| A day in which I escaped from Moldova, well sort of. My decision to go Tiraspol in the �Dnestr Republic� looked to be on shaky ground this morning, however as I failed in my efforts to get out of bed fairly early, and when I did find my way to the bus station all of my language skills appeared to desert me as I stumbled around the place looking for the particular heap of metal on wheels that was to take me there.
With not a great deal of time to spare, I did find my bus, although more through luck than judgement. A succession of women came on board just before the off and one carried a pile of newspapers and magazines that she tried to flog with a spiel that was so emotionless it could have been produced by a computer. As she held up each magazine she would say something like �Astrology magazine- very interesting will tell you about your future in the new year. Anecdotes-very funny magazine with many stories, � and then, with her expression hardening even more she held up what looked like a very cheap pornographic non-glossy magazine �very interesting sexual erotic journal,� she said or might have, What a way to earn a living. No one bought any of them, by the way. |
| The journey to Tiraspol was a lot less interesting than that suggested by the scale model of Moldova in the museum I saw which implied a picturesque climb down an almost ravinous valley (does �ravinous exist?). Nothing of the sort, really, and the scenery was a lot less interesting than on my jaunt to Baltsi and Soroca. I hadn�t realised though that Benderey, on the west side of the river formed part of the self-declared Dnestr Republic, but a checkpoint which didn�t stop us at all, adorned with the unimaginative and uninspiring Dnestr red and green flag marked the start of the rebel-held area. There was a huge concrete sign saying Bine ati venit (welcome) but written in the old Cyrillic script, just to rub Moldovan noses in it, I thought. Bendery did not look to be that much of a place, being rather dreary and industrial, although it did have some good old communist slogans about Peace and Progress in red and yellow hanging about the place. This was to be surpassed by Tiraspol, though. |
| When I did find the centre of Tiraspol, I changed some money in an exchange office in Lenin Street, although the surrounding noise of street traders and kiosks gave the place a familiar air, although I would have to say that it was a little more subdued than the other towns I�ve been in here. I changed four dollars into Dnestrian coupon-Rouble, which will now serve as my only souvenir of this odd little corner of the former Soviet Union- I now have a one rouble note that is worth less than 0.2 p which was given me in change at a cake shop. The notes themselves look a little more professional than their Ukrainian counterparts but they are a bit stuck for illustrations- there�s a less than inspiring picture of an administrative building on the back of them, and there are pictures of a statue of a man on horseback here and there, but in a �country� that�s been patched together alongside the Dnestr river and without any great attractions, it would be asking a lot to find something imaginative. |
| I then asked a question to a woman sitting on a bench that could have come straight out of an old Intourist phrase-book - �Excuse me please, where is the statue of Lenin?� She didn�t help much, saying I think that she didn�t know as she didn�t live in Tiraspol, but I trudged along the main road, finding a bust of Vladimir Ilyich outside one building but I had to go to the other end of the road to find the main one. It was indeed, a true �Stalinist� Lenin, wrought out of concrete, atop a tall pedestal with his coat tails flailing in the wind, as he expounded the merits of Democratic Centralism, no doubt. Just over the road from Lenin was a memorial to the dead in the civil conflict of 1992, with an eternal flame, a few soldiers� graves and lists of the dead chiselled into granite. A tank with �for the motherland� (I think) scratched on it stood guard over the whole scene and there was a Soviet-style poster resplendent with prominently-placed hammer and sickle in the central reservation just to complete the picture. I sat down for a few minutes and inwardly chuckled- this was why I had come � the Soviet Union was still alive and kicking right here in Transdnestr and Moldova was just a collective figment of our imaginations. The graves of the soldiers were well kept, with images of the dead etched into the stone but the slabs around the memorial were not well kept, with weeds growing all over the place, which did make it look a little unkempt. |
| So after that, I was at a loss to find something to do, as Allan [one of my fellow teachers] had predicted. I took a few photos, walked over a tributary of the Dnestr on a footbridge, and made my way back to the bus-station feeling quite warm on a very spring-like February day. I had found Lenin, the tank, been to an unrecognised country that had been a war-zone in the none-too-distant past, bought some useless money as a souvenir, so I didn�t have any alternative than to go back to Chisinau. I had a bit of a panic in the ticket office as the clerk was unable to sell me a ticket- �you�ll have to see if there�s any room when the bus arrives,� she ominously said, there being none of the computerised ticketing system that there was in Chisinau. So I spent an hour clicking my heels, unloading a wodge of roubles for a Wispa, hoping that I would have enough left for the journey back. There were also a few lads around the place who wore Transdnestrian military uniforms- they looked very young and I can only hope that no more lives are wasted on this silly dispute- it�s all very well to blame the whole fiasco on Stalin, but that doesn�t really solve anything as he�s been dead for forty years.
In the end I paid for my ride back to Chisinau in Moldovan lei to the conductor on the bus, but any hope of a quiet doze was removed by a woman apparently trying to sell pamphlets to the passengers as the journey actually went on. There was quite a heated argument going on at times and I would guess that it was probably about religion, but I was too tire to care. Back in Chisinau, I headed for the Roundabout once again, had a beer with Duncan, Allan, Gary and the ridiculous Andy before going off to the kebab house for a pizza. We bumped into three American Peace Corps girls there who were down from Floresti for a while, who seemed to get very excited about the sok [fruit juice] and had about three cups of the stuff each. They didn�t much care for the other four smoking- �haven�t you heard of cancer, � said one, to which Andy replied �yes, but you get 85% of the fumes as we get to use the filter,� which kind of sums up his attitude. I think that the rest of our conversation left them all rather cold and one of them accused of being all very sarcastic. In turn Duncan et al accused them (albeit when we had left the place) of being ugly. What candour! What wit! |
I arrived back a the flat and seem to have been sent to Coventry, or Baltsi, if that�s the local equivalent by the Macarencos, so I�ve obviously committed some other sort of indiscretion along the way. I know that I�m not the easiest person to live under the same roof with, but I shall be away from all this soon. I guess that I should be grateful that I don�t have to sign up for two years as they do in the Peace Corps. So the end of another day in Moldova- more interesting than most, I feel, and despite the fact that I spent longer on the bus than I did in the town I�m glad I went to Tiraspol. If nothing else I shall be able to say �I�ve been there� if the troubles start there again. Trans-Dnestr. Twinned with Chechnya, Ulster and Bosnia. |
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| Saturday 25th February 1995 |
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| The flag of the self-proclaimed "Dnestr Republic" isn't going to win any design awards |
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| Lenin (below) looks out from the Dnestr Republic's House of the Soviets. |
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| More wasted lives in a corner of a foreign field that is forever the USSR. |
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| Back in Chisinau: with Helen, Duncan and Allan (above) and my hosts the Macarencos (right). |
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| Every rebel region needs a tank or two |
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