Life in the good old USSR: Pridnestovie....

So, I woke up this morning thinking I was going to Comrat, in Gaugauzia (Moldova's nominally Turkish autonomous region) but we ended up (my and two Norwegian brothers, Guttorm and Gustav) driving the the PMR, or the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica.

I'm not going to lie: it was a bit funny and scary going there - a true no man's land - as we drove by the ever-so militarized internal Moldovan border past the Nistru. There were two tanks at each end of the bridge, covered in camo netting. very rambo, i dare say.

At the "border" i was expecting a Kafkaesque experience, as the soldier eyes lit up when they say the maroon Norwegian passports and the navy blue US one. I quickly barked out some crap in Russian, saying in essence 'where do you get a visa, and how much is it?'

The guy cracked a smile, and said in English: How much money you have? and started making gestures with his hands, starting small and getting larger. i pulled out a major sob story...

I told him we're students, we're poor, and that these guys are from Norway (he knew nothing about it), and said that we're simply going to Transnistria to 'go to the vineyards.' He takes our passports, and we're led into this quasi-interrogation chamber where a 'transnistrian security services' officer interrogated us. Evidently, Dubasari is famous for its vineyards, which we couldn't find, as he seemed to have no problem letting us by. i said a few lines about how i wanted to see what it's like there, to get beyond the propaganda, and we had to pay 23 lei (less than two bucks) for three day passes. yes folks, it's only about 60 cents to visit the Soviet Union.

Dubasari was surprisingly cool, and we found a nice cafe covered with grapevines that was located above an automotive repair shop of some kind. Went on to Rybnitsa, checked out the huge statue of Lenin (so nice, it's a shame those have disappeared from most of Eastern Europe: good or bad, it was a reality, and having the authentic statue is much better than selling overpriced images of it to tourists.

but anyways, rybnitsa was cool, even if the soviet wwII memorial's eternal flame wasn't eternal (what happened to all that free gas guys???)

people were nice, there was no problems, and a little russian goes a long way. i'd like to thank raissa, slava, and viktoria from the cornell russian department for giving me to the tools to not have to pay an exorbitant bribe to visit the PMR.

the irony was that we got extorted by moldovans when we were trying to leave. and the guards on both sides of the border asked me what an immigrant can earn hourly in America. i said at least $10 an hour cutting grass for Purdy Landscaping, Inc.

highlights include: making a wrong turn and ending up in Ukraine; eating apricots that were the size of peaches; paying for a meal with moldovan money and receiving transnistrian rubles in return (nash dengi); being asked by old ladies how we americans like "our city" (i said it was great, which it was ... much more consumer goods there); and getting lots of cheap homemade wine that hopefully won't make me blind.

in these parts, a little russian goes a long way...