North Africa ‘Plus’ Travel Diary

2011

 

In the end, it was all much easier than I had expected.  Given some of the horror stories I had heard, I thought it might take me a full day to find a driver who would be willing to take me into Transnistria and return again with me to Odessa.  However, with the help of the brilliant staff at the Hotel Londonskaya, where I am staying, I had a driver waiting for me at the hotel at 9:00 am this morning.

The drive from Odessa to Tiraspol is only 100 kilometres, but it took us almost three hours to complete.  Of the three hours, one and a half were spent driving, and one and a half were spent in the lines waiting for immigration on each side of the border - not that there were many cars in front of us, it’s just that each car took a long while to process by the time passports were checked, boots (trunks) were opened and scrutinised, and mirrored bomb detectors had been run under each car.

I guess the other reason to help explain why a drive of 100 kilometres on an almost straight road, through flat plains of wheat and sunflower cultivation might take one and a half hours would be our car and driver(s).  The car was an old black Mercedes (apparently such cars are treated with more respect at the border than equally old Ladas and Moskviches), and the driver - well, the driver inexplicably changed on the journey.

We started from Odessa with a man driving and a young woman sitting in the front passenger’s seat.  To my embarrassment, I don’t know either of their names because they spoke no English whatsoever (the hotel staff kindly told them where I wanted to go).  I introduced myself to them, but they just nodded without smiling in what I would describe as a hopefully now outdated KGB brand of terse inverted hospitality.  After we had passed the immigration post to enter Transnistria, the man got out of the car and walked away, and the woman drove the rest of the way, first into Tiraspol (the capital city of Transnistria), and then all the way back to Odessa.  I only saw the man once more, and that was on the return journey when the woman waved to him as we saw him emerge from a border liquor store carrying a large plastic bag filled with bottles of vodka.  Anyway, the point of this little informational sidetrack is that although the man drove at about 100 kmh, the lady tended to drive at only 70 kmh or so.

And so it was that a little before midday, I found myself right in the centre of Tiraspol.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s diary, Transnistria is an unreformed Soviet republic that has broken away from Moldova.  Its full official name is the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, and it has its own army, police force, an independent immigration service, its own currency (the rouble) - in short, it is a separate, viable nation-state with just one major shortcoming, this being that almost no other country recognises it.  Indeed, only three countries have embassies in Tiraspol, these being Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, all of them also being breakaway former Soviet states of dubious international standing.

Tiraspol, Transnistria’s capital city, has a population of about 160,000 people, and its character is more provincial than one would normally expect of a national capital.  The focus of my visit was the central part of the city where the unreformed Communist ideology is most strongly shown in signs, billboards, statues and buildings.  I focussed especially on Strada 25 Octombrie (25th October Street).

I can probably let the photos attached to today’s diary do most of the talking, but in summary I first visited the open air market (which seemed surprisingly capitalist to my eyes, although I suppose it is quite possible that all the stall holders were government employees), followed by a walk to the western end of Strada 25 Octombrie and back, which enabled me to see (among other things) the equestrian monument to Alexander Suvorov, the tank monument, the cemetery of heroes who died in the 1990-1992 struggle for Transnistrian independence, the newly built Lenin Monument in front of the Presidential Palace, the Monument to the First Power Plant in Soviet Moldavia, the Monument to the Third Ukrainian Front, and several freshly painted signs featuring socialist symbols such as red stars and hammers and sickles. 

I had heard terrible stories about old Soviet-style restrictions on photography in Tiraspol (after all, what could be more terrifying than restrictions on photography?).  For example, I had read that taking photos of the Presidential Palace is prohibited.  I took several photos, and I am pleased to report that I was not detained (although I was careful to ensure that no soldiers were watching at the time).  I had heard stories about foreigners being forced to pay bribes for the ‘crime’ of not carrying their passports with them.  I did carry my passport with me at all times, so it was something of an anticlimax not to be questioned by the police at all.

In the end, Tiraspol on a sunny Sunday afternoon struck me as a very relaxed, ordered, tidy place - during my visit I didn’t see a single piece of rubbish, even on the streets near the markets.  My perception of a relaxed atmosphere was reinforced towards the end of my walk when I crossed a small bridge over the River Nistru that flows just south of the city centre.  Hundreds of Tiraspolis were enjoying sunbaking on a small sandy beach beside the river and swimming in the blue waters of the stream, enjoying their time together as families and friends.

If Tiraspol, and Transnistria in general, are a lingering remnant of Cold War Eastern Europe, my admittedly superficial experience of them today was that they seemed to be quite a humane and relaxed expression of socialism.

Day 28 - Tiraspol, Transnistria

Sunday

10 July 2011

Today’s Bonus Images