Moldova & Ukraine

Hi everyone,

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting a little fed up. I started to feel like I was rushing through the European leg of my trip, blurry-eyed, sleep-deprived and experiencing it all through a salt-damaged camera lens. I had spent five weeks exploring Israel alone, yet five weeks later I had visited eight nations and accumulated a further 3915 kilometres. The last two blog posts were little more than accounts of the towns and cities I hardly saw; no unique cultural anecdotes or interesting insights into the national psyche as I wasn’t around long enough to find any. In the last post I even managed to mistakenly label one of my Romanian hosts as Bulgarian! I was no longer a traveller but a tourist. I felt like I was constantly on the move, often forgetting which town (and occasionally which country) I was currently in. But then I did only have a month before Germany. I thought I should just keep going.

So on the 27th March I caught a minibus to Chişinău in Moldova. I was staying with couchsurfer Irina and her mother for a few days in their cosy suburban flat. The first topic of conversation concerned Irina’s numerous male admirers and her mum’s pride in the likelihood of her daughter bagging a foreign husband. I initially felt like I was being touted as a potential suitor, but my concern that I’d wandered in a Tennessee Williams play was alleviated when she confided that she wanted to live somewhere warm. After that, I had a lot of fun staying with this small, hospitable and friendly family.

I spent the day on Friday exploring the city, including a nice cathedral, a mildly triumphant ‘Arc de Triomphe’ and the very interesting but badly translated Ethnographic Museum (dinosaur bones were displayed in the anthropology section). In the evening Irina took me to a German pub complete with traditional Bavarian food, beer and ambience, including a live oompah band sporting reproduction-threatening leiderhosen. On Saturday I decided to visit Orheiul Vechi, though I was informed that Moldova’s premiere tourist attraction did not have a single bus heading there. I therefore decided to catch the first bus that was heading north on the A253, and jumped off at the junction. A sign informed me that I had seventeen kilometres of walking ahead of me and it was already lunchtime. The trip through small villages and rural communities was very rewarding, as I got to see the traditional side of the country (including stopping to have a cup of tea with an amiable local), but it was gone 4.30pm when I finally arrived at the town of Trebujeni, deep in a rocky valley. The Cave Monastery was already closed, but I managed to catch a minibus heading back to Chişinău. I’d completely missed Moldova’s biggest tourist attraction but the day’s trip had given me a slightly better sense of the country I was in. It was travel at the expense of tourism.

On Saturday I decided to go to Transdniestr. Though an internationally undisputed part of Moldova, this breakaway republic boasts its own government, flag, constitution, national anthem, currency, police and military. As one of the world’s last surviving bastions of communism, it is how I imagine a trip to the USSR would have been, with large imposing buildings, huge statues of Lenin and countless national flags depicting a yellow hammer and sickle of a red background. It is also fiercely anti-Western, with people having been beaten up or arrested simply for speaking English. The most interesting part of the trip however was not the place itself but the route there. At the technically non-existant Moldova-Transdniestr border I was yanked off the bus and interviewed for an hour by four different police officers. They all wanted to know my motives for entering the territory and, more importantly, what I was willing to pay for the privilege. I had been briefed about the likely bribes at the border so had kept some money aside while hiding the rest of my cash in my socks; this turned out to be a smart move as I was made to empty all my pockets and patted down as they searched for funds. I had kept 130 leu on me to ‘buy’ the required entry visa, but was asked straight away for 500. In the end, after a lot of fierce negotiation, I managed to get the chief police officer to accept 100 (about five quid); he was apparently unconcerned that, as far as he knew, I was then left with only 30 leu for a day in Transnistria and transport back, not to mention the bribe to leave the country. I spent the day in Bender and Tiraspol, Trandniestr’s capital or Moldova’s second largest city, depending on your viewpoint (ie. whether you’re from Transdniestr or from anywhere else in the world) then exchanged some of the hidden cash for a bus fare back to the border. I had been told the exit fee was normally higher than the entry, as visitors are essentially impotent when it comes to negotiation in this direction, so kept 150 leu in my pocket and the rest tucked deep into my pants. However, after being dragged off the bus and rustling my way into an interview room, the officer was distracted by a situation outside. He went out to investigate and left my passport on the table, so I grabbed it and, as nonchalantly as possible, strode back to the bus, telling the driver that it was “all sorted”. Five minutes later I was safely back in Moldova and retracted my sweaty currency.

I had planned to catch a midday bus on Sunday to Ukraine but discovered that it went back through Transdniestr, so I decided to hang around for the direct midnight bus instead. I arrived in Odessa at 6am the following morning and caught a taxi to couchsurfer Sasha’s flat. This was one of my most challenging couchsurfs. I had contacted him after seeing the following on his profile; “No Europeans or Americans! Your embassies humiliate Ukranian citizens when applying for visas”. I consquently wrote him a polite if mildly arsey message arguing that it was unfair to discriminate against entire nations based on the actions of their politicians, and that I’d like to stay with him and change his mind about his fellow Europeans. He reluctantly agreed, but by Monday evening I hadn’t succeeded, so he kicked me out. I felt I’d seen a reasonable amount of Odessa (including the April 1st “Humour Day” festival) so went to the train station and decided to get an overnight ticket to Kiev.

On the train I thought long and hard about why I was still travelling. I had planned months ago to head to Simferopol (Crimea) before Kiev, but having been unable to find couchsurfers or accommodation online I’d now chosen to bypass it. I thought back to my pre-couchsurfing days in Japan, where I never made sleeping arrangements in advance; I figured at worst I would simply have to wander the streets for the night, or find a park bench on which to get a few hours kip. I would never wimp out of visiting things just because it was a little difficult – if I’d done that in Jordan I’d have missed out on so much. My sense of adventure was obviously waining and I was craving comfort and certainty. I was growing tired of having the same conversations, and even generalising, exaggerating or bending the truth to save explanations; for the last month I’d been British not English, a student not a graduate and from London not Camberley. I made up my mind that I would spend a few days in Kiev and if the bad times were still outweighing the good I would look into flights home. This schedule was thrown out the window as my wallet was stolen on the Kiev metro and I was left with no cards, no travellers cheques and no cash besides a single twenty euro note. I didn’t even think about resolving the issue but simply about going home. I arrived at couchsurfer Anna’s at 8am and by 4pm I was on a British Airways flight headed for Heathrow.

So that was it. After 228 days, 3 continents, 2 sub-continents, 15 countries (plus 3 self-governing provinces), 71 major cities, 10 islands, 94 long-distance buses, 58 taxis, 33 long-distance trains, 17 hitchhikes, 16 ferries, 12 flights, 8 cable cars, 7 trams, 26 hotels, 25 couchsurfs, 16 hostels, 38 brands of beer, 24 blog posts (containing 31,871 words), 13 SCUBA dives, 12 naked saunas, 7 organised tours, 3 coats, 3 beards and 1 conjoined dog later, I arrived at Terminal 5. And I could have been back three hours earlier if I hadn’t bothered working that out.

I have absolutely no regrets; I know it was the right time to come home and my seven-and-a-half month trip was absolutely incredible. I have visited both the highest and lowest places on Earth. I’ve taught English to monks, been on safari, learnt to SCUBA dive, sailed on the Nile, slept in the desert, worked on a farm, been very nearly mugged and very actually sexually assaulted and tucked into some unusual local delicacies. Travelling alone has been a real challenge but it has been very good for me; I have become much more confident and mature and feel significantly further on the road to understanding who I am. I expected to return from my trip feeling more like a world citizen and less defined by nationality, but I have never felt more British. I already knew that people across the globe shared the same base instincts, emotions and desires, but I learnt that what really makes us unique – our mentality, our personality, how we interact – is a product of our influences, with nothing more influential than the culture we happened to be born into. Travelling has given me much more insight into what it is to be British, good and bad. Perhaps it is because you’re constantly asked where you are from – by border guards, hotel receptionists, locals and fellow travellers – and judged accordingly, or perhaps definition can be found in what you miss most about your own culture; the humour, the whinging, the etiquette, the four distinct seasons, the defiantly antiquated measurements. Maybe it’s seeing your compatriots throwing up in the streets of Tokyo, slowly turning to leather on the beaches of Sinai or cramming into English pubs across Eastern Europe. But I don’t think you ever feel your nationality more than when it’s under attack; when being taught about colonialisation and slavery in Asia and Africa, learning how the British Mandate refused Nazi-fleeing European Jews entry into Israel, or discovering that Winston Churchill was responsible for choosing the Japanese cities on which to drop atomic bombs. The fact that none of this is on the school curriculum is its own disturbing insight into the British psyche. I feel much more a product of my own culture, but not necessarily more patriotic. That said, I’m awfully glad to be home.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog. I know the quality has been a little inconsistent but I suppose that’s inevitable when travelling. As for the future, I have now been home for three days and feel it’s time to begin applying for jobs. I need to start taking responsibility and enter the real world. Perhaps I’ll wait until after Germany…

Cheers,
Joe x

PS. I am aware that as this post is after arriving home I shouldn’t be including it in the blog/word count, but it just feels so deliciously self-referential.

PPS. If you're interested you can click here to see my couchsurfing profile, with links to the profiles of all my hosts.