Transnistr and Moldova

August 2005

Just up the road, we reached another border. Moldova we thought. Wrong. Transnistr. It is a difficult situation to explain and I didn’t have any information about Transnistr, except that when Moldova eventually shook off the Communists with the collapse of the USSR, an eastern section of Moldova wanted to continue to be Communist and unofficially broke away from Moldova while it sought autonomous status. It is a separate republic in everything except international recognition.

The British Foreign Office guidelines started with “We advise caution if considering travelling to Transnistr, where there is no official British representation”. It went on to say individual travel to Transnistr was “problematic” and then in bold “It is very important to avoid getting into difficulty with the Transnistrian authorities.”

So we approached the border patrol. “Visa?” they asked, knowing there was no such thing and then I was asked to come to a small concrete bunker. The top man scribbled a figure of $100 x 2 on a piece of paper. I diplomatically said it was too high and we would just go back to the Ukraine where we didn’t need a visa. The figure came down to $50 each which was fine. When you have a car, it is a lot more difficult to negotiate at borders. It’s not as if you can leave it there and we didn’t want to go back to the Ukraine. We were issued with two small pieces of paper and an official stamp. I kept trying to work out if this was a Moldovan visa and all I could get was “Moldova. Yes”. So we had bribed our way into a non existent republic. I think the name Transnistr is enough to stop it from getting international status. I never learnt to pronounce it and it came out of my mouth like a drunk trying to complete a sentence. You never knew where to place any emphasis or actually stop saying the name. How do you pronounce an ‘r’ at the end?

We headed for signs saying Tiraspol which, according to our, shall we say, limited roadmap, was in Moldova. There was no traffic on the road. We passed through scruffy villages of houses made of concrete and cinder blocks, where locals, with nothing else to do, took their evening constitutional walk, and rounded up the goats or cows that wandered the lanes. There were no billboards, no commercials, no road signs. It was like entering the land that advertising forgot.

Apparently, they do have their own currency, the Transnistr rouble which is about as valuable as Monopoly money but not as stable or straightforward. Online Lonely Planet indicated that “When inflation reaches critical meltdown, zeroes are added to selected bills. All you have to remember is that the Blue 50,000 notes are worth 50,000 roubles while the brown 50,000 notes are actually worth 500,000 roubles, and five rouble notes are really worth 50,000 roubles if they have a silver hologram attached to them. And none of them are worth anything outside Transnistr.” Not that we ever saw any. We never saw a shop or a bank.

What we did see were army and police roadblocks and plenty of them. Every 10 minutes or so, we would approach concrete pillboxes, endless sprawls of barbed wire, those big spiky things on the road to puncture tyres if you try and run the roadblock and soldiers in camouflage, toting huge Russian machine guns. We would stop and they would look at our passports, driving licences, car documentation and little piece of paper with the stamp on it worth $50 and we would say ‘Moldova? And they would smile and think “what the hell are these fools doing in our shithole of a republic?” and point ahead and we would disappear thinking, its going to be dark soon and we have no idea where we are going or what we are doing. Alternatively, police cars were parked at junctions. Sometimes they would wave us on and sometimes they wanted to see our documents. We met only one soldier who spoke a little English. He told us that Tiraspol was actually in Transnistr and that we could not go there without the correct paperwork and that our stamp was like a transit visa to get us to the Moldovan border. I have a feeling that the soldiers are there to prevent the population from leaving the republic. Virtually noone has a job and the majority of the population are living below the poverty level.

The British Foreign Office guidelines stated that “The authorities in the Transnistr region can be uncomfortable with visitors taking photos in Transnistr. We advise caution if taking photos of even the most normal buildings/monuments and we strongly advise against taking photographs of military staff and installations that could lead to difficulty”. I can state for the record, that there is absolutely nothing to take a photo of in Transnistr except military installations. Since it was dusk when we arrived and dark when we left, we never got the chance to get into “difficulty” anyway.

Well, we could. We couldn’t find an exit to the country. And when we did, it was closed. The only activity we saw, were a large number of people, like an extended family from hell, all spread out and walking up the road herding goats, cows, chickens all in one pack. The barrier was down. An old railway carriage without the wheels was the immigration hut. Two officials in uniform eventually appeared. One spoke a little English and told us that this border was closed but that one about 20km was still open and we could enter Moldova from there. Can we get a visa? “Yes. Yes.” This first border post was so far from anywhere, noone would have noticed if we had slipped out, but they refused to take a bribe.

So we drove to somewhere else and saw some more soldiers and policemen who pointed this way and that and it came to pass that we discovered the open Moldovan border…which didn’t issue visas…

The official didn’t speak English, but a VW campervan arrived with three German students. A girl told me they had taken three days to drive to Moldova from Germany. They were heading for the Ukraine. She managed to speak enough whatever language it was that the Moldovan official understood, to ask him if we could get into Moldova and get a visa in the capital. First he said no. Then when I intimated to the girl that it would be worth his while, he said yes. So, it came to pass that we paid 20 Euros each so that we could be let into an internationally recognised country with no visa and no entry stamp in our passport. We were told that there was a consular at Chisinau airport where we could get a visa. I think my dad was wondering by now if it had been a good idea to go on a road trip with me. Still, mustn’t grumble…

By now it was 9.30pm, pitch black, and there were no street lights. We were in a new country illegally and since there had been no computer at the border, we had ceased to exist on the International travelling databases.

Our plan of action was…well we had no plan of action except to find the main airport at Chisinau. We drove down a decent dual carriageway, which was mostly empty and then out of nowhere, we saw a flashing sign “Motel”. It looked new, very western and was the best building we’d seen since leaving the Ukraine. Inside, a woman with a stern face listened while I tried to intimate that we had no Moldovan currency and no visa, but we were on our way to the airport to get a visa and money and we’d be back to stay the night. A waitress who spoke a little English translated. When we asked where the airport was she said ‘next door’. Next door in the dark with no helpful traffic signs indicating ‘Airport’ seemed to be a long way. It was 30 minutes and one police check away; a well lit solitary terminal on a hill.

In the darkness, I could see a road to approach it and turned left. It turned out to be an exit road and a police car was sitting there in the dark waiting for anyone to make the illegal turn. So they got out and I got out and they took my passport and driving licence and in sign language said I had committed the sin of all sins and it would cost me 50 Euros which was taking the piss. At first I tried to humour them and explain we had just driven from the Ukraine, that we were tourists and couldn’t see in the dark and to give us a break. One policeman sat in the car and wrote out a traffic offence form.

I refused to pay it. I argued we were ignorant tourists. In the end they called up the Commandant of the Police (the Top Man) on their mobile phone who spoke good English. He explained that I had broken the law by making an illegal turn and that the fine was 50 Euros. So I explained it all to him and said. “We are tourists. We just arrived in your country less than an hour ago. It is dark. The signs are not lit. We did not see the entrance sign which is 200m down the road because there is are no lights. It is a police trap. I am not paying it. So take me to court” and handed back that phone to Mr Policeman. This approach seemed to work. We were let off.

Entering the nearly empty airport terminal, a lady at the information desk took me up to the Consular office. It was locked. They sent someone to find him and I sat around waiting, changing my Ukraine currency into Moldovan. Eventually this little bald short arse man turned up. He spoke ‘French, Spanish and Italian’ and no English. He refused to issue a visa. I tried to explain in French that when someone arrived by plane, they were issued a visa so what was the difference? He refused to budge and told me I had to drive to the Romanian border and get a visa there. At 11.30pm at night in the dark? He then just walked off. You don’t want to hear the expletives I called him. “Paper pushing prick” was a starter. Welcome to Moldova!

Our best option was to head back to the motel, hole up for the night and drive to Romania in the morning. Fortunately, Mrs Happy was still up when we arrived back around midnight and even happier with the Moldovan currency that she literally grabbed from my hand. It had been a long day to say the least. Definitely the worst day, if not the most exciting, in a completely spontaneous kind of way, of the trip. Its not every day you bribe your way around the world. The bar was still open so a refreshing Moldovan beer put the world to rights. Reading the British Foreign Office guidelines it said “You should avoid driving after dark outside Chisinau. There is little street lighting, people and animals are often on the road and road conditions are poor” and that “there are frequent police checks”. No shit, Sherlock.

The ‘SV Motel’ was a strange affair. We were able to park the car around the back behind a locked gate. This was good news in case a nationwide search started for an Englishman who had verbally abused both the Head of the Police and the airport Consular official and done a runner from a traffic offence (all within the first hour of arriving in the country!) and who was on the run in Moldova with no legal status, with his renegade outlaw 73 year old father riding shotgun, whose own major crisis was wondering how long our peanut and chocolate supply was going to last.

For about £25, we got a luxurious spacious suite with a lounge, bedroom and bathroom. The TV had dull Moldovan and Romanian channels. The water was hot but sulphuric. There must have been a thermal spring nearby. Every time you had a shower or washed your hands, it smelt as if someone with a bad bowel had farted. There was no drinking water, apart from a well outside, where you lowered a bucket and filled up your own plastic bottles. But no matter what it smelt like, it was the best accommodation we had found on the trip so far. And it was better than spending a night in a police cell.

Online Lonely Planet reports that Moldova is “a picturesque country – all rolling green hills, whitewashed villages, placid lakes and sunflower fields – with an old world charm that’s hard to manufacture”. Which is true. It’s a shame that they did not mention that all their officials were complete wankers.

The on line CIA World Factbook adds “Formerly part of Romania, Moldova was incorporated into the Soviet Union at the close of World War Two. Although independent from the USSR since 1991, Russian forces have remained on Moldovan territory, east of the Dniester River supporting the Slavic majority population, mostly Ukrainians and Russians who have proclaimed a “Transnistr” republic.” The poorest country in Europe, Moldova became the first former Soviet state to elect a Communist as its president (Voronin) in 2001. Which should really help its 4.5 million population of which 80% apparently live below the poverty level. Not! The average income is only $1,900. Military service is still compulsory at 18 years old. Roughly 25% of all working aged Moldovians are employed abroad

Moldova is slighter larger than Maryland, which if you are not American will mean nothing. It is not a large country and, as we found out, you can drive across it’s narrow twisty lanes from one side to the other in about two hours. The highest rolling hill is only 430m above sea level. It enjoys a favourable climate and good farmland (especially for vineyards) but has no major mineral deposits. As a result the economy depends heavily on agriculture (fruits, vegetables, wine and tobacco). It gets all its energy supplies from Russia. Inflation is currently around 18%. Life expectancy of a male is 61 years old (even less if you are an official that has to deal with me). Nearly everyone follows Eastern Orthodox religion. The Moldovan language is virtually the same as Romanian. Not that we could speak either.

Chisinau is the capital and only real city in a country of rural villages. Apparently “though severely damaged during WWII, a wealth of stately buildings and cathedrals survive.” (LP). You could have fooled me. We drove into the centre the following morning to explore and found nothing of interest. Seriously. There was a main drag with some decent buildings, a mini Arc de Triumph, some tree lined boulevards and mostly just bland grey boxy non descript buildings on the side of bland non descript roads which mostly lacked road signs.

We eventually found a road going north out of the city, that turned into a motorway, which was great, except that it was heading for the Ukraine (Moldova is landlocked, wrapped around either side by the Ukraine and Romania). Luckily we came off at a junction, asked at a garage “Romania?” as you do, and were pointed down an unmarked side road. The scenery was indeed green rolling hills, lots of vineyards and sunflowers, small wooden churches and strange religious icon at the side of the road. We passed though many picturesque but dull villages with goats, ducks and chickens hanging around and a few horses and carts.

There were police speed traps on the edge of a few places but as long as you dropped your speed when you saw a speed sign, you wouldn’t get caught. Incidentally, when we left the motel that morning, there was a policeman with a radar gun only five minutes down the road (on a dual carriageway?) where we narrowly avoided getting caught. By the time we reached the border, I had counted 12 police checks or radar traps on a 90 minute journey. We took our time thinking we would be in Romania by the early afternoon.

We thought the border was at the town of Ungheni (well our map said it was), but it was actually at a tiny place called Skulany 20km north. We discovered this by following a public minibus (that was travelling between Chisinau and Iasi, the nearest town in Romania) to the border. First we lined up to get into the Moldovan compound. Then I entered a building to visit the Transport Section, where our car details were tapped into a computer and then I had to take a piece of paper to someone else sitting behind a table with nothing on it. Nice job. There was nothing to pay. It did occur to me that our car details would not exist on a computer system because we were obviously illegal but our car at least was legally checked out of the country.

Then we lined up for customs and immigration. Noone spoke English. I tried to explain that we had come in via Transnistr and that the paper pushing prick at the airport had told us to come to the border to get a visa. We were told to wait. Around 20 minutes later, a woman official appeared and told us that we had to return to Chisinau to get a visa. Eh? She wrote down the address and pretty much told us to piss off. We think your Communist bureaucracy and officials are wonderful.

So now we had a new problem. It was about 2pm on a Friday afternoon and we had to drive 90 minutes back to the capital, find the building (with no map) and try and get a visa issued before the office closed for the weekend…or we would have to hang around in a country we didn’t want to stay in for three more days. Bugger the police traps, my dad put his foot down and we blazed our way back to the capital in an hour. We found the main boulevard, saw a policeman and showed him the address. It turned out to be just a few blocks away. It was open! It was also the wrong office! The office we wanted had moved somewhere else. A lady wrote down the address and said it would be open until 4.30pm. So we hunted that down and I left my dad in the car while I went to negotiate.

The visa office was on the fourth floor of an old building. First I went to an office where a lady said “Ah, you are the English boy we were expecting”. Boy? I’m 45 years old. But I was wearing my shorts. Still, someone had obviously called from the border. Then I was shown to another door and told to wait. It was after 4pm. A smart looking slim 20 something paper pusher kept me waiting 20 more minutes and then came out and filled in a couple of forms. Yes, I could get two visas. They would be ready on Tuesday (3 working days). Bugger.

He had a sidekick, this little man who he called the ‘mail boy’ who was responsible for running around getting visas processed. He was just about to run off and process some final ones. We all came downstairs, and while they had a cigarette, I pondered my options. It was going to cost us £75 more to stay at the motel, plus meals, and we would still be illegal all weekend, while we drove around the same kind of scenery we had seen all day and just deal with police speed traps. What a great weekend.

I then mentioned the fact that in other countries that you could get a rapid visa application. His ears pricked up. I knew this is what he was waiting for. A back hander. “Yes, we have such a process.” So we trooped upstairs back to his office where the negotiation started. It would cost $25 each for the visas and $75 for the rapid process. I decided to refuse because I didn’t actually have $200 on me. He said that the judge who signed the visa permission would have to be bribed because it was after office hours. Well, at that price I lied, it would be cheaper for me to spend the weekend in Chisinau and just get the visa normally on Tuesday. “Yes, but…” he back pedalled “you will still have to pay the bribe on Tuesday because you do not have a visa and you are illegal in our country”. “It would be cheaper for us to bribe our way back to the Ukraine”. So it went back and forth and they started to worry because they knew the offices would be closing soon and their ‘bonus’ would also disappear and I was worried that regardless of what I paid, we wouldn’t get out either. Eventually we agreed on $110 which was probably a fortune to them. As I paid it over, I was still unsure.

Then the panic started. It was 5pm. It was sweltering outside but I had to jog with the ‘mail boy’ over to the building where the ‘judges’ lived. He went into a room, filled in a couple of forms and I sat in the old dusty corridor for about 15 minutes while short arse tried to find the right person to validate the visa. I realised that the ‘judge’ would get a payoff but that the dynamic duo would pocket the majority. Then we had to jog a few blocks to a post office place where the ‘visa’ money was banked and a receipt was issued. Then we jogged back to Mr Slick who had to sweet talk his boss over a cigarette to actually issue the visas even though the office had closed. I was covered in sweat. Back in his office, he stamped our passports with official Moldovan transit visas to leave the country.

Once I had the passports in my hand and was leaving his office, I said “That extra money you got off me today with your scam. That’s a lot of money to you isn’t it?” He pretended not to acknowledge it. “Want to know something? I earn that every 30 minutes at work so fuck Moldova and your shitty corrupt bureaucracy.” Well I felt better for saying that after all the chaos we’d been put through. It was around 6pm. There was only one thing to do. Find a supermarket, stock up on cold beers and head back to the SV Motel for another night of bad odours.

The following day, we set off early at 7am and made for the border for a second time, trying to find the road we had come back in on yesterday. We managed to get lost in Chisinau and stopped to ask a policeman. He wasn’t on duty yet but if we waited 5 minutes, we could follow him in his car. He couldn’t tell us how to get there, but he could show us. Ten minutes later, he was still talking to his mate and we gave up. I took a left and another left and we found the road leading to the motorway. Doh! How can you not explain two left hand turns?

We reached the same garage and turn off, the same rural scenery, some of the same police speed traps. We were eager to escape this country and trailblazed. There was a 30 minute wait at the border before I could enter the Transport Section to have the car details added. I was standing at the counter thinking “how does this system operate?” I mean, we supposedly left the country yesterday but noone told us to come back here on our way back to Chisinau to tell them we were not leaving, so why were typing in the details again? A different man sat at the empty table and pronounced my details we in order. Thankfully, there was a different set of immigration officials on duty today, so we just pretended to have arrived for the first time and just kept our mouths shut. The customs official asked “Do you have arms?” I pointed at my father and said “Does he look like he’s a terrorist?” The official laughed, where upon my father maced him and we took off. OK, we didn’t. We waited while he typed in our car details again and we drove onto another check where our car details were typed in for the third time in 200m. I guess they just like collecting details about cars.

After two nights and two days, we had finally escaped the country that noone wants to visit. I can see why. You might as well stay in Romania to see the same scenery. Moldova offers you nothing but bureaucratic grief, police checks and lots of people in uniforms pretending to do a job. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. If I ever find a Moldovan official on holiday in England, I will punch him in the mouth! I don’t often rubbish a country and but in this case, I will make an exception. You don’t want to go there. Trust me.

Travel - £ 6.50
Accommodation - £45.00
Food - £6.80
Other - £177.96 (58.14 – Transnistr bribe, 26.80 – 1st Moldova bribe, 58.14 2 x visas, 34.88 – 2nd Moldova bribe)
Total - £236.26