Return to Cis-Nistria

On a rather gray and drizzly morning, it became readily apparent that I had to leave Transnistria.  I had spent two of the most action-packed, fun-filled days of my vacation here, and was not totally looking forward to returning to whatever reality had existed for me before.  So I naturally attempted a defection.

The teenagers who had helped me the first day invited me to their high school English class.  They went to a prestigious foreign language school, and were excited to bring me for Show and Tell.  I was put in front of a combined class and the two English teachers, grand dames of the old order, put me on trial.  They asked about life in Canada, about travelling, and no one seemed actually interested in any English.  I was told that no, native English speakers were not wanted in Transnistria to teach English.  This is fine, but the one skill I am equipped with proved useless and I realised that I would have to leave later that day (because the police were going to make me leave.  I was past my registration due date).

The teenagers took me for a walk along the river and gave me a book on the republic.  One got a call from the school telling him he had been accepted for a Rotary Exchange to the US, to somewhere rural like Nebraska or Missouri, and he was ecstatic.  Another kid had already done one, as had Stas a few years before.  When Stas asked me why I had contacted him on CouchSurfing, I replied that it was because there was a picture of him in New York and that if he was good enough for US Homeland Security, then he was good enough for me.

Then Oleg rolled up and whisked us away in his black BMW back to Chisinau.  We had a mild border incident in which I was to be “fined” for not leaving from the border through which I entered.  However, a quick phone call to a border guard’s superior, a little undermining of authority and a touch of circumvention of protocol reserved for “special citizen” and we were off, hassle-free and on the open road to Chisinau. 

As it turned out, everyone came up to Chisinau to say goodbye to me, and so we hit the club.  Apparently, if you don’t go by foot, the two cities are only an hour or so apart.  That’s easier to get to than Kelowna from Grand Forks so I can see why they go so often.  We went to the mall (Dova) and ate some Japanese grill food (like Koyo from the Kelowna mall food court, if you’re lucky enough to be familiar), and then to a Soviet-themed bar called “Attic” which was on the top floor of another mall which was pretty much only made up of bars.  

In the elevator, we were joined by a man in his late 30s wearing white jeans, a teal silk shirt barely buttoned up, a silver chain, enormous wrap-around sunglasses that were entirely transparent and probably not UV-protected, and excessively gelled and curly hair plastered to the side of his head.  When he got off on one floor, Stas and Oleg burst out laughing and I explained that in English, we use the word “douchebag.”  Stas, familiar with the analogy, gave Oleg the literal translation in Russian which led Oksana, who spoke no English, to suddenly turn around with her eyes apoplectic with surprise and then burst out laughing, despite the fact she wasn’t aware of why her husband had suddenly talking about sanitary products in Russian. 

And of course, to top the evening off, I committed a serious political gaffe and embarrassed everyone.  They asked me to make a toast and I said in my booming North American voice, “TO TRANSNISTRIA” and everyone at the table ducked, covered their heads and yelled “SHHHHH!  We’re ‘Moldovans’ here!”* at me.  So this conflict is, like, real.  Whoops.  Luckily my impish charm and coy apologetic demeanor saved the day and took the edge off, in my own mind at least. 

*Whoa, I just realised I probably owe a bit of context to bring everyone up to speed.  For those of you who don’t closely follow geopolitics, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 (you heard it here first).  But don’t tell this to Transnistria because no one there will believe you.  The Soviet Union actually did a good job as a supranational state apparatus and selectively protected many minority rights.  In the wake of resurgent national awakenings and other 19^th century incarnations that exclude and discriminate, little wedges of territory have been sitting in limbo since 1991, longing for the days when they could all get along using Russian as common currency.   While this is a fairly rosy, simplistic and naïf assessment, a lot of people still believe that the SU was the best thing going and still see themselves as Soviet citizens.  And if reading a book title “Brezhnev Reconsidered” in 2005 has done anything for me it is reconsider Brezhnev.