Eastern Europe 2007 - Moldova

From Worldtraveller

At the town of Bendery, just before the border with Moldova, two young Pridnestrovians had got on the bus and sat next to me and Carlos. We spoke to them in a strange mixture of English and French, not finding much common language in either but still having a friendly conversation. When we got into Chişinău they showed us to a currency exchange booth so we could get some Moldovan Lei, and called a taxi for us to get to a hostel. A short drive through the dark and potholed streets of the city took us to a place near the centre.

That night a huge thunderstorm rocked the city. I lay awake listening to the rain lashing down, and got up late the next day as a result. Having gone for a short walk through the city centre in the dark when I arrived, I set out for a longer explore. Carlos had gone to find a different place to stay, not being much impressed with the hostel, but I soon bumped into him in town. We were both taking a photo of the presidential palace on the main street, Stefan cel Mare, when a young police officer came up and asked us what we were doing.

One of the consequences of travelling through Pridnestrovie was that I had no Moldovan entry stamp in my passport, so technically I was illegally in the country. The police officer introduced himself by name and asked to see our passports. I thought this could be a problem, but perhaps fortunately, his phone rang before he could look through them. He gave us a quick salute and strode off.

A slight problem in Moldova was that none of the cash machines seemed to accept foreign cards. Luckily I'd taken some cash with me, and I had enough to cover a few days in Moldova. When I tried to change my notes at a bureau de change near where I was staying, I ran into problems caused by not having crisp new banknotes. I've always heard that this can sometimes be a problem but had never experienced it until now. Luckily the owner of the bureau was very friendly and spoke excellent English. "I'm really sorry", he said, "but the central bank charges us 15 per cent of the face value to change damaged notes". The only note I had that would pass muster was a 50 dollar bill, so I was definitely going to have plenty of lei left by the end of my stay.

I chatted to the currency man for a few minutes. He asked me what I was doing in Moldova, and seemed very surprised that I was just on holiday. I asked him if he could recommend any places I should go and he said he really couldn't think of any. When I pushed him he said that maybe I should go to a place called Mileştii Mici. "You might like it", he said. "But then again you might not". He strongly recommended Moldovan wine, though, and on hearing that I don't drink he equally strongly recommended Moldovan fruit juice.

One thing I liked about Moldova was that the language is a Romance language, and so having learnt Spanish in Central and South America I could understand many written things. I began to believe that I could probably understand some spoken Moldovan as well, but I was proven very wrong when I tried to buy stamps for my postcards from Tiraspol at Chişinău's main post office. My first attempt to say "Four stamps for the United Kingdom" ended up with me buying two airmail envelopes instead. I tried again and got the right thing the second time, but only by showing my four postcards and pointing at the top right corner.

After a couple of days I'd pretty much covered Chişinău, and so I walked down to Chişinău's grand main station and bought a ticket for the night train to Bucharest. The train was quiet and I thought I might get a compartment to myself, but a few minutes before the train left someone joined me. When the train left at ten past five, I spent a while looking out of the windows at the beautiful Moldovan countryside rolling by in the evening sun, and then I got talking to my travelling companion.

He was called Cristi, and luckily he spoke quite a lot of English. He was Romanian but married to a Moldovan, and he said he thought Moldovans were friendlier and more honest than Romanians. It turned out that he was on the first stage of a journey to Italy, where he was planning to work for at least a year. Romania had been a member of the EU for nine months and he was taking advantage of the free movement of labour that this brought. But I felt sad for him that he was leaving behind his wife, and didn't know when he would see her again. As we approached the border with Romania, he said he was just starting to realise how much he would miss Moldova. Like the currency man, Cristi was bemused that I'd come to Moldova as a tourist, and particularly that I'd been to Tiraspol.

At nightfall we reached the border with Romania at Ungheni. We were leaving the broad tracks of the former USSR for the narrower ones of the rest of Europe, and our train was shunted into a yard where each carriage was raised, and the wheels changed. My passport was taken away by the first person to check it, and after an hour or so when the wheels of the train were back on it still hadn't reappeared. Cristi went to ask the train attendants what was going on and they said that it was nothing, and we'd be getting checked again by immigration shortly. And soon enough another border guard appeared. He wanted to know why I didn't have a Moldovan entry stamp, and it was really lucky for me that Cristi was such a friendly guy and spoke English. They had a conversation in Romanian, the approximate gist of which was "So, how come he doesn't have a stamp?" "Because he came via Tiraspol." "Why did he do that?" "Oh, he's a tourist." "Really? No way!" "No, he really is."

And with that I was into Romania. Cristi shared a colossal bag of Romanian chocolates with me to celebrate his return to his homeland, and I felt terrible that I had nothing to share with him to thank him for his help. He asked me if I could name any famous Romanians. I managed Dracula, the Cheeky Girls and Ilie Nastase - the last one made up a bit for the first two. In return, he named most of the royal family. His knowledge of Britain definitely beat my knowledge of Romania, but surely in a few days time I would know more.

Eastern Europe 2007: Return to Warsaw / To the East / Kiev / Black Sea / Breakaway Republic / Moldova / Transylvania / Bucharest