Tidbits From the World

I have always wanted to travel in an old soviet train. Therefore, I left Moldova in a train similar to the one on the picture.

The train for Moscow was leaving at 7:55 pm and arrived two days later at 5 am (Moscow time zone), thus the trip had a duration of 32 hours.

This was my ticket. I wonder if the design of the ticket is the same as it was in the 1970s! As you can see, the information on the ticket is written in three languages: in Moldavian, Russian and German. Knowing how to speak English is almost useless in Eastern Europe. Very few people speak it. French and German languages are far more useful!

Here is a picture from the interior of the train. As you can see, everything is so… brown. Everywhere you can see old MDF (false wood), that was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s. There are old, thin curtains, false flowers made of plastic with dust on them, a carpet with holes. The temperature inside the train, before it leaves, is so hot you have to take off your clothes to be comfortable. There is a strong smell of urine coming out of the toilets and the rooms are infested with flies. Fortunately, when the train takes off, the temperature falls back to a comfortable level, the flies go away through the windows and the smell of urine disappears thanks to the aeration.

The restaurant. Very expensive. The price for a dish can easily reach $ 25, whereas in Chisinau, with $ 25 four people can eat at a good restaurant! However the employees are very nice. They don’t speak English, but they are very patient. If you are able to utter some words in Russian (or better, in Moldovan), they will take the time to try to understand you and to respond with a simple vocabulary.

It is possible to shave in the train. There are various plugs like this one in the wagons. Some even have mirrors on top of them so you can see yourself while shaving your beard! “220 B” means “220 v” in Russian. The letter “B” is Cyrillic for “V”.

Here is my last negative statement! (Some people think I am too negative!) As I saw the state in which the toilet was left as I entered it, I was blessed that I was born a man. There was no toilet paper for the women to avoid direct contact between their skin and the men’s urine on the seat. There was a sink, so it was possible to brush your teeth, but you had to hold your breath… this is very important. The smell was so… execrable. It seems that no one has ever cleaned the toilets since the inauguration of the train some 30 years ago. If you take one breath in this place, you will feel a very strong nausea… if you breathe one more time, you will start feeling the food rising up from your stomach to your oesophagus… and if you breathe a third time… then I don’t know what happens, I haven’t tried myself. Yours to discover!

I was sharing my cabin with a young Moldavian girl named Svetlana. She was going to Moscow to visit her mother who works there. By a incredible coincidence, she was a student of foreign languages and she was learning both French and English. I was the first foreigner she had ever met in her life, therefore it was the first time she had the opportunity to practice the languages she is learning at the University.

The windows were open so it was possible to look outside.

Sometimes, we would cross other old trains.

The borders… the train crossed two of them. One between Moldova and Ukraine and the other between Ukraine and Russia. Here is a picture of a Ukrainian border patrol officer. As the Moldavian police officers, the Ukrainian don’t have a face you can trust. They are young, they wear a uniform that doesn’t fit them, they look disorganized… and they are very corrupt.

Corruption is so widespread in Ukraine that the government has issued warnings in all the wagons of the train so people can know what to do in case they are asked for some money. There is one number you can call at the bottom of the poster if you need assistance… but wait, the last two digits of the phone number have been taken off! It is therefore impossible to call in case a police officer is trying to get a bribe from you. In all the wagons of the train, there was this warning and on all of them, the last two digits of the phone number were missing.

I was the victim of Ukrainian corruption. I was not directly affected but I was involved in it. In the train we were only two foreigners: the English guy with whom I was sharing the room in Chisinau and me. We were talking in the hall in one of the wagons when suddenly, a police officer passed behind us while going to the next wagon. I was surprised to see a police officer in the train and he was surprised to see foreigners. He stared at me directly in my eyes. His mouth was wide open and I think that if we would have been in a cartoon, dollar signs would have appeared on his eyes! Then, he went away and came back some minutes later, with someone else not wearing any uniform. I don’t know if he was a police officer or not. The man wearing the uniform cried to us in Russian: “ WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” and he pushed us to an isolated place like the one on the picture, the space between two wagons. The police officer ordered us to give him our passports. He gave mine to the other guy not wearing a uniform and he kept the passport of the British guy (his name was Rod). Rod did not speak Russian and I did understand a little. Maybe this is what saved me, but in the same time what condemned Rod. The two men were asking us questions, many questions very rapidly. I had to answer the questions that were directed to me and in the same time, to translate Rod’s. In the end, when the police officer got tired of asking questions, he asked me “WHY IS ROD DRUNK?” I answered that he hadn’t drunk. Then he screamed at Rod: “YOU’VE DRUNK TOO MUCH VODKA, ISN’T?!!” and then, he got closer to Rod and smelled his breath. He acted as if Rod’s breath had a strong smell of alcohol. The police officer told me to smell too. So I asked Rod to “blow in my face”, and he did. I smelled his morning breath, but no alcohol. The police officer then told me “you see? He’s drunk!” And I answered that he was not. But nothing could have made this police officer change his mind. He told me “your friend is drunk and he is going to need to pay a fine…” So I translated to Rod what the police officer had just said, and he was expecting it. He had lived three months in Moldova and so, it was not the first bribe he had to pay. He took his money out of one of his pockets and said “I’ve only got lei’s on me” and gave the police officer 160 lei ($16). As the two men saw the money, their faces changed completely. They were so glad. Their eyes opened up so much that they looked like children in front of a huge chocolate cake. They were laughing, smiling, shaking. The police officer, while counting the money, said “tol’ko?” which means “only that”? and then he laughed and laughed. They gave us back our passports and they left. When the police officers had left the place, Rod showed me the money he had in his other pocket. He had euros… lots of euros! At least 200! He had put them in another pocket, in case he was going to need to pay a bribe. And he had planned right. He was very pround to have only paid 160 lei instead of 200 euros!

I took a picture of myself in the bathroom of the train before arriving in Moscow.

I took another train from Moscow to Saint-Peterburg. But I had a bad experience. Two drunk people from Azerbaijan were seated just in front of me. When they fell asleep, they dropped their bottles of beer on the ground. There was beer everywhere on the floor. The odour was so strong, it was disgusting. And as if it were not enough, neonazis seated to my left took advantage of this situation to punch Azeris and to steal their belongings without having any problems.

Trains take seven days to arrive to Beijing from Saint-Petersburg! A whole week in a train, in a closed space, this must be a very difficult experience to live… Taking the plane seems to be a better alternative!

I’ve been in Moldova five days already. An English journalist who has lived in the same apartment as I am living in, had been staying in Moldova only three days before he wrote an entire one-page article about this country. After five days of being here, I don’t feel I know enough to write this much about this country, therefore if I rely on my own experience, I guess his article must have been incomplete. Moldova is a country with a very complfex history, it is situated in the European continent, but it does not belong to the European Union. To enter this country you need to go through customs. Moldova uses as a currency the “leu” (plural: lei) and they are far from adopting the euro. In 2001, Moldova became the firfst European country to ever democratically elect a communist party. This country is, therefore, in theory communist. But was does it mean in reality? I guess one must have grown up in this country and seen the transition from the communist economy to the market one to really know. Five days are definitely not sufficient. But what I could say is that, on the surface, Chisinau really looks like a “capitalist” city, well converted to the market economy. Businesses and advertisements are ubiquitious. There still are however, some remnants of the communist era: old messages, apartment buildings, trolleybuses…

^{(Source: John Dutton; http://www.documentaire.com/caucasus/Transdniestria.html )}

Here is the map of Moldova. This country declared its independence from USSR in 1991. Before becoming a SSR (Socialist Sovietic Republic inside USSR), Moldova was the region of a bigger country named Bessarabia, uniting Romania and Moldova. The language spoken in Moldova is Moldovan, but in fact, it is nothing else than Romanian with some differences in the pronounciation and in vocabulary. In the USSR, the central government adopted a politic of russification of Moldova. Many Russians moved to Moldova, which changed the demography of the country in the favor of the Russians. In 1991, when Moldova declared its independence, the russophone region located on the eastern bank of the Dniester River, Transdniestria, declared their independence from Moldova, which resulted in a war between both regions. With the help of the Russian army, Transdniestria won the war and… a country was born. Everything you need in order to get a country was present in Transdniestria: there was a government, a currency, a constitution, laws, armed forces, the police… everything was there except for… the international recognition. Transdniestria is not recognized by any foreign country, and for this reason, it does not appear on any map. The Moldovan government has no control over this area.

It has been a long time since I first got the idea of visiting Transdniestria, for its history, present and past. The website of the Canadian Government advises that no consular protection is provided to the Canadians visiting the breakaway Republic of Transdniestria, because Canada has no diplomatic relations with Transdniestria and Moldova does not have any control over that region. The government therefore advises to “avoid all travel” to that region. All the Romanian people in Bucarest to whom I have told I would visit Transdniestria all said to me the same thing: “don’t be stupid and don’t go there”. But in Chisinau, the Moldavians and the tourists I have met had another vision on the subject. The tourist with whom I am sharing my bedroom has visited many times Transdniestria without having any problems and my guide has crossed the border some 50 times without any problems neither. Knowing that I would regret it my whole life if I didn’t go to Transdniestria, I decided to go take the tour to Tiraspol, the capital city of Transdniestria, with the daughter of the owner of the apartment where I live. Here is what I saw:…

My guide, a tourist from New-Zealand and I went to the bus station in the center of Chisinau and we took a collective taxi that goes everyday to Tiraspol for 75 lei (7,50$). One hour after we left Chisinau, we arrived to the Transdniestrian border. In theory, visiting Transdniestria is free, but in practice, you have to pay if you are a foreigner. Actually you have to bribe the customs officers if you want to be allowed in. My guide, Natasha, knew what to do to get in. After having crossed the border some 50 times she knew the customs officers well and for her, the prices for each tourist that she brings was “only” 15 euros, instead of the habitual 50 euros. 15 euros a tourist, we were two tourists in the car, that gives 30 euros directly to the pocket of the customs officers. If you multiply this figure by the number of tourists who come everyday to Transdniestria and then by the number of days there are in a month, you get a fairly good salary for someone who lives in the poorest place in Europe! I was given this immigration card with the hour I got it written on the top right corner of it: 10:20. The visa was valid only for 4 hours.

And… here I am! In Transdniestria! The hammer and the sickle, the former flag of the Molvovan SSR, and a sign that says “MTR welcomes you to the capital city”. The official name of Transdniestria is MTR (Moldovan Transdniestrian Republic).

This is the main street in Tiraspol. Very wide.

The day I was there, there was some maintenance work going on on the street.

With very old machinery…

On the main square in the main street, Natasha explained to us the meaning of what we were seeing.

A tank on the main plaza. It was used in the Great Patriotic War, against the Nazi forces. (1941-1945).

A memorial to the war in Afghanistan.

A panel remembering the 63rd anniversary of the soviet victory over the nazi forces in 1945.

“USSR… Victory”.

The flag of Transdniestria. It is the same as the one used by the former Moldovan SSR.

The Tiraspol parliament and a statue of Lenin in front of it. It is prohibited to take pictures of the parliament, so I could not go nearer to get a better view.

The House of the Soviets.

The laureates for a contest.

The Dniester River that separates both worlds.

… and the bridge that crosses it.

Che Guevara and Vladimir Putin together.

Y Dmitri Medvedev, el nuevo presidente ruso.

And Dmitri Medvedev, the new Russian president.

Some objects were hidden behind this wall in 1967. In the year 2017, 50 years later, this wall will be destroyed and the hidden objects will be revealed. What do you think is hidden behind this wall?

<

A water distributor. For 70 transdniestrian kopecks, you can have a glass of carbonated water…

No tour of Tiraspol is complete without buying some alcohol. Bottles of cognac and of other kinds of alcohols are from 5 to 10 times cheaper in Transdniestria than in Moldova (where the prices are already very low). On the picture you can see a range of prices between 17 and 60 Transdniestrian rubles (between 2 and 7$).

Typical Tirapol apartments.

A Russian soldier. Without the help of Russia, Transdniestria would not be able to keep their independence against Moldova. In Tiraspol you can see lots of Russian Soldiers. There are even offices of the Russian Army with the Russian flag flying on the roof!

The exchange rate of the Transdniestrian ruble against the American, European, Russian, Ukrainian an Moldovian currencies. I find it fascinating that Transdniestrian have created their own currency! But as Transdniestria is not recognized by any foreign country, their currency is not exchangeable anywhere else than in Transdniestria. So if you don’t want to be stuck with worthless money after your trip, better change all your transdniestrian rubles before leaving the country.

Petro station “Sheriff”…

Supermarket « Sheriff »… there is also a Sheriff Stadium. Sheriff is the trademark of a chain of business present all over Transdniestria. The owner of the chain is the president of the country himself, Smirnoff and his associates (in the government). It is said that Transdniestria is governed by mafia and that the president Smirnoff is the boss. His counsellors, ministers, deputies, etc are all his associates. Some of them are even wanted by Interpol, according to some sources… When Transdniestria opened up to the market economy, the government and, the president created the brand Sheriff. Today, it is ubiquitous in the breakaway republic.

This is what I saw in Transdniestria. On the surface, Tiraspol seemed to me very similar to Chisinau, except for the communist emblems that I could see all around Tiraspol. To me, Tiraspol did not look like a city besieged by the army. The soldiers who were walking on the streets were not even armed. Tiraspol is a very calm city. Would this be the calm before the storm? Nobody knows. But one thing is clear : status quo cannot remain for very long in Transdniestria. Smirnoff is the president of the breakaway republic since its independence 17 years ago. When he will step down or die or whatever, what is going to happen in there? Can Transdniestria remain isolated from the rest of the world, without international recognition? To all these fascinating questions we will have an answer… one day… or one year…