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. 

Living in the 'nău

If there was something I wasn’t expecting, it was the city of Chișinău. I was expecting a city, yes, and I was expecting it to be named Chișinău, I’ll grant that, but I was not expecting it to exist in the capacity in which it did in April of 2010 and presumably still does—that is, thriving. While I can’t say it was necessarily bumpin’ (a term I reserve exclusively for cities that bump seriously hard), it was a well-planned, vibrant, and beautiful city. My initial ride into Moldova indicated to me that Chișinău would be a bleak outpost, a greyish village with a couple of socialist-realist administrative buildings. Instead I found parks and amenities and all the fine accoutrements of modern Western living, like electric buses and a McDonalds I was able to stand outside of and siphon free WiFi. What more, pray tell, does a capital city need?

If I may be perfectly honest, I was only in Moldova for two things.  One is, quite obviously, for the long, rectangular, orange stamp. The other will become readily apparent in subsequent posts. This is how Chișinău caught me off guard and charmed me into submission.  The only hostel in Chișinău (voted “Moldova’s Best Hostel 2009” though I’m willing to wager it’s Moldova’s only hostel) was located behind a shopping centre named—ready for this?—Mall Dova.  Mall.  Dova. Do you have any idea how much I want to work for international development firms coming up with catchy, sassy names for shopping centres? It’s not even important that I don’t like or approve of malls or that they have no place in eastern Europe. Mall Dova clearly offsets any negative social or environmental impact.

When I reached one of the main boulevards leading into the city, I became aware that I was being followed by—how to make this as PC as possible?—a “free-spirited” and “alternative” young “gold dust woman.” When I would stop, she would stop. When I would start, she would start. I would sit, she would pass, loop around, and come back and sit three benches down from me. I had been robbed enough times in Costa Rica (once) to know what was going on. I passed a bank and paused to think about using the ATM. When I looked up, I could see her reflection right behind me. I walked faster and faster and tried to lose her, but she kept on my tail. I stopped to check my iTouch, she stopped to smoke a cigarette a few paces behind. She was one of the creepiest people I have ever encountered on my trip. I sat in the boulevard and pulled out my book to read and let her pass, which she did. Two minutes later, I put down my book and turned to my left to find her sitting right next to me.

“Away, vile harpie! Do your evil bidding elsewhere!” I wanted to scream, but she spoke first and asked if I was from Serbia. I was caught unawares by the absurdity of the question. Granted, I was looking at a map of Serbia and accompanying text from the Sally Rosa Guide to Europe, but absurd because why would I, as a Serbian, miss Mother Serbia so much in Moldova that I would be reading about travelling through Serbia? Rather than catch her in my web of logic I instead answered, “No.” She spoke accented English, carried an old backpack, but there was something hard to place about her. Feral, perhaps. Yes, feral most probably. She mentioned she needed to find a place to sleep and implied that it would be outdoors. While I’m sure she was a nice person, my only feedback for her self-improvement would be to be less off-putting and less defying of the laws of physics. While perhaps this was needlessly harsh of me, she was a smoker so I feel absolutely zero guilt and will continue to laud my own grace under fire.

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. 

Getting’ Mauled in Moldova

There is nothing even remotely true about the title of this blog post.  I did not get mauled in Moldova.  In fact, I barely remember a single bad thing that happened to me in Moldova.  I love Moldova, it is perfect.  Moldova, for those not paying attention, is one half of the ancient principality (? Duchy? Kingdom?  Wikipedia knows better than I do) of Moldavia, the other half belonging to Romania.  At various times throughout history Moldavia was split between the Turks and Russians, only temporarily reuniting in the interbellum for one last Romanian irredentist hurrah before being sliced in half one last time. 

Splitting already small linguistic groups is tough for everyone, trust me.  Not only is there an irrational, nagging, and tempestuous 19th-century notion that there should be an overarching political union or state that groups together all peoples who speak the same language (Kosovo, Greater Hungary, etc.) but when you’re dealing with an ethnicity with fewer people than the City of Toronto, then the number of “national” “heroes” who have done enough to advance the plight of their people is not only bound to be quite small, but also not exactly controversy-free when dealing with a Vehn Diagram such as Romania-Moldavia-Moldova. 

This is why Alexander the Great is headlining for Macedonia, and Skenderbeg has cornered the Albanian statue market (although a leading source has confided to me that we’re not far away from a 10,000 leke note with Jim Belushi on it, or the Eliza Dushku Parkway connecting Tirana with Durres).  In a similar vein, Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents on Croatian territory, so naturally both Croats and Serbs claim him as their own.  Of course, they ignore that Croatia subservient to the Kingdom of Hungary which itself was headed by a German-speaking Emperor in Vienna, Austria, the educational institutions of which Tesla’s research was articulated on, in Slovenia, Prague and Budapest, all before the Austro-Hungarian Empire was split ad infinitum into the bite-sized chunks we know and love today.  

So naturally, the biggest problem facing Moldova upon the creation of their SSR and subsequent blebbing off from the Soviet Union, was what great historical figures would adorn their banknotes and rename squares and boulevards from various declensions of “Lenin” or “Soviet”?—tough decisions indeed.  The Moldovans have settled on Stefan cel Mare, or Stephen the Great.  He fought a bunch of battles, etc., maintained the independence of the Moldavian people, etc., and preserved the territorial integrity of Moldavia.  As this ancient principality cover both sides of the River Prut, so do claims to Stefan’s legacy.  Moldovans see themselves as the inheritors of this principality and have adorned every banknote with his visage, but he was also voted greatest Romanian of all time. 

This leads one to suspect that it’s a skilled art and unique set of conditions that must be met in order to take the fiery Romanian ethnicity and order them neatly on a grid.  Of course, we have the Soviet Union to thank for this, as nobody knew how to construct, order, and grid a nationality quite like they did.  As such, Moldova is one large, gridded agro-coop today, firm in its resolve that “Moldovan” is both an ethnicity and a language, albeit related to Romanian.  So the only thing “mauling” me in Moldova was the concept of the Romanian ethnicity and the mental anguish involved in trying to wrap my brain around it.  

The divisions are fairly stark.  My first time in Romania (2007) involved a conversation with a Transylvanian Hungarian-Romanian who was pro-Transylvania and interestingly enough, pro-Ceausescu with limitations.  Many Transylvanians, whether Romanian, Hungarian, Saxon or otherwise, see the region as an entity unto itself, not a part of Romania or Hungary.  It had been for many centuries and perhaps very well it should be, too.  When I asked him about places to go in Romania, he suggested only Transylvanian destinations.  I asked about Iasi and he said, “Iasi!? Yes, it’s okay, but once you’re in Iasi, you’re in Moldova, and that’s practically Ukraine, and then you’re in Eastern Europe!”  

Unaccustomed to having my geopolitical paradigm so abruptly and arbitrarily realigned, I undiplomatically blurted, “Um, where do you think we are now?!” He said that before the First World War, Transylvania was a part of Europe, part of the West, and then it was ripped away and stuffed into the Balkans.  I chose not to counter that perhaps Transylvania was part of the imagination in the West, but that Bram Stoker and his novel’s many derivatives had severed any plausible ties between Transylvania and its dubious claims of Western heritage.  Besides, if Romanian tourism is based on Transylvania, and the image of Transylvania is based on vampires that never actually existed, aren’t we all better off with a lie that makes us happy than a truth that ruins our childhood?

So Moldovans resent Romanians for patronising them; Moldavians and Transylvanians resent Wallachians for Bucharest’s economic and political cachet; Hungarians resent Romanians for taking Transylvania; Transylvanians resent Hungarians for adopting such possessive discourse; and Romanians resent Hungarians for not assimilating.  What we have learned is that the so-called “Romanian ethnicity” is rife with internal divisions, and can’t agree on a history.  That, if anything, makes it European.