From Moldova to Prague
We left Moldova Thursday July after putting the finishing touches on the fence paint job and saying goodbyes to staffers and beneficiaries at the centre. We caught the overnight train from Chisinau to Bucharest and spent the evening with a Moldovan woman intent on using the opportunity to improve her English skills.
Bucharest was better this time around because we stayed with locals instead of in a hostel. We arrived a little after 6 in the morning on Friday the 21st and had the whole day to kill before our hosts would be home from work, so we put our stuff in the station lockers and explored the city. That night, we went out to a relaxed outdoor cafe with our hosts. Delia is a 26-year-old Brit who has been living in Romania for three years as a manager for an international HR recruitment company. Her boyfriend has lived in Bucharest his whole life and liked to sleep as late into the day as possible before he needed to get up to smoke a cigarette. On Saturday, Alyssa and I hung around their flat then met Mihaela, a Romanian who lived in London for a year, for drinks on a building-top bar. Afterwards, we grabbed dinner and then went to an expensive DJ KidLoco concert.
We left Sunday July for Amsterdam, where God knows what happened. Within an hour of arriving, we were smoking a joint in one of the city's hundreds of coffeeshops and never looked back. We had all sorts of plans for our time in Holland, like seeing the flower market and taking a day trip to The Hague, but none of them never materialized. Instead, we took trips of a different sort. We often ended up in Vondel Park, a gathering place for tourists and others enjoying The Netherland's lax drug laws. We met some characters in the hostel and enjoyed a nice dinner out courtesy of Alyssa's dad, but the four days there are already a blur. A wonderful blur. It was alot of fun.
We're now back in Prague, bringing the experience full circle. Unfortunately Ray, our couchsurfing friend who was supposed to host us once again, is hospitalized with appendecitis.
Leaving Moldova
After nearly a month of volunteering in Straseni, we'll pull up the stakes tomorrow and head out of Moldova. Its been a pleasant time, picking fruit, painting and making connections with beneficiaries and employees at the centre. We've also had the opportunity to experience life in a rural community, where people think nothing about taking their cows for walks after dinner. Although its interesting, small town life can get boring, even with the option of going into Chisinau every week, so I am ready to move on.
The real vacation starts now. Back to living out of a suitcase, sleeping on floors and in crowded hostels. But it promises to be fun. I can't wait to get to Amsterdam.
Gettin' Back
Don't forget that travelling actually involves alot of, well... travelling.
And we did just that on Tuesday. After packing up, saying some goodbyes and grabbing some breakfast, Alyssa and I walked the 30 minutes from the hostel to the train station to catch the tram headed for the bus station. We hopped on only to realize neither of us knew which stop to get off and wound up taking a guess. A bad guess. We wandered for about 20 minutes before deciding that we had no time to spare and were thus forced into desperate measure: paying for a cab.
The bus ride started off comfortably enough. It was hot and crowded, but there weren't too many bugs and we got first row seats with plenty of leg room. We had just settled into a groove when we hit Transistria.
The separatist province between Moldova and Ukraine was the stage of a bloody confrontation in the early 1990's that never really resolved itself. Although not officially recognized in the international community, Transistria considers itself an independent state and acts like it. It also steadfastly refuses to deny the disintegration of the Soviet Union and so hangs on to its Communist identity - including an unreasonable and corrupt bureaucracy that pokes its ugly head out at border crossings.
We had tried to avoid it. When someone from the centre bought our tickets to Odessa, we specifically requested taking the once-daily bus that avoids it on its route. Getting the ticket back, however, we didn't have the luxury of someone from the centre brokering the deal. Imagine standing in a pushy line in a confusing bus station, trying to buy tickets from someone who doesn't even recognize English. If only the alphabet was Latin, we could point! But we couldn't even recognize "Chisinau" on the Cyrillic-only board. Luckily, we ran into a girl we knew who had lived in Moscow for a bit and she offered to help us purchase the tickets. Somewhere, however, the "no Transistria" demand was lost in translation.
So here we are at the border of a non-existent country when the border guard checks our passports and dollar signs virtually light up in his eyes. We returned to the bus, thinking our documents would be returned as at other crossings. When we started to pull off, I ran up to the front and did my best to explain the situation. Alyssa and I jumped off and ran back to the building, to find the room we had just been in was now empty. We stood there looking confused until a guard directed us to a little post behind the main building.
"Ah, Americans," said the man behind the window.
"Yes, just passing through."
"You businessman?"
"No, just passing through."
"Stay in Transnistria?"
"No, just passing through."
"Come on back."
We made our way to a back door and entered the little office where we faced more questions, including whether or not we were trafficking in bombs, cocaine or heroin. And then came the one everyone had been waiting for:
"How much money?"
I was prepared. We'd been warned about this. I knew how to deal with it.
"Very little," I replied.
"We're students," Alyssa added.
Two minutes and a 50 lei bribe later, we had our passports in hand and ran back to the bus.
Safe and Sound in Odessa
We are in the Ukraine.
The trip to Odessa went as smoothly as can be expected - which is to say, not very easily. The five hour bus ride was not altogether uncomfortable by Moldova standards. There was a warmish sort of air circulating throughout and the bugs weren't too annoying. The customs check at the Ukrainian border went off without a hitch, although it took over an hour to get through.
It wasn't until we got off the bus in Odessa that we realized we had absolutely no idea how to get to the hostel. We had some unclear directions from the airport and train station, but they didn't help us get there from the bus station. Besides that, the street address we had was written in Latin letters, which is of absolutely no assistance in a city where everything is in Cyrillic. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, we stopped into an internet cafe to try to figure out our way. We put our heads together and did some good investigative work that got us the street name in Cyrillic and pointed us in the right direction. Two hours after getting off the bus, we finally arrived at the hostel.
Odessa is a nice city. Its very sophisticated, with expensive shops and upscale dining along tree-lined streets. Very rich Russians and Ukrainians come here to spend their summers on the sea, and the city's culture reflects it. Our hostel is located on a lovely pedestrian strip with lots of foot traffic.
Besides the rich Russians and Ukrainians, another crowd flocks to Odessa: Westerners seeking mail-order brides. In the few hours we've been here, I've seen tens of pudgy bald guys going in and out of expensive boutiques with beautiful young women.
And I already had a celebrity spotting! At dinner, the guy who played the brother on
Everybody Loves Raymond was sitting at the table next to us.
Day Blending
"Pleasantness" aptly describes the past twelve days in Moldova.
The similarities between them have allowed the days to blend into a pleasingly amorphous period. We rise after 8 each morning to a filling breakfast of porge, bread and fruit, accompanied by a mug of drip coffee. The work gets off to a slow start, but we are out picking fruit, working on the grounds or painting by 10. Before 1, we're back at the building, doing our best to scurry over the language barrier with innovative attempts of nonverbal communication with the Russian- or Romanian-speaking beneficiaries. Lunch, a big meal that never fails to include a soup, vegetables and bread, is served at 2. As in the morning, the afternoon activity is slow to begin. By 6 o'clock, we're showered and enjoying an evening coffee before the last meal of the day. Afterwards, we stroll down to the internet cafe before spending the rest of the day playing board and card games or watching a movie.
There have, of course, been a couple of events that broke the rules. Last Saturday, on one of our excursions to Chisinau, Alyssa and I met up with a Peace Corps volunteer who invited us to a Fourth of July celebration. We just showed up and flashed our passports to enjoy the free beer, food and live concert. That night, on our way to the centre from the mishuka stop, we peeked into a Strasheni pub only to be greeted by the locals with enthusiastic interest and some complimentary wine. The free beer and wine of the day were partially to blame for our acceptance of a free ride home in a friendly Moldovans BMW.
While the habits of everyday life endear us to Moldova, memorable experiences - like celebrating the Fourth of July with an American ambassador in what was recently the Soviet Union - help make our time here truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The Habits of Moldova
"Pleasantness" aptly describes the past twelve days in Moldova.
The similarities between them have allowed the days to blend into a pleasingly amorphous period. We rise after 8 each morning to a filling breakfast of porge, bread and fruit, accompanied by a mug of drip coffee. The work gets off to a slow start, but we are out picking fruit, working on the grounds or painting by 10. Before 1, we're back at the building, doing our best to scurry over the language barrier with innovative attempts of nonverbal communication with the Russian- or Romanian-speaking beneficiaries. Lunch, a big meal that never fails to include a soup, vegetables and bread, is served at 2. As in the morning, the afternoon activity is slow to begin. By 6 o'clock, we're showered and enjoying an evening coffee before the last meal of the day. Afterwards, we stroll down to the internet cafe before spending the rest of the day playing board and card games or watching a movie.
There have, of course, been a couple of events that broke the rules. Last Saturday, on one of our excursions to Chisinau, Alyssa and I met up with a Peace Corps volunteer who invited us to a Fourth of July celebration. We just showed up and flashed our passports to enjoy the free beer, food and live concert. That night, on our way to the centre from the mishuka stop, we peeked into a Strasheni pub only to be greeted by the locals with enthusiastic interest and some complimentary wine. The free beer and wine of the day were partially to blame for our acceptance of a free ride home in a friendly Moldovans BMW.
While the habits of everyday life endear us to Moldova, memorable experiences - like celebrating the Fourth of July with an American ambassador in what was recently the Soviet Union - help make our time here truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
