Report of Glorious Travel !

I've had Transnistria on my "places to visit" list for a long time now. As with most places on my "places to visit" list, it's not really as mass-tourism destination. It's a state unrecognised by any other in the world; it's poor, openly corrupt, and is far away from anywhere else that anyone would want to visit; since declaring independence from Moldova in 1991 it has been sitting and waiting for the resurrection of the USSR; and it's not easy to get to. This fabulous combination meant that I wanted to go and visit. Earlier this month, I got the chance. Armed with an InterRail ticket, very little money and a coat that was completely unsuitable for the winter temperatures of the Eastern Balkans, I headed with M from our temporary base in Chişinău, Moldova, to the city's cold and chaotic central bus terminal. It seems that Moldova doesn't really like tourists visiting Transnistria : "Are you going to Ukraine ?" is asked at the border - this means transiting through Transnistria - and there is no Moldovan border post between the territory and Moldova proper. This means that if you enter Moldova through Transnistria, you are entering without an entry stamp and therefore illegally. However, from Chişinău there are minibuses every 10 or 15 minutes to the capital, Tiraspol.

We were directed from one ticket desk to another, told off for smoking near the kiosk (unexpected in a country where people breathe more cigarette smoke than oxygen) and then directed to another ticket desk where we picked up our tickets to Tiraspol for 2€ each and hopped onto a minibus. On arrival at the "border", we were greeted by a bear in a Russian style hat, who gave us a Russian-style greeting by snatching our passports and the immigration form we'd filled in without a word and then directing us towards a building a bit further down. There, the occupants of about 5 buses and minibuses crammed themselves into a room the size of a small car to try and get their papers stamped and enter legally into Transnistria. One guy from our minibus took us under his wing - he was from Tiraspol but his parents had lived just near Brussels and he also had a Belgian passport. He spoke a bit of English and explained to the official that we were only there for the day, to avoid us paying anything. "No one knows the point of this registration" he said. "Unless it's an exercise in improving relations between neighbours !". Moldova and Transnistria fought a war between 1991 and 1994 and relations aren't exactly warm. Neither was the weather that day and, having eventually got ourselves to the front of the queue with liberal use of elbows and stubbornness, we got back to the minibus and our new-found friend showed us the sights through the window. Before long, the minibus was stopped for a bribe-extraction exercise. The driver got back in and muttered something in Russian before driving off again. Our friend smiled and translated "he called him an animal who eats from the asphalt. With foreign license plates you can't escape the traffic police here". Apparently it is quite a common occurrence as I saw 3 other Moldovan-plated cars getting the same treatment during the 10 minutes we were stopped. We bounced our way through the potholed streets of Tiraspol, got off at the end and our friend drew us a map in subzero temperatures and explained the sites to us before wishing us a pleasant stay in "the open air museum of Communism" ! We wandered off down Lenin Street as per his instructions and at the third intersection (the first two were Karl Marx street and Karl Liebknecht street) we turned into 25th October street. The date of an important event in Transnistria ? Maybe its independence date ? Nope - the official day of the Bolshevik Revolution.

More signs of the orientation of this pseudo-state come from the flag - which is the old flag of the Moldavian SSR, complete with hammer and sickle - and the coins, which also bear the old emblem of the glorious Soviet worker. The walk to the centre is periodically interrupted with giant slogans singing the praises of the city or of fellow unrecognised states - one has the flags of Transnistria, Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia with the slogan IN UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH ! and over the road is the Abkhaz embassy. The main square is impressive - large, concrete, empty. It's the only city left in the world with a statue of Lenin on its main square. There's a Soviet tank as a memorial of the war against Moldova, complete with a cemetery and a memorial to the unknown soldier. As we arrived the Orthodox Christmas celebrations were just unfolding but sadly, because it was a holiday, the minibuses back to Chişinău were stopping early. Not to be deterred, we stopped off at the (supposedly) state-run supermarket on the way (the same company also runs most petrol stations, owns the biggest hotels in the country, the biggest football team and the national printing company) and bought some of Transnistria's famous [sic.] "Kvint" cognac. It was only 4 hours in one of the world's last fortresses of Communism (albeit with some fabulous splashes of capitalist thrown in for good measure) and enough to get a taste, but it's still on my "places to visit" list, just to have a better look.