Blogs we like

After yesterday’s wastefulness, when I awoke from my deep slumber today at 08:00 (with the gentle persuasion of Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lover’s ‘Morning of our Lives’ as an alarm) I was ill prepared for getting the bus to Bucharest at 10:00 am.

This hostel is pretty good but it’s a little bit out of the way and you have to use taxis to get where you need unless you have the time for a decent walk. So I needed money for a cab and for the actual coach fare (as well as a bit of food supplies) but the shopping mall next door doesn’t open until 10. The taxi drivers don’t seem to speak English and I didn’t fancy trying to explain I needed an ATM with time not being on my side.

Right, so my change of plan is to visit Tiraspol in the break away republic of Transnistria for the day, this is the place I didn’t go to the other day with the Welsh lads because of the derby.

Then I will either get the night bus at 22:00 if I’m back in time or at worst stay an extra night here and make sure I’m ready to rock ‘n roll properly tomorrow morning.

I’ve cast away the apathy (mainly due to tiredness from too many late nights and also because of the laziness that can develop when you have a comfortable hostel to squat in) and it’s groovy gravy from here on in folks, maybe.

Do you know I had to buy another set of earphones a couple of days ago. That’s one pair I’ve had stolen (or taken by accident), a replacement pair from Berlin lasting a month or so before packing in and then a cheap pair I was forced to buy in Poland (so I was over the minimum card amount in a shop) lasting around a day. It’s up there with my biggest recurring costs, blimey.

I’ve always wondered why mosquitos don’t bite you on your face, it seems they do. One of the sods has nailed me just under my right eye socket (as well as on my left knee and right elbow). Grrrr.

Crikey, the bus station setup here is mental. You get there and there are a hundred buses (literally) in all directions. There’s a load of mildly official looking larger ones under departure gates, then there are lots more dodgy minibuses with signs in them saying where they are going.

Eventually I found the right mini-bus more by chance as I heard the driver saying Tiraspol. I wouldn’t have noticed it by the sign as this one was all in Cyrillic. With the help of a pen and paper I got the price (30 lei, that’s less than 2 quid I think), departure time, how long it takes (a bit less than 2 hours) and what time the last returning bus is. Not bad eh.

I’ve heard that sometimes the border control peeps expect bribes so I’ve stashed my decent value notes in my sock just in case.

The suspension of this vehicle is on par with that of the waist-band of Vanessa Feltz. It’s proving exceedingly difficult to compose this blog but I’ll soldier on anyway eh.

Hmm, I may have a problem. At customs going into Transnistria the official said in English “You must stay 10 hours”, I replied that I can’t as the last bus is at 18:45, he just repeated his last statement and added “Understand?”. “Yes” was my reply.

10 hours is 7 more than I intended (and intend) to stay. I’m positive that the Welsh lads had stayed less than 10 and they didn’t have this issue. Also I spoke to maybe 3 or 4 different people (including staff) about visiting here and they didn’t mention it either.

So I’ve got 2 options, neither of which are particularly appealing.

Option A is to try and find somewhere to stay in Tiraspol and go back to Chisinau tomorrow morning, there are lots of drawbacks to this: My bag is in the Chisinau hostel so I’d have to ring them and ask them to look after it, I obviously don’t have any stuff that would be useful for spending a night here (even a jacket), I can’t imagine it would be an easy task finding somewhere cheap to stay (few people round these parts speak English), I’d need to ring the hostel in Bucharest to change my booking (again as I already Skyped them this morning to move the booking forward a day as it is) and lastly I don’t bleedin’ want to spend a night here you draconian red star beaurocrats!

That leaves option B of having to chance it and pay for the bus back to Chisinau at risk of being detained at the border until midnight (or beyond! This post might never actually make it onto STBB and the SAS may have to launch Operation Get Bugger Back, I’ve paid enough ruddy national insurance to justify it). If I do get detained, how the hell I get back to Chisinau at that time I know not.

Actually I think it might not be a case of having to spend 10 hours here, it’s more likely that you can’t enter and leave within the same day. I’ve just noticed that the bloke has written ‘24′ next to the stamp saying ‘22 CEH 2009′. I wonder if there’s anywhere to buy tipex round here, ahem.

I hope it isn’t the same customs official working I get later, or I can’t really deny understanding what was said to me on the way in (though it probably doesn’t matter to them whether I understood or not anyway.) My current plan is to play dumb if this issue does rear it’s ugly swede and hope its more hassle for them to have me hanging about but that would be negated if it’s the same geezer. Backup plans formulated so far are small change bribery and outpouring of extreme violence on da muddas.

I really need a beer. First I’ve got to figure out how to change some lei for roubles, apparently there are no ATMs here or they don’t work or something.

That bit was straight forward enough, I changed a 200 Moldovan lei note to 2 x 100 notes and then changed one of them to 81 roubles. I did get questioned by a copper while sitting on the steps doing the maths prior to this though, I showed him the (as yet undoctored) paper I was given at the border and he let me go then.

The state of my wallet is becoming a mighty complicated affair. It is currently home to Transnistrian roubles, Romanian lei, Moldovian lei and Lithuanian somet. Come back €, all is forgiven.

Niet is a Russian word I’ve heard often today. As in “Do you speak English?” – “Niet”. You see the station where the bus dropped us off doesn’t seem to be near that much and I’m not really sure which direction it is to the town centre (if indeed there is one), I’ve made my best guess and headed in that direction while trying to keep track of the route I take.

I can’t begin to tell you what beer I’m drinking as the name is in Cyrillic. I’ve found a bar at least anyway.

I’d guessed right so got to have a quick butchers about. Transnistria seems to be very much still steeped in Sovietism. Lenin and hammer and sickle stuff everywhere. It sees itself as part of Russia which is evident by the Russian flags on display and Putin posters knocking about.

Flamin’ ‘eck, oh for a babelfish right now. I appear to have got myself in another pickle. I stopped in for something to eat at a very large fast-food chain called Andy’s Pizza. I went for steak and chips but wasn’t sure if I was reading the price right as it was 35 roubles (a touch over £2) which is ridiculously cheap, there was some other number next to it saying 300 and I wanted to be sure this wasn’t the actual price as it would have been ridiculously expensive and I wouldnt have had enough to pay for it. So when I tried to query this what seemed like the entire staff surrounded me and none of them spoke a word of the Queen’s (this isn’t a criticsm when I say this, it’s just an explanation of the situation) so we were getting no where fast. Where’s Andy when you need him eh? I just chanced it and luckily it was the 35 amount.

The food was okay, nothing to write home about (though in a way, that’s exactly what I’m doing) and quite small portions. But I certainly got my 2 notes worth.

The next thing that went wrong is I got a little lost (no map and the Cyrillic street names not helping) with about 20 minutes to go before the bus left. Cue me sprinting about (which has given me blisters in these sneeks) lots trying to find someone who speaks Blighty talk to get directions.

I found someone eventually but it was a little difficult to understand as she kept getting her rights and lefts mixed up. I got enough though and thankfully with the turn of one corner I knew where I was again.

I’m on a bus to Chisinau now, I’ll know if I’m home and dry shortly as the border is only 15 or 20 minutes away. Gulp.

I thought I was on the wrong bus for a bit as the route to the border seemed very different and had taken considerably longer. It said Chisnau – Tiraspol on the front and I said Chisinau to the driver and he kind of nodded but then I thought well the sign should be Tiraspol – Chisnau so maybe they’ve just not taken it down and it’s actually going somewhere else now. It’s horrible not being able to speak to people, you spend a lot of time not knowing what the chuff is going on.

Well that’s a relief, after all that threating the official that came on the bus didn’t bat an eyelid when he looked at my papers. I did think the odds were in favour of there not being a problem, but still I was far from sure.

This outing really hasn’t been worth all the stress and ball ache. I think I’ll switch back to lazy apathetic mode, it’s a simpler life. Groovy gravy indeed.

Right I made it back to the hostel in time and have shared a taxi with a Dutch girl who is getting the same bus. She’s a freelance journalist on a working holiday with an interest in the geo-politics of the region so I picked up lots of good info.

The bus is a full on double decker whopper complete with tables and everything. That’s relative luxury after what I’ve been used to of late.

I just showed my travel companion that the little thing on her iPhone is actually a remote and microphone, to be fair she has only had it 6 months! Women eh, give them access to some top banana technology and I gurantee they’ll only utilise a tiny fraction of it.

They just gave everyone on the bus a rum and cocoa flavoured croissant and a peach drink for free. Not bad this for 235 lei (less than 15 smackers).

It took a couple of hours to get everyone through both set of customs but there should be no further disturbances now so at 2 in the morn, I’m going to have a go at a much needed kip.

I was daft and didn’t take my hoody on the bus and as a consequence of that I was freezing. As a consequence of being freezing I didn’t sleep a wink. Boo boo.

Okay it’s getting close to 7:00 am I’m in Bucharest now you’ll be relieved to read.

The next stage of my disasterous 24 hours was a completely inept taxi driver who said the journey would cost me €10 and I said 10 lei as I knew €10 was 5 times the price it should be, he nodded. After the first corner he clearly didn’t have a clue where he was going (even though it’s is one of the main streets in Bucharest. Shortly afterwards he dropped me on a street that I was pretty sure wasn’t the right one, but I couldn’t see a street name to confirm it as we weren’t near a corner. Reluctantly I gave him the 10 lei and the cheeky sod had the face to try and get more off me by flashing a 50 lei note (which would be even more than the 10 Euros he’d tried to charge me initially), for that distance it should have only been about 4 lei. I told him to “Get to f*ck”. He had dropped me on Regina Maria Blvd rather than Regina Elizabet Blvd, so I had to get another taxi anyway. Grrr.

The last little quirk of the day was having to ring the hostel several times (and likely have cost myself more in roaming rates than it will have done to actually stay here tonight) to figure out where it was as it was supposed to be 44 Regina Elizabet Blvd and as I’d been at 34 and 10 metres later I was at 54 with no hostel between it was a bit perplexing. For some unexplicable reason 44 is a quarter mile the other way, I can’t even be bothered thinking about why.

It’s been a bit of a ruddy long one today hasn’t it readers. Readers? Hey! Where did ya go?!