"You must leave Moldova by midnight on Oct 14," the Moldavian consulate official told me in French.
"And if I don't?" I wondered aloud.
"You will have big problems," she assured me with a smile.
I wondered if Moldovans learned from their Romanian vampire neighbors and practiced impaling tourists who overstay their welcome.
My $30 transit visa gave me 3 days to get through Moldova and into Ukraine. The consulate is conveniently located at the border so they process the visa in minutes. EU citizens pay almost half the price as Americans so I whipped out my French passport to snag the discount.
Border crossing paradox
Why is it that the less desirable the country, the more difficult it is to get in it?
When I entered into Finland, Czech Republic, and Austria I could time the border crossing in seconds. However, when I entered Belarus, Kosovo, and Moldova I had to measure the process in hours.
You'd think that elite countries would be highly selective about who comes in and that undesirable countries would let any jackass in. Not so.
Another divided country
Another cramped bus, another little known country, another worthless currency, and another unpopular language. After 20 countries in 5 months, I'm used to this and still loving it! :-) I am also getting used to encountering divided countries:
- Finland (co-existing with Swedes)
- Estonia (with Russians)
- Various Balkan nations (with Albanians)
Moldova is one of the 23,473 little countries that came out of the former Soviet Union.
I could tell Americans that Moldova is located between Romania and Ukraine, but I might as well tell them it's between Togo and Mali, because most Americans have no clue where Romania and Ukraine are.
Moldova is yet another Eastern European nation that struggles to make its ethnic majority (Moldovans) get along with a significant ethnic minority (Russians). The Russians weren't always so significant in this country.
Moldovan football
Romania and Russian have been playing political football with Moldova for the last few centuries. Control of the region has traded back and forth more times than a stock on the New York Stock Exchange floor.
Most Moldovans hate the Russians. Why? Because they're bored and have nothing better to do.
But also because:
- After WWII the Russians imposed their Cyrillic alphabet on the Moldovan language (which is a dialect of Romanian, sounds like a Romance language, and uses Roman characters).
- Russian became the official language.
- In 1949, Russians deported 25,000 Moldova to Siberia and Kazakhstan, which is never fun.
- During the next couple of years Leonid Brezhnev, then first secretary of the central committee of the Moldovan Communist Party (and later leader of the USSR), deported 250,000 Moldovans.
- To dilute the Moldovan population further, they gave incentives for Russians to settle there.
Yes, this ethnic cleansing at its finest.
Homo sapiens did it when we were hunting down the last Neanderthals.
Humans, like all living things, seek to reproduce themselves while stamping out the competition. The more different someone is, the more we seek to obliterate them. Which brings me to the...
Easy four step ethnic cleansing plan!
In case you want to do some ethnic cleansing in your neighborhood, here are the four steps for you budding despots:
1. Conquer a territory.
2. Expel or kill the rebellious indigenous population.
3. Have your nation overwhelm the land through massive immigration.
4. Take away their contraceptives so your people reproduce fast.
If you do it right, in a couple of generations you will have transformed the language and ethnicity in the region! Voila! Instant empire expansion!
Alas, it almost never works. Those feisty indigenous people are just too hard to stamp out. The Serbs tried to follow the Four Step Ethnic Cleansing Plan, but NATO crashed their party.
Israel is doing its best to take over Palestine by following the Four Step Plan, but has been consistently a bit weak on executing Step 2. The Israelis need to more ruthless if they want to pave the way for a Greater Israel. Constructing a few concentration camps for the Palestinians might do the trick.
The Palestinians would love to do some of their own ethnic cleansing and get rid of the Jews, but they need a lot of work to fulfill their fantasy. But at least they have Step 4 down pat.
Sadly, as long as we have bigoted and unforgiving people, we'll have idiots trying to cleanse each other. Fortunately, it's hard to execute the Four Step Ethnic Cleansing Plan. Off the top of my head, the only examples of "successful" ethnic cleansing are:
- Nazi Germany's cleansing of the Jews (a few thousand are left in Eastern Europe compared to the original six million).
- The Spanish and Portuguese cleansing of South and Central America.
- The American cleansing of the Native Americans.
The last two examples "succeeded" mainly because the Old World inadvertently used biological warfare (through small pox and other diseases). That's hard to do today especially since we can't find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
It also helped that the Old World had overwhelming technological superiority over the indigenous peoples. This helped finish off the few that didn't succumb to the bio-weapons.
Nazi Germany "succeeded" partly because of technological superiority, but mostly because they're just organized Germans. They're just good at getting things done.
Ok, back to Moldova
Believe or not, that diatribe is relevant to Moldova today. The Russians aren't efficient like the Germans. They left way too many stragglers behind and managed to only overtake one dinky region in Moldova.
Russians only make up 27% of the country overall. So like the Albanians who dominate small regions of Macedonia and Serbia, these Russians don't want to be marginalized into second class citizens.
Today Russians and Ukrainians make up over 50% of population east of the Nistru River. This tiny region in this tiny country is called Transdniestr.
Ethnic Ukrainians and Russians are concentrated in that region.
Like the Estonians, the Moldovans have reinstated their language, while the Russians still cling onto theirs. The bitter hate between them erupted in 1992 when a bloody civil war started along the river that divides them.
Crossing the river
Like Montenegro, Transdniestr is a tiny nation within a nation. Montenegro is within Serbia, but they use the Euro instead of the Serbian Dinar. Montenegro is nearly completely autonomous.
Transdniestr is similar. The Russians living there have their own currency, police force army, and its own (unofficial) borders. It was relatively painless to cross these borders, although I had to pay a tax for a one day visa and register with the military in two different places. The border is heavily policed. With the Lenin's face still ubiquitous it's clear that, like Belarus, Transdniestr is one of the last bastions of the silly Soviet system.
Inflation is rampant and the local currency is next to worthless. It all started in 1994 when the separatist government introduced the Transdnistran Rouble so they could be free of the Moldovan Lei. Inflation exploded and the rouble quickly added more zeros than Bill Gates's bank account.
Eventually a million roubles could barely get you a cup of coffee. So they slashed six zeros in 2001 and today inflation has cooled, but the economy is still in the toilet.
For the average person economic conditions are abysmal. Wages are low and poverty is rife. About two-thirds are elderly and impoverished. They long for the good old Soviet days when the government gave them money just for being old farts.
Transdniestrn trail magic
The signs at the 1992 War Memorial in Tiraspol, the capital of the Transniestr region, are only in Russian. It was late and the memorial was deserted due to the cold temperatures. But then I spotted two women and I asked them to help translate. I had little hope that they could speak English, but to my surprise one could! Barely.
Moldovans, like Belarusian, usually have one of two extreme reactions when I open my American mouth...
1) They break a wide smile: They are curious why a lone Californian is trotting through their unpopular country.
2) They act like I just told them that their mother is a whore: They glare at me, slowly squint their eyes, turn their head, and walk away. They don't even try answering my question. They're so rude it's comical.
It's rare that I get a ho-hum reaction.
Luckily, these ladies fit category #1. Within minutes they asked me if I wanted to join them for coffee. They offered to help me find a hotel and negotiate hard. They weren't satisfied with what the hotel was charging me (inflated "tourist prices"). Then they surprised me.
Alyssa, who is married and has two daughters, invited me to stay with her family. I was thrilled with another opportunity to stay with a local family. Such encounters are always highlights of any journey.
Alyssa served up a delicious late night noodle/potato/vegetable soup. The apartment in a 10 story building was humble, but functional. They have no hot water, but they do have gas. So I just heated up a pot of water, mixed it in a bigger bowl of cold water, and had a overdue sponge bath.
Don't call me Dostoevsky yet
Nobody in Alyssa's entourage could speak English well, which forced me to continue improving my Russian. Considering I've never taken a class in Russian, I've come a long way. I'm surprised how well I can communicate with Russians.
So how good is my Russian now?
I'm confident that I no longer speak like the Frankenstein monster. I'm much better. Nowadays I speak like Tarzan.
The Russian perspective
The Moldovans look at Russians like the Macedonians look at the Albanians: they're tainting the "purity" of their country. Moldovans dislike the Russians because they refuse to learn the Moldovan language and integrate with the rest of the population.
But I just like I went into Kosovo and Albania, I figured I'd hear the minority view. Russians aren't used to being second class citizens. But the Moldovans want to squeeze them out. The Russians believe that Moldova wants to unite with Romania (they share a similar language and culture). Meanwhile, the Russians have a natural affinity toward Russia. Today it's a stalemate with no end in sight.
The root cause of all this turmoil is the Russian's half-ass ethnic cleansing a half a century ago.
So the lesson folks is that if you're going to cleanse somebody's ass, make sure it's a deep cleaning.
Visiting Chisinau
I briefly visited Chisinau ("Kish-i-now"), the capital of Moldova. It's nothing special, but it's not terrible either. The crowds in the streets astounded me.
Why is it that no matter how shitty the economy, there's always people buying stuff on the streets, yapping on cell phones, wasting discretionary income on cigarettes, dyeing their gel-filled hair, and frequenting overpriced cafes?
The three lane highway to hell
With my visa soon set to expire, I set off to Ukraine on hell's highway. Moldova has a curious highway design: a three lane highway.
The two outer lanes go in opposite directions. The middle lane is a free for all. Use it for passing, but nobody has right of way. It's a constant game of chicken. When you're blasting down the middle lane, there's nothing stopping anyone going the opposite direction to challenge your position.
It's times like these that I just sit in the back of the bus and find God.
The language that teases
When I entered the Russian-controlled territory of Moldova I saw Russian written everywhere. This will prepare me for Ukraine and reminds me that it's a language that teases me.
Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Serbians use the Cyrillic alphabet, which tortures those of us who have grown up on the Roman alphabet.
Part of me is happy that I can recognize some characters, but other times I just wish it was gibberish like Arabic and Chinese characters. At least when I go to Japan, I don't even try to read the signs. There is no hope.
But when I walk through a country that uses the Cyrillic alphabet I feel a glimmer of hope. Like when I travel through Italy or Brazil, I try to read the signs that have my trusty roman characters. This works in Italy, Brazil, France, and Spain because nearly all the letters sound like the English version.
For example, when you see "farmacia" you can say the word out loud and realize that it sounds like "pharmacy."
You'll naturally do the same when you come to Ukraine. Unfortunately, you'll be completely lost because many characters may look the same, but the pronunciation is completely different. As a result, you will go clinically insane.
Here's a crash course. I'll show you a letter in Cyrillic and then show you the equivalent sound in English.
(For you smarty pants who know how the Cyrillic characters really look, forgive me that I'm not using them. But most people who are on this list are unable to display the true Cyrillic letters, so I'm approximating how they look to the untrained eye.)
Cyrillic Alphabet = English Alphabet
B = V
r = g
j = y
H = N
H (with a slanted connecting dash) = i
n = p
p = r
c = s
x = kh (like "ch" in loch)
U = ts
W = sh
3 = z
Perhaps it still hasn't hit you as to why these slight changes can drive you bananas, let's play a game. I'll write the word as you might see walking through the street, and you try to guess what it means. Then I'll show you how it sounds if you were to pronounce it, and then what it means.
Let's start with my favorite. It's the one you see everywhere: PECTOPAH.
What the hell is a PECTOPAH? Use my handy cheat sheet above, and you'll realize that the P sounds like an R. The C is like an S. So instead of "PEC" say "RES". For the last 3 letters: remember the P is an R, and the H is an N. So: RES-TO-RAN. Restoran. That's right, restaurant.
The Bulgarians make it a bit easier on you, they write PECTOPAHT; hence, RESTORANT.
Whew!
Here's a few more:
bAHK = "baank" = bank
bAP = "bar"
nAPK = "paark" = park
TAKCH (slanted connector on H) = "Taxi"
Cnopt = "Sport"
KOMnyTEP = "Compooter" = Computer
Cynep = "Sooper" = Super
So "cynep mapket" is "super market"
3y = "Zoo"
nACnopt = "passport"
nPECCA = "Pressa" = Press (i.e., newspaper stand)
And one of my favorites...
rA3 = "Gaz" = Gas
Isn't this fun! So my greatest pastime when I'm in countries that have Cyrillic alphabet is slowly reading their signs. I mouth it out and then realize what it means. It's a tedious but fun process, especially when you get it!
Once I cross the Ukrainian border I'll have plenty of time to practice and I'm sure it'll get old quick.
OK, I gotta go, it's getting late, and I'm running out of rA3.
October 19, 2004
