When the Soviet Union dissolved and 15 independent nations laid claim to their territory, one of the early tasks was to set up miles and miles of borders. Thus, it’s somewhat ironic that in the age of globalization, it actually became much more time-consuming and tedious to travel within the former Soviet Union. Today, border crossings in the former Soviet Union are pretty uniformly irritating. It usually takes at least an hour to cross the border in a bus, and sometimes much longer.
For some reason, I always seem to get stuck with the bus driver that the border guards have decided to punish. On the way to Odessa from Chisinau, we discovered, much to our dismay, that the driver’s passport was expired. Let me repeat that one more time: THE DRIVER’S PASSPORT WAS EXPIRED. It was truly the height of incompetence. He claimed to have “grabbed the wrong documents” on the way out the door. The border guards said that this driver had tried to cross with expired documents before and they weren’t letting him through.
When the middle-aged women standing next to me heard this, she uttered the Russian curse word пиздец. When the middle-aged ladies are swearing, you know you’re screwed. So, we the passengers were left to try and figure out what to do. I should add that it was extremely hot and humid, which didn’t help anyone’s mood. People started arguing with the driver, who steadfastly refused to take responsibility for the passengers whom he had just stranded at the border. Understandably, people started swearing at the driver. Meanwhile, other passengers started working things out with the border guards to get their documents stamped so that they could hop on other buses that were going through the crossing. About half of the passengers figured out how to do this. None of this was actually organized and half of the conversations were in Moldovan, so I was quite confused and starting to seriously worry.
After two hours of sorting out this ridiculous situation, finally the border guards decided they had punished the errant driver enough and decided to let him go through the crossing. The guards on the Ukrainian side weren’t as assiduous as the Moldovan guards and let us pass without any trouble. We arrived in Odessa two hours late. Situations like these that remind me why neither of these countries are major tourist destinations yet.
On the way back, I had even more entertainment on the border. In Odessa I made the mistake of getting on a bus that was going to Chisinau through Transnistria.
For those of you not familiar with the historical/geographical/political oddity that is Transnistria, it is what we in the biz like to call a “frozen conflict.” Transnistria actually was incorporated into the Soviet Union in the 1920s (instead of after World War II like the rest of Moldova) so it was and is culturally, economically, and politically different from the rest of Moldova. It was more industrial, more Russophone, more ethnically-diverse: in a word, more Soviet. Basically, the authorities in Tiraspol, the second-largest city in Moldova and the capital of today’s breakaway state of Transnistria, decided they didn’t like where the country was heading when Moldova became independent and decided to set up their own country instead. The Russian military division stationed in Transnistria decided to help out, and after a brief and bloody conflict, the Moldovan authorities in Chisinau lost control over Transnistria.
Considering that Transnistria is in the north and I am in the south, it hardly ever affects my life in Moldova. Except, of course, when I travel to Ukraine and accidentally get on a bus going through Transnistria. Transnistria is smack-dab between Chisinau and Odessa. The main problem is that you have to go through two Transnistrian border crossings on the way from Odessa to Chisinau. In Transnistria, they’re still much more egregiously corrupt than other border guards in the former Soviet Union.
I was pretty nervous about going through Transnistria. It’s generally not a big deal, but it is known that if you get into trouble in Transnistria, the U.S. Embassy has no pull in this pseudo-country and cannot help you. I kept fussing on the border about every detail, and the other people in the bus were actually very nice about helping me out and telling me not to worry too much.
So, what ended up happening was that I got solicited for bribes twice. On both the entry and exit borders, the guards made me get off the bus, go into their sketchy office, and then tried to tell me that I didn’t have the correct stamps for entering Moldova (because I crossed through Transnistria...duh) so I would have to pay a “fine.” At the first border crossing the guy in charge told the guard who was giving me trouble to cut it out so I was free to go. (I’m guessing the Transnistrian authorities have sent out the word that guards shouldn’t be quite so overtly corrupt anymore.)
At the second border crossing I had a more involved conversation because this time there was no boss around to tell the guard to give it a rest. After being asked to pay a “fine,” I pointed out, with that devastating logic I learned in high school debate, that it made no sense for me to pay a fine for “breaking” a Moldovan “law” in Transnistria, which is (from their point of view at least) a different country. I was able to wiggle my way out of a bribe in the end. I’m guessing that most of this guard’s foreign tourist marks haven’t taken 6 years of Russian, and he decided it wasn’t worth arguing with me.
When I got to the Moldovan side of the border, the guards asked to speak to me again. They told me I hadn’t broken any Moldovan laws, but I should register my passport with the authorities in Comrat to avoid any trouble. They asked if I had paid anything in Transnistria and were happy that I had avoided paying a bribe. In general, I have a positive view of Moldovan border guards, as they seem to be pretty decent human beings.
The bus ride through Transnistria was pretty underwhelming. They are known for hanging on to all the old Soviet monuments and slogans. I did see some Soviet throwback stuff, but Comrat has a statue of Lenin, so that stuff hardly knocks my socks off. Other than that, it’s the same as any other poor Moldovan region. The most exciting thing, I suppose, was seeing the Russian tanks that guard the Transnistrian border against Moldovan aggression. Now I get to tell people that I've been to Transnistria, which for some reason is cool among the Eastern European backpacker set.
So, in conclusion, “frozen conflicts” cause headaches and travel delays. On the upside, I now know that the right strategy in a bribe situation is to stand your ground and show that, despite your American passport, you can actually speak Russian and thus are not easily cowed. All in all, it was much better than the time that we were stuck on the Armenian border for hours and I had to fend off the romantic advances of an Armenian border guard for a good 40 minutes (at 3:00 AM!) while my friends tried to convince the border guards to let us through. But that’s a story for another blog post.
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