Don't Cross Me!

One of the more interesting aspects of Eastern Europe is that it has more splinters than a wood pile. Transdniester, otherwise known as Приднестровьская Молдавская Республика (Transdniestrian-Moldavan Republic) is one that is pricking the side of the Moldovan government as I type. Some quick background: the breakaway "republic" - it was never and still is not recognized by any other nation - fought a quickie conflict with Moldova, which still claims it, in 1992. This, over fears that the majority population, which is ethnically Romanian, would choose to join its neighbor to the west. Those in the disputed territory are for the most part ethnically Russian and still do not wish to join with Romania. Since that time, nastiness has been relegated to dirty-name calling (Russian from the eastern side and Moldovan from the western) and throwing empty vodka bottles at each other across the Dniester river. Not a government to sit around and wait for international recognition and a posh nice little office at the UN, the leaders took to printing their own currency, stamps, maintaining their ubiquitous military, as well as a less alacrious border patrol. As their coinage bears the infamous hammer and sickle, they remain the sole desert (or bastion if you're a diehard Red) of communism in Europe. As the Iron Curtain was clawed down by many of the fat cats who raised the dreary drapes in the first place, the Transdniestrians host what may be the largest open air museum of Soviet realist sculpture in the form of their otherwise anti-social former Soviet socialist city of Tiraspol, the makeshift capital. Alas, the rumors of every bust of Lenin east of Berlin having been beaten into powder has been greatly exaggerated. While everyone in the former Soviet Union, all the way from Krakow to Vladivostok busied themselves taking the hammer and sickle to every one of Lenin's heads, the people of Tiraspol were polishing the father of the Russian Revolution's spartan scalp, which in reality yielded about as much as any Five-Year Plan.

My journey to Tiraspol begins a few days before I plan to head there. Everyone warns me against it, even websites and travel guides. Non-essential travel should be avoided but such phrases when read cause are prone to cause a release of adrenaline in any traveler and so I became even more resolute in my decision to see what this seperatist republic was all about. However, I figured that the lack of a consulate in that land could bode very unwell for me and such a risk the first time visiting a "micronation" (wikipedia.com's term) and so I decided on just an afternoon of travel to feel the waters (of the Dniester).

That afternoon in Tiraspol, which is not too far from the capital Chisinau (Кишенёв), begins at the main railway station, which once through the station selling a packet of Marlborough Lights for less than a buck and track-side, is a very clean and comfortable area hosting sterile benches and a few cafes. However, there are two types of toilets in most Moldovan public places: seatless and Turkish. Please note if you are a woman traveling here or a just a guy with a gastrointestinal track run amok. This place was no exception however heavenly. The train rolls up and takes me away across green praries and farm fields alongside which rise up impoverished houses halfway dilapidated teeming with peasants yielding scythes and walking their cows across potholed two-lane highways. On the train, I was in a sleeper car which had mattresses floating all over the place along with pillows and seemed like a sort of trailer on wheels, like one of the semis with the "Wide Load" sign that has the car with flashing orange lights behind and in front of it. Inside, a group of people all Murmansk-bound. One of them, Angela (Анжела), begins talking with me in French. The two words I know in that language are expended within the first two seconds "non francais." Everyone figures me for anything but American and some of the attitude that I get once I let them in on my true identity makes me to envy those backpackers who play it safe, as well as cliche, by sewing a Canadian flag onto their rucksacks, backpacks, and anything else to deny their true nationality. After a few moments, I begin muster some Russian with her. At this point, I feel like absolute shit because I can't handle the heat (in Russian), in which I have recieved my BA. Of course, it doesn't help that Croatian has totally taken over, conducting a total linguistic offensive reminiscent of their all-out assault late in the Bosnian war, nearly overrunning the Serbs and the Bosniacs. Well, in my universe, Croatian has totally succeeding in overrunning Russian. Russian doesn't know what to think playing second fiddle to a little Adriatic lingua but at least it does better than get by as with a few words of Deutsch. All be damned if they had to play third-fiddle to damned Deutsch. Anyways, Angela and I spoke about what I was seeing here in Moldova, what she was doing in Moldova - she never said, only said that she was born here, received a PhD in philosophy and history and then taught both subjects at the university level, and why was I going to Tiraspol. I guess their bad rap has been sung in all directions and across all borders. We spoke about family: she has a daughter, Anna (Аня), and a brother who recently passed away from lung cancer. She had some pictures on her to document the funeral which was approached with anthropological coldness (even after having lost my mother, father, and a paternal grandmother; I do not know how to be comforting when confronting others who have lost) when looking at the still lifes of tear-sodden son, wife, and mother, clinging in a futile attempt to hold onto someone who is lost to them. I told her of my mother (and I suppose this where others approach others' losses with coldness as well) and she responded by speaking only of her brother's passing.

At about this time, some border guards come on the train and I mistake them for the Transdniestrian horde that is notoriously rumored to terrorize the trainside where travelers pass. No bribes, no guns, no excessive questioning, no worries. Angela and I continue talking about her teaching of philosophy and she tells me that she aslo taught religion and I wondered if she had been a professor at one of those smaller colleges that might combine classes: The History of Religious Philosophy or Kant and Catholicism through History. Soon enough, the Dniester river rolls into view and I can see that we are coming upon Bender, a city whose namesake is unintentionally the same as the Futurama character. I thought is was funny and inconsequential and gave a laugh that Angela couldn't track but soon came to realize that the city with all its derelict factories and metalworks hanging out among the countryside, the namesake more than fit.

Five minutes later the laughing ended. A gaggle of men walked into the car, sporting the usual blouse (fatigue-term, no...if these not-so-gentlemen were sporting a sort of cabaret-style uniform, this story which would have a much funnier twist that you are about to find) without the undershirt, the exposed "V" of each one's chest baring a fully blackforested terrain whose underbrush had probably not seen sun, nor soap, in years. The first one came to collect the official tariff for entry - seven leu, which is about 60 U.S. cents. Not bad, I thought. Yeah, some scary border crossing. I suppose things had settled down. Maybe I should have brought my better camera than my 35 mm Pentax SLR. In fact, I'm kind of sorry that things still aren't a little the same. I wouldn't really have minded paying the 30 leu bribe ($2.50) to get across the border. I guess my inside voice should just shut the hell up next time. After the more diminutive border guard had passed, taking my tariff and then handing me my entry document, a more grievous, bullish looking brute rolled up, asking for my identification - this is former Communist land after all, so I wasn't suprised, except there were no guns with the other guy and now there were guns...enough to make up for any lost nostalgic feeling of tediously terrifying border crossings. Well, I got mine and so did the border guards. He took my entry documentation, my passport and me up to the front of the car. He asked me if I understood Russian and I said "well, you're about a 90 rpm, I need you at a 45 rpm." Not really, otherwise I probably would have to be typing this with one hand; however, I asked him to speak slowly and so he just takes off like the Indy 500 leaving me in the dust of unintelligibility slurring his syllables like the spectators do their cheers. He then asks me how much money I have and fearing a fully body strip search - oh, how the scene went from congenial to menial to corruptive and menacing, like Gen. Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica - and so I tell him a rough figure after commission ;) and then Angela comes up front and speaks on my behalf and the guy just says to hell with it, he isn't allowing me entry. Angela argues with him saying I'm a student - she knew I wasn't - and that I just want to photograph monasteries - he had seen my camera. Nope. Isn't gonna happen. I walk back to my seat to collect a few of my things and my new acquaintance from Murmansk tells me that I should just pay about 30 leu. Is this price common knowledge? He comes up - and obviously the desire to get into this de facto nation tapeworming itself along the eastern belly of Moldova must have shot up recently - he asks me for 200 leu (approx $17!). I tell him how about 100 leu and he says no. Note: border crossings are not known for bargain deals. And so this Transdniestrian dick steals away with 200 of my leu...and my entry document, which in my stunned state, I forgot to ask to have back. Keep this in mind for later!

We're all back in our seats and everyone is just looking at me wondering why the hell I just didn't get off the train and wait. And of course, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have done the same thing because now I have spent enough for renting an apartment in Chisinau for a night! Angela looks at me with those pitiful eyes and I'm thinking, "yeah, yeah, yeah!" Everyone's laughing because at least they didn't get taken like this POOR fool. However, everyone's really worried for me, telling me to hide my camera, not to talk to anyone in Tiraspol, call up the embassy - well, we already covered that one. I was a little concerned about what would happen to me once I walked off the train and onto the platform. Would I be shot? be made to bow to one of Lenin's proletarian hats hoisted upon a pole and swear allegiance to it? be fined? be confiscated in my entirety? Such questions were quickly answered once we arrived in Tiraspol and I ran off the train, onto the platform, speed walking all the way just outside of the gate of the Gara (вокзал). No one stopped me or even inquired anything of me with even their eyes. I changed my Moldovan leu into Trandniestrian roubles and ran off in search of these so-called remaining vestiges of Soviet Communist kitsch.

more to come...