A Cossack in Qazak*

I really wish I had just gotten over my distaste for humidity and really just got ‘er done in Azerbaijan, but unfortunately I didn’t and I have had to live with the consequences ever since.  I got so little done there!  After I got back to Baku from Quba, the next morning I went to the bus depot and bought a ticket to Ganja, thinking I might enjoy myself there.  Upon entering the bus depot, I discovered that it was highly unlikely that I would enjoy myself there.  I think it was raining or something made me not want to exit the bus so I paid for an extension to the end of the line, which I think was Tovuz.

The Tovuz terminus was actually quite a run down affair and I was actually a little regretful I had decided to take the bus there.  I kept walking out of town in the direction of the Georgian border and I stopped in at an internet café to make sure I was on track.  The kids in the internet café (as usual playing some sort of war game) loved me and would not let me leave (Azerbaijan.  They didn’t want me to leave the country at all) and I promised them I would return.  I’d still like to, because as I have mentioned there is a lot I seem to have missed. 

So I walked towards Qazak and I hadn’t made it too far out of town when a marshrutka stopped for me.  It was empty so I was a bit hesitant, but for days now I had been practicing how to scream “No!  That is NOT the price!  It costs X manat to go from (blank) to (blank) and this is the not the accepted fare!  I will NOT pay that!” in Russian and I was just itching to use it.  I was so trigger-happy.  So as we inched towards Qazak I was getting so pent up ready for the impending scream-fest that when the marshrutka stopped and I handed him 50 kopek, he smiled, and swatted his hand in a gesture to indicate it was on the house.  Of course, this gesture also knocked the money out of my hand and I never did get back 25 kopek and I presume it’s lost forever somewhere in the woolen blankets covering the bolted in seats of that orange Mercedes van.  

Qazak is, as the name suggests, full of Kazakhs.  Or at least it was.  No one can really be certain any more where anyone is in the former Soviet Union.  A popular past time has been to take people from the Caucasus and other troublesome regions and ship them to Central Asia.  I believe some Kazakhs were shipped to Azerbaijan.**  In any case, the town was really nice and the entire centre seemed to be composed of huge parks with outdoor seating and people sitting around drinking tea, or playing pool, or having shashlik.  In fact, I kind of wish I had stayed the night there but sometimes when I have my mind set on something I will achieve it come hell or high water. 

Both Hell and high waters seem to have manifested themselves in the form of a TWO KILOMETRE long truck lineup at the border to Georgia.  Or it was more like 5km.  It was friggin’ long is what it was.  After leaving Qazak on foot, I caught a ride with a great truck driver who took me to a gas station where we hung out for like 30 minutes while he smoked and did whatever, and then we got on the road for 5 minutes and hit this enormous lineup.  He also tried to get me to throw his old Coke bottle out the window but I refused and carried it all the way with me to the border where I could find a garbage can.  

He apologized for not being able to take me to the border, and I apologized for how his day was going to be wasted in this traffic jam, and I continued to walk towards the border.  I passed all sorts, doing all sorts of activities, and there were trucks from everywhere trying to get through.  I made it to the border but was totally disoriented on as to where I was supposed to go because the crossing was being completely overhauled and I foolishly went into the building that had absolutely no personnel working in it and I came out the other side and realized that I was entirely in the wrong place.  No sooner had someone started screaming at me and soldiers rushed at me with guns that I used that ol’ western charm, flashed a white and toothy grin and said in about as clueless-American-tourist as one can get, “Sorry, where is the crossing?”  They took my passport, passed it around, took me to various offices, and then a young soldier personally escorted me to where I was supposed to go, which was a corralled section down the hill.  

Down the hill by the river was a temporary crossing, made up of a portable and some wire fencing.  The soldier, probably 18 years old, asked me if I had an iPod.  Instead of saying, “B****, please, I have two” I coyly hinted that I might.  He told me to give it to him.  I upped the coy factor and said, “No.”  He said okay.  My main take-away from this experience is that being coy always wins the day.  And while no one else finds it funny, you can write about in your travel diary later and then post it to a blog three years later and still find it extremely funny.  

*I've frequently been referred to as being a cossack in the past.  Partly due to my steely blue eyes and striking features, and partly (mainly) due to the way I can devour an entire loaf of bread in one sitting with my bare hands.  
**Or it's actually full of cossacks.  I have no idea.  Very little research went into this one.

Quiche. Now.

Some may ask whether the last post was about Romania or Moldova, but at this point I am not quite sure it matters.  What matters is that I was now in Moldova.  If, god willing, the Soviet Union still existed, getting to Chișinău (literally, "quiche now") from Odessa would have been quick and easy, but of course no trip in the FSU is complete without needlessly extending your trip by several hours in order to circumvent a breakaway republic (more on this later).  The bus went directly to Chișinău and stopped at the border for three hours while everyone else’s bags were searched and our passports were taken en mass.  Then the customs officer came back on, handed the stack of passports to the person in the front seat, and then let that person distribute them.  Chaos ensued as passports were passed in every which direction and I panicked, trying to figure out the grammatically correct Russian for “Wait! I need my passport back first, it’s more valuable than yours!”  Yes, I said it.  My main fear was actually how expensive and time-consuming it would be to replace it, so in dollar terms it actually was and is more valuable.  Furthermore, anyone can get a Ukrainian/Moldovan passport (I actually know a girl who knows a guy who can get me one for $3000) so this was serious business.

Borders are usually so intense that I like to see what kind of impish, zany antics I can get up to lighten the mood.  While the customs officials were rummaging through every plastic burlap bag full of socks, or Crocs, or chocolates, or something that didn’t need to have been bought in Ukraine and brought to Moldova, I left the bus of my own accord and walked up to a group of cold and forbidding armed soldiers.  This is my “hot travel tip” of the day:  when there are a group of soldiers with guns yelling at you, walk directly up to them smiling and speaking loud, nasally English.  The smile lets them know you’re harmless, and the English lets them know how much paperwork is in store for them if they shoot you.  I asked to use the bathroom and they begrudgingly indicated that it was around the building, but all I could find was a little wooden shed over a swamp with a plank up to it.  I went back and said, “Wait, where is it?” and they escorted me to the shed.  I walked up the unsteady plank into the shed that simply had a hole in its wooden floor.  It’s this kind of investigative journalism that makes me understand the motivation behind border guard corruption. 

The Moldovan countryside was beautiful but there was something a bit strange about it.  The landscape was decidedly greyish-brown, punctured by villages the whole way to Chișinău (interestingly enough, Moldova is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe).  The roads were narrow but perfectly straight and gridded, which reminded me of driving along backroads in Saskatchewan (or would have reminded me if I had ever done that in my life.  But I assume life in Moldova and Saskatchewan are roughly the same).  Each village had a stucco bus stop with decorative mosaics on it, depicting traditional Moldovan life and the triumph of socialism (the two were not mutually exclusive) and we also passed an abandoned Palace of Culture or two.  While the detailing on each individual house was remarkable—well-kept and painted wooden siding with ornate tin roofs and eavestroughs—the village as a whole was obscured by the early spring dusk that obscured each village and its environs into a monotone,  almost 19^th century haze.  Of course, I was on a French bus from the early 1980s (TRANS-Isere Voyages et Loisirs was stylishly slashed across the side) and for entertainment the radio was turned to this song which the DJ liked so much that we got to hear it about 8 times.  This, complete with a smattering of Russian techno, helped to complete the dichotomy that I so eagerly search for and embellish upon in Eastern Europe.  

It took about 7 hours to reach Chișinău , and the litre-and-a-half water bottle that I emptied on this duration came to haunt me about halfway through.  We stopped in a medium-sized village for some unknown duration (this is the main problem with travelling in other countries.  No one tells you how long we are going to be stopped.  Or else they announce it in some impractical language like Moldovan or whatever) and there was no way of changing money so I was in it for the long haul to Chisinau.  When we docked at the Chișinău bus depot, I burst from the bus anxious and desperate to not only find where the actual city of Chișinău was*, but most importantly a bathroom.  Continuing in this pattern, I burst into a restaurant exclaiming, “I have no money! Where is your bathroom!?” which was unsuccessful.  Consequently, I have learned to enter an establishment calmly, use the bathroom, look at the menu and see what they don’t have, ask for it, and look sweet and apologetic when you say that you’re a tourist and you were really hoping for that one dish that you already knew they didn’t have and then exit.  In today’s neoliberal world of pay-per-pee this is how one person is beating the system.  Ultimately, I pretended this was southern France and I peed behind a dumpster.**

*For potential visitors, the Northern Bus Depot is on the Northwest side of the city, across a small river and a major highway.  It’s actually fairly easy to access by foot but when you de-bus, it looks like you’re in an industrial wasteland in the outskirts of town.  Which you actually are.

** I’m totally kidding!  That was unfair.  If I were actually pretending this were southern France, I would have waited until I was in the centre of town and then peed against the side of a government building or school in the middle of the day.