Alex's Travels

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.

posted by The League: Reassembled @ 11:03 AM