Best of Bessarabia

When I awoke, I was presented with the programme for the day: tour of Bender and the museums and monuments there, the Tiraspol “Museum Crawl,” register at the police station, meet up quickly with the helpful teenagers from yesterday, and then about two hours of “free time.”  We accomplished all of this, though registration took about three attempts because Nadia forgot her passport first, then the staff was on lunch break starting at 11am until 3pm or something, and then the third time, it went through without a hitch or any money paid.  It may or may not interest you to know that they did not stamp my passport but rather a piece of paper that I can, at any time and at my own volition, attach to my passport with a stapler.  Grumbling slightly at the lack of officialdom, I questioned my whole reason for being there.  I can pass time with ministers’ children and descendents of heroes of the Soviet Union literally anywhere, but passport stamps are unique and timeless.  

We went to a few museums.  One was in Bender, where Stas’s wife Oksana works as an orthodontist.  At the next museum we somehow scored a deal on the entry fee for me (2 TDR for locals, 25 for foreigners).  I bought a book on Transnistrian industrial achievements and some postcards.  For information on cognac and the major textiles production centre located in Tiraspol, please inquire, I have everything anyone could ever need.  When everyone pored over what I had bought, one of Stas’s friends (the son of the former minister-representative of Transnistria to the Moldovan parliament in Soviet times) told me that his girlfriend’s aunt and uncle were two of the people featured on one of the postcards.  They’re, like, famous.  No big deal or anything. 

Then free time!  I went to 7Fridays, or Fr7days, or something along those lines for its name and was aghast that the trendiest place in town was serving chicken salads and designer coffee for $1-2, and also had Turkish-style toilets—I suppose a remainder of Catherine the Great’s plunge into Bessarabia and its hasty Potemkinisation.  I spent a few hours seeing and being seen, and then met up with the old gang to plan the evening’s festivities. 

We first went to dinner at La Placinte, a Moldovan restaurant that serves the favourite polenta with bacon fat, garlic and cheese.  This is what Denis ordered.  He also, being a 200+ lb, 6’6”, smiley Russian who spoke no English, was wearing a T-Shirt that said, “Kiss Me, I’m Filipino.”  Then we went to a traditional Russian banya, which had the sauna, the birch branches, the bucket with the rope that you pull to dump ice-cold water on yourself, and the whole works, really. 

"Working for wide sections of the population"

The evening program was the social event of the season for Tiraspolers.  Stas called his friends, no less than the young, intellectual elite of the country.  Biznezmen (a Russification of the English word, but with a decidedly post-Soviet bend on the definition), doctors, dentists, minister’s children, and bankers.  Naturally I was expecting as such, and felt right at home in Tiraspol society.  Our venue of choice was Shinok Kumanyok, a traditional Ukrainian restaurant.  The first page of the menu, painstakingly transcribed word-for-word, deserves its own paragraph:

Shinok Kumanyok
If you are reading this information it means that you’ve come to our restaurant.  Thanks for your choice.

Main principles and distinctions:

• Working for wide sections of the population
• Invariably delicious cuisine
• Democracy in atmosphere and prices
• Regular novelties in our menu
• Respecting atmosphere, interior (many nice particulars, creating agreeable atmosphere) and music (including viola and accordion)
• Our splendid Ukrainian cuisine would help to forget about all daily problems even to blacksmith Vacula
• It is forbidden to use vulgarisms and unquotable words regarding the guests and employees to bring with you food and drinks
• We don’t allow a discount if you don’t have a discount card
• We regularly organise drawing of lotter “Fortune” (prize is given to discretion of administration)
• Form of payments in cash in PMR roubles

We ordered (or they ordered, rather.  I sat quietly) black bread, cheese platters, salad, salo (bacon fat/lard), whipped salo with garlic, pickled vegetable platters, pork-vegetable-cheese things dipped in egg and flour and fried with potatoes and mushrooms, blinchky (pancakes) filled with ground liver, beer and wine.  Those were the appetizers.  Then we had vareniki, pelmeni, more beer, more wine, and other main courses for everyone.  Then dessert, which was a pear soaked in wine, fried, and stuffed with chocolate-hazelnut ice cream, and on a bed of whipped cream.  It was fairly decadent.  And cheap!  For 8 people, the total bill came to something like $100, and because it’s Transnistria, anything goes and you can pay with whatever currency you see fit.  USD, Russian roubles, Transnistrian roubles, Moldovan lei, Ukrainian gryvnia and euros flooded the table.  I meekly paid my share in the local currency while and prepared another helping of whipped-lard-and-garlic spread on a bun before the waitress whisked away my plate.

Then we headed to Denis’s apartment.  He lives alone but has two apartments which have been joined together.  These are the perqs of being the son of the former vice minister of finance of Transnistria, as I’m sure you know.  We passed the time sampling fine local beers and cognac (possibly the most famous in the FSU, despite what a recent spread in Aeroflot Inflight Magazine on Armenia that tried to convince me otherwise), watching the Nostalgia Channel (featuring newscasts from the 1970s announcing Uzbek cotton harvest yields), admiring large bearskin rugs, trying on hats that so-and-so's grandfather had worn in the war, and talking about the good old days.  They told me that every Gen-Y in the FSU remembers when the Soviet Union finally collapsed because they interrupted the once-per-week half-hour transmission of Disney, and they never got to find out how that one cartoon ended.  I told them that the Soviet collapse really hit home for me when my parents bought me an updated atlas and told me to get over it.* 

Then we seamlessly flowed into the topic of Russian grammar as well.  RUSSIAN GRAMMAR.  This is a passion of mine.  I was telling them how annoyed I was by all the prefixes to Russian verbs that wholly change the meaning, and they threw me another curve ball: zaletat, which literally means to be flying somewhere and suddenly be rerouted to another destination without warning, is also used to mean “accidental pregnancy.”  The beauty of Russian is in its simplicity. 

*No joke. 1989—1993 were some heady days for Rand McNally, and frankly one paradigm shift too many for me in my tender and formative preschool years. 

Tour du Tiraspol

1. The fortress built by Suvurov.  SUVUROV.  Do you know who he is?  I didn’t until I went to Transnistria. If ever there was an ethnogenesis that can be pinpointed exactly, it’s the Russian population of Transnistria.  As a subordinate of Potemkin, Suvurov actually oversaw the creation of the Potemkin villages, and I think Tiraspol was/is one of them.  There were patriotic old pensioners outside of it drinking (surprise) and the walls had recently (1930s-40s) been redone by stuffing them with the bodies of political troublemakers (surprise!).
2. The bridge over the River Dniester.  This is of note because no cars are allowed on this particular bridge but ours’ was.  My driver rolled down the window, mentioned to the guard that he knew his boss.   The guard didn’t believe him and said, “Oh?  Call him.  Let’s see what he says.”   So Stas called the boss, handed the phone over to the guard and said smugly, “He’d like to talk to you” and we were promptly waved through.  Snap.
3. The Belarusian Olympic Rowing Team.  Yes, you better believe they were here.  OF COURSE they were here.  Where else would they be?  Everyone knows that the Belarusian Olympic rowing team practises on one of the slough/oxbow arms of the Dniestr.  Everyone knows this. 
4. The tallest church tower in Transnistria.  I know what you’re thinking—okay… that’s not that tall, but bitch, please, do you know how flat Transnistria is?  It looks tall.  And the priest was so delighted to have a foreign dignitary that he insisted we go up the belltower to have a view of the ENTIRE COUNTRY.  We could see clean across from Moldova to the Ukraine and then some.  I also had a good bird’s eye view of the monastery, which was extensive and full of industrious monks, presumably scribing, brewing beer, and storing tubers.  The monastery was also at the junction of the 45 and 36 lines, which has some sort of historical importance.  I didn’t press for more information on that one. 
5. The largest church bell in Transnistria, cast by Nicholas II himself (o.  As legend/proven fact goes, when Nicholasha was on his 300^th Anniversary of the Romanov Dynasty Tour of All the Russias, he was dismayed to learn that Tiraspol’s church did not have a bell so he had one cast and send there.  It was massive and they had to bring in dirt from somewhere else to build a ramp to get the bell up on top.  It weighed like a million tonnes or something.  Like, at least one million.  Or something.   And the walls were two metres thick to support the weight.
6. The Great Patriotic War Monument up on the hill that overlooks the other hill that the Soviets stormed up to push the Germans out of Moldova for once and for all.  Evidently they did not have guns or something but what they lacked in guns, they made up for in sheer numbers and spirit(s).  Communism over Fascism prevailed, and now there is a large monument to remind us of it.  Some workers—Moldovan speakers (hello, underclass) and who worked for one of Stas’s friend’s company—were fixing it up for the 65^th Anniversary of the end of the war and the FSU’s favourite day to parade tanks around the street, May 9.
7. The Opera.  Something by Pushkin was playing (okay, I’m assuming something by Pushkin was playing, but it doesn’t matter because I am right.  Something by Pushkin is always playing.)
8. A large fighter plan on a pillar.  It was the first Soviet plane with the engine inside, so it was either a rocket, or a fighter plane, or both.  It was either made in Tiraspol, or someone from Tiraspol flew it.  It was dark and I was really tired and cold by the time we got here. 
9. A real estate development that my host’s friend was involved in. 
10. A statue of Suvurov.  If you’re about to make a comment about I have already mentioned Suvurov and who he is, stop.  Just stop.  There is a whole lot more Suvurov coming up, and if you have ever had the dream of leading a group of people to settle an area and form an isolated community and ultimately become immortalised by the descendants by sheer virtue of their ethnogenesis having such a limited pool of historically relevant figures to draw from, then please soak up as many lessons from Suvurov as your spongy gray matter can.  Also, to be fair, this statue of Suvurov is really big because he’s on a horse and there is little else puncturing the immediate landscape.
11. A church in Tiraspol.  Get out your camera, it’s an Orthodox cathedral!  You only get to see one of these every two blocks in the Russo-Christian-dominated areas of the FSU, so you better believe I soaked this up.  While I appreciate how much gold went into the church’s roof, I was hard pressed to come up with new and original adjectives to discern it from the 47 others I had recently seen.
12. The Heroes of the Soviet Union display in front of the town hall.  Oh, and what’s that?  My host’s grandmother was up there?  Yeah, no big deal.  She only managed the hospital during the Great Patriotic War.  She’s only the greatest person ever.  

Tearing into Tiraspol

I would love to simply apply the term “bender” to all my post titles for the Transnistria series of this blog because I was on a total bender the entire time I was there.  I have never had anything go so smoothly in my life.  Everything about the republic seems perfect.  Broad boulevards, not a scrap of garbage, large billboards encouraging family values and local pride, and clean, white, concrete apartment blocks—I had stepped into a 1970s postcard from the Soviet Union.  Even my encounter with the Russian army was delightful.  Approaching the bridge across the Dniestr that would take me from cis- to Trans-nistria, a soldier popped out from behind a scantily clad tank (I was later corrected sternly that this is an armoured vehicle and not a tank.  A rose is a rose) in the centre where the highway divides, ran across the street to shake my hand and laugh in disbelief.  He welcomed me to the republic and wished me luck on my walk to Tiraspol.

I realise that I may have claimed I was going to walk to Tiraspol, and subsequently have told people I walked the full way, but I actually took a city bus for the remaining 2 km.  There were trolley buses running along the main artery between the two metropolises of Bender and Tiraspol and I decided to catch one so as not to be late.  The fare was about $0.02.  I de-bused at the central station and took stock of my surrounding: how was I going to contact Stas, my couchsurfing host?  Furthermore, I had written down the name of the main hotel in the city as my place of residence while there—was I going to be arrested for not sleeping there?  Were they waiting for me?  Naturally, I was on edge.  

I bought a phone card and tried to call my host from a pay phone.  I have a hard time using a phone period, much less a card-operated pay phone in Transnistria.  Some teenagers noticed this and followed me as I was walking, assuming they were going to jump me and steal all my belongings (which consisted of precious little as I left most of my belongings in Chisinau) I was, as usual, ready for a fight.  They instead asked me if I spoke English and if they could help me in any way.  Evidently I had been trying to dial on an emergency-only military phone.   In my defence, what on earth is as “emergency-only military phone” and why was it on the side of the street in the centre of town?  They brought out their cell phones and called my couchsurfing host, then waited with me for him to come.  They told me that they studied English in high school and that it was their dream to meet a real, live English speaker.  They insisted we meet up the next day and gave me their number.  Then Stas arrived, we shook hands and I loaded my bag into his car. 

Stas then sent out the standard “The [Canadian Goose?] has landed" call and people suddenly started to materialise.  “Is this the Canadian?” one young guy shouted out of a passing car that parked up ahead.  He came out to shake my hand. Then more people suddenly appeared to talk to me.  Sacha, Stas and I got into Stas’s car and the Grand Tour de Tiraspol commenced.  We hit every single site in that town.  Every fortress (1), every Great Patriotic War monument (1,000+), and every other feature of interest.  The following post bears a list that is by no means exhaustive but was, I admit, a bit exhausting.

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.