Kings of Krunk

I was basically at the crux of my escape from Nagorno Karabakh, and began my descent down back towards Armenia.  As I set off by foot an ice cream delivery truck immediately picked me up and dropped me off at the bottom of the hill.  Then as I walked barely any further another ice cream truck stopped and picked me up.  But this was no ordinary ice cream truck, either, and at this point I was pretty well-versed in Armenian ice cream trucks.  It was doing some sort of express run from Stepanakert to Yerevan in one day.  Come to think of it, I have no idea why this ice cream truck was going all that way, but I can assure you that there was definitely ice cream in the truck because they fed me some.  Revellos!  My favourite!

Oh. My. God.  I had no idea how interconnected Lil Jon and Armenia are.  Look at those teeth.  Kings of Crunk is all about making it in Armenia and making sure people know you've made it. 

The ice cream truck drivers loved me.  They absolutely loved me.  And if you only could see how good I was at Russian at this point.  I was bullshitting with the best of them.  They told me all about politics; what they think an Azeri moustache looks like; what the president of Armenia is; how Kim Kardashian is an even bigger one of what they think the president of Armenia is; and countless other tales.  Both had fought in the war in the 90s and both of them were not phased when we passed something called “Café Krunk” and I absolutely lost my shit and screamed, “STOP! STOP THIS VEHICLE NOW! IT IS NEEDED BY MY THAT I MAKE PHOTOGRAPH!”  Then I tried in vain to explain what “crunk” means in Russian and they just laughed, handed me another ice cream and said, “Foreigners.”

3-6-9
Damn you're fine
Move it 'til you sock it to me one more time
Get low, get low, get low, get low, get low, get low, get low

The drivers also insisted that I go to Jermuk, to the thermal spas.  Normally I brush this kind of stuff off but this was the first time that an Armenian did not insist that I go visit the local monastery so I believed they must be on to something.  I decided to get out at the turnoff to Jermuk and began the long walk.  I made it pretty far before a bread delivery truck picked me up and drove me right to the heart of town.  The two men driving it told me they didn’t speak Russian well so I was happy to be on even footing.

Jermuk was definitely a spa town that gouged every tourist dollar (but in this case rouble) one had.  I thought that maybe I could just break into the old abandoned Soviet hotel at the end of town and sleep there but upon approaching it I realized how eerie it was.  So eerie.  Instead I inquired at a hotel that seemed reasonably cheap but the catch was that they offered me dinner and breakfast and ended up just not giving me change.  I don’t like that kind of sneakiness.  Then there was a Slovak also staying there and the woman put us in the same room because she no doubt did not want to have to clean two separate rooms.  I would have been more unimpressed if the Slovak wasn’t ballin’ and bought champagne at dinner.  I was totally living the glamorous life of a Ukrainian coal miner sent to a spa in the Caucasus to recharge.

There was also a massive chess tournament going on because if there is one thing that Armenians seem to love, it’s reminding the world that Gary Kasparov is of Armenian descent.  I don’t think I actually got to go to any “spa” as it were, as much as it is my dream to lie naked on a cold marble slab and have some 300lb Armenian woman lather me up and just go to town on my back to work out all the kinks from carrying a 23 kg backpack for 10 months.  

On a Bender in Bender

It has oft been noted that the world can be divided into two separate, but equal groups: those who have heard of the Republic of Transnistria, and those who have not. Being a proud, geography-degree-bearing member of the latter group, visiting this thin strip of land wedged between the Dniester River and Ukrainian border—de jure Moldova, de facto Russia—has been a life dream of mine ever since I discovered its adorable Wikipedia page. In fact, much of my life at this point revolved around visiting Transnistria. I could barely sit still in Odessa (and Odessa was, by all accounts, the bomb) just thinking about what lay before me in Tiraspol, telltale foreshadowing of what would turn out to be an insatiable and arguably unhealthy addiction to visiting breakaway, unrecognised states.

My target lay to the southeast of Chișinău, a short or marshrutka ride that cost in the neighbourhood of $10. Of course, I had been spending all too much time living lavishly in Chișinău, a surprisingly chic and cosmopolitan island in the poorest country in Europe. Most of this high-rolling time was spending embassy-hopping, as I was hoping to inquire with the local Azerbaijani attaché about the possibility of obtaining a visa. When I knocked on the door, a young lady opened it and informed me in perfect English that the embassy had moved and this was now a private residence. She was clearly a scion of the Chișinău elite, studied law, and was destined for great things. We chatted about life and Moldova and she gave me her email address and told me to contact her, which I did, but in retrospect the sight of her boyfriend in the other room glaring at me and grinding his teeth is probably the reason she never responded. Oh well. There are plenty of successful young Moldovan girls out there for everyone. 

Anyway, all this social-climbing and hobnobbing had me realise that I was ripe for some adventure. And because simply going to a breakaway republic under the “protection” of a Russian army detachment wasn’t adventure enough for me, I thought I would have a better chance at the internal border by walking.  By my logic, going solo was preferable to holding up a bunch of people in a marshrutka with my paperwork. I marshrutka’d south to a town called Anenii Noi and then walked to the tiny village of Balboa where I met my Peace Corps Couchsurfing host, Casey. Casey, a lawyer/archaeologist/English teacher (all at 26, which believe you me accentuated the many failures of my 24 years), lived in a beautiful old farmhouse up the hill from the valley. We sat on the porch sharing a large plastic bottle of Moldovan beer and basked in the sheer calmness and serenity of the village. So calm, and so serene. Nothing happens there. It is probably the least eventful place in the world. As you may have guessed, I was his first CS guest and probably his last. From Balboa to Bender, Transnistria’s main border crossing, was about 20km. I rose at 7am, drank a tea, and started my walk through the early morning mist with the school children, old people, and cattle. This was me, walking to Transnistria.

The walk was quite pleasant.  It was early spring, the trees were budding, and there was a surprising amount of activity along the way.  I stopped for a nice breakfast of gas station cappuccino, caviar-favoured croutons, and an apple, and made it to the border before noon. Three men were sitting at a school desk on the side of the road and looked at my passport. They waved me through. After all the hype, I couldn’t believe how disappointing and easy this was—the republic of Transnistria was easier to get into than Washington state. But then I realised those were the Moldovan guards, who did not recognise it as a real border. The Transnistrian guards were up ahead, which I reached after passing several unfriendly-looking soldiers hiding in sandbag dugouts, ill-concealed tanks behind thread-bare camouflage netting, and lots of Russian signs. I was then ushered into a building and given a Russian form to fill out.

Outside the guards lethargically inquired about the contents of my bag, my standard reply of “dirty underwear” quashed any curiosity for good and they waved me through, making the usual jokes about why I was going by foot. They told me it was imperative that I register, and that I was only allowed to be in the country for as long as I was registered, lest heavy fines rain down upon me. Aside from this, stern, motherly warning, entering was a piece of cake and I was on a M-Fin’ bender.