Transnistria / Tiraspol

So, we left Odessa by bus one morning. all of the other travellers were ukrainian, russian or moldovan. We, being the only two westerners, were systematically asked to get off the bus and answer questions at each check point. At the ukrainian border, none of the officials spoke english, and we were given a declaration form to fill out. We had to choose between the form written in russian or in ukrainian (umm.. let me think!) So any ways, we kind of comunicated with the border patrol people with hands and feet (them: dreenk? us: no, no drink, no alcohol. them: smoke? us: no cigarettes!. them: droogs? us: nope, no drugs. ) So anyways, the people at the border were pretty nice and let us go without having to fill out the form written in russian. Then we crossed a little dirt bridge with tons of wild dogs on the sides, and arrived to the Transnistrian "border". The old moldovan border facilities are still intact, and the transnistrians use it. (or have occupied it??). Anyways, we had met a transnistrian girl in the night train between Cracow and Odessa, and she said that Transnistria wasn't that bad, and that all was great there, not like described in the wikitravel website. (yeah, right)

Anyways, as we approach the border, a military guy boards the bus and just tells us two to get off the bus. We follow him to a small building outside the main building. He just goes in the small room with a wooden desk, a wooden counter and nothing more. He speaks in russian to two other guards (soldiers?) and they open a drawer with bills of money in it and then close it. Then, the first soldier asks us to leave the room, comes out, locks the door and starts speaking with a friend of his who drives by, Meanwhile our bus with all of its passengers and driver are waiting for us.

He stops talking with his friend, brings us back into the small building and asks us what we want in Transnistria. As I say "tourism", he starts to laugh. I show him our Lonely Palnet Romania + Moldova, and he brings us to the main building of the customs/border office. Meanwhile, all the other passengers are waiting in line with their luggage in front of a little wooden desk with another customs officer and a huge super modern scanning machine which you normally have in airports. The guy that has our passports disappears in the building so we just get in line with our backpacks. After a few minutes, he comes back out and signals us to come to the front of the line. there, the other guy tells us to put down our backpacks and wait. he then processes a couple of other passengers, and then just randomly decides to take care of us. the scanning machine scans our backpacks and the employee working there looks sceptically at our stuff. then, at the end of a corridor, a man is waiting for us. There is a closed office. We are called in with our luggage. The man who seems to be in charge here tells me in german: "woman, stay outside". I start to panic, thinking he wants to interview us separately but after a few minutes have gone by I realize he is dealing with the bf for both of us. During this conversation he basically told the boyfriend we could either bribe him with 20 american dollars or he would make our trip (entry) hell. So we bribed the guy to let us in. We still don't get our passports back!

we have to line up again with the second guy, and he tells us we have to buy a "visa" (note that this isn't a real country, so there are no embassies and no place where we could have actually bought the "visas" in advance, as we did with our moldovan one). Note: according to the official "Website" (read: propaganda), you don't need a visa to enter the "country". (yeah right! try to explain that to the military mean looking guys! So anyways, he wants 7 hrivnas each for the visa ( about 1 american dollar) but when we say we only have american money (bad calculation and stupid move on our part), he decided finally that it was actually 7 DOLLARS per person. We negotiated it to 7 dollars for both, if I remember right (since when do you negotiate the price of a visa? LOL), got the hand written piece of paper (we don't have a clue what's written on it!), and were on our way. The bus was late on the schedule, partly because of the wait at the border crossing, partly because the driver took a one hour break to drink beer in a bar, just leaving us there (note: ukrainian people seemed to find it normal).

We finally arrive in Tiraspol, as soon as we enter the city it looks like a living museum of the soviet union(to quote either the lonely planet or wikitravel, I'm not sure). There are a couple of military trucks driving around and buildings look like this:



So , we show up at our hotel "Drushba":



At the reception, a really sweet little russian only speaking grandma explains to us that we need to "register" at the police before we can sign in, but looking at my backpack, suggests I leave it at the reception as starts rubbing my back.

We set off to the adress written in our guide book. There are different police offices, and a policeman shows us the next building. We go in, wait 15 minutes in line and finally when we come up, the women behind the window just kind of ignore us. "Hello?" Nothing. aparently they're writing really important papers. They finally tell us to go to another office. In this office, after taking our passports, they finally tell us we have to go to another office on another street, and to hurry because it closes at 4:30 Pm. I ask if it is far, or if they can point it to us on a map but apparently no one in the office knows where this other government/police office actually is. I felt like I was in "The twelve tasks of Asterix". After the long bus ride and stress at the border, I just want to get a hotel room, any room, and quiet down.

so we set off in the city. there are once again many wild dogs roaming the streets. We find in a sort of back yard the adress we have written on a torn piece of paper. We ring a bell. A voice comes out in russian, we just say "passport" and the voice hangs up. Okay. We try to walk aournd the building, a door is open, but looks like a back door to a shop. we walk in , a man says something in russian, and we show our passports. Finally, he brings us to the right room, although I think he wasn't an employee.

We get to a counter, and a little square piece of the window opens. A woman asks something in russian. we show our passports and she rolls her eyes, great. it's 4:10 PM. she holds up a pre-printed piece of paper written: "Pay 4 roubles and 70 kopeks for registration". and slams her little window shut. Uh, ok. We get the money and knock once more at her window. Exasperated, she opens again and shows us the "Kacca" (cash register?) nearby, gives us 2 pieces of paper and shuts the door again. great. we show up at the "kacca", pay the money (which turns out to more than 5 roubles per person) and ask the girl then what we have to do " fill out passport info". Great, once again, papers only in russian. The girl at the Kacca fills them out for us, that was really nice of her. Except I think she wrote down as my last name "Canadian / Canadienne" and entered as my country of residence "france" (my first name is francoise), but at this point, I don't give a shit, I just want to get the stamp and get back to the hotel. So we have to get back in line for the first counter with the exasperated woman. She asks for our passports, visas (we give 2 copies: original and carbon-copy), fills out different papers, and then holds up a paper that say "What numbers leave to Tiraspol?". Okay, now I feel like I am in a game quiz and am starting to lose my patience. We finally get that she wants to know til what date we are going to be staying, and she gives us a stamped paper and our passport and slams shut the little window. Shit. She didn't give us back our visas, and we need them to leave Transnistria. It's 4:25. After trying to explain to her that she has kept both of our copies, and that we need at least one with our passport, we get them and get to go back to the hotel. We are exhausted and I feel the tears rising in my eyes, I am ready to fall on the sidewalk from exhaustion and stress.

We finally get to our room, that looks like this:


Our bathroom WAS the shower, and pretty disgusting, but at this point I didn't give a damn about it, also that there was just a couple of squares of ukrainian toilet paper available:


We ended up having a short but nice evening and visited a couple of things:

church:


tank monument made to remember the civil war:


and the palace of the republic, which wouldn't be complete without the statue of Lenin in front of it:


The next morning we were off to Chisinau, the capital of real country Moldova, even though Transnistria has cut off all train connections. stay tuned!