites). But there is a lot more out there too. For instance, there ARE some very reasonable priced Moldovan hotels, mini hotels (10 or less rooms) built in the last five years with things like working fireplaces and (in one case) a private whirlpool tub (things UNHEARD of in Moldova). Its at a rate that you can't even get an unrenovated single for in a major hotel.
If you do a standard search on Google - the first two hundred websites (okay maybe 100) list THE SAME SIX HOTELS. As if they're antent anymore in Moldova. (Sometimes only two or three are listed but it is always from the group of six.)
ALL of these hotels are controlled by "Best Eastern" (a feeble attempt at cosumerism, by sounding like "Best Western"?). And all are Soviet era concrete block buildings. (Where your bed consists of a twin sized rock mounted sideways to the wall.) And all cost Westerners $80 to $220 per night.
There are some GREAT deals - but you won't find them on any website ending with .com
"Best Western" sounds nice because it plays off the "est" sound in both words.
"Best Eastern" doesn't do that. And judging from the hotels they offer (of which the terrible Black Sea Hotel in Odessa was one) I'm thinking that they should change their name to:
"Least Eastern".
Just a thought.