Thursday, December 08, 2005

PING PONG WITH MOLDOVA. ODESSA: SHARING ASYLUM WITH A CAT. RACE TO ROMANIA.














The only reason for which I had crossed Romania from South to North and Ukraine from North to South was to enter the Separatist Republic of TransNistria, a fantasy country with façade of socialist paradise and true background of arms smmugling that lies inside Moldova, pressed between the Dniestr river and the Ukrainan border. The plan: enter that country in a checkpoint with separatist guards, in order not to pay moldovan visa (for which anyway I copuldnt get without strange letterts of recommendation) The man-who-speaks-english that morning, who accompanied to the tren station was a member of the intelligence services who soon declared his love for Veronica castro. I thought that admiration for latin amrican TV series was only something common in Romania…
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I stepped down the train in Rozdilna, where a Lada driven by a huge man who would have required an Audi was easy prey when the train barreer fell down. In the border queues of cars with the misterious Moldovan plate numbers, seemed to be carrying loads of grain. A very medieval scene. Two guards in the border led me to an officce to interview me. The badge in their uniform told me they were official guards: no chances. The looked at my passport, they asked for my Moldovan visa and kicked me back they way I came, much for the fun of the Ukrainan guards who had stamped me away of UA just 20 minutes before.
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I was back in Odessa at 9 p.m. Roofless, like in Vilnius, I approached some street musicians, and so I met Dimas, a Russian from Ekaterinburg. "That is in the Middle of Siberia" he pointed proudly. And it was trough, for tyhis dude Paris is more far away than Mongolia. Maube that's is the reason why he never cared abput visitng the Far East, instead he dreamt of travelling in Western Europe. Percutionist, compulsive hitch hiker, he had no destiny. In vain I asked him about the following steps. He didn't know them, he didn't want to know them. He knew the mate, and when I prepared some he said: waw An original argentinian mate! Then her friend (owner of the appartment) came with a kitty in hands she had rescued from the streets. Not too bad, to start the day strolling in almost parisian boulevards with a mmber of the intelligence service and to end up sharing asylum with a cat and a street musician.
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It was time to return to Romania and from there to istanbul. My Syrian visa was expiring on the 17/11 and that was hurrying me. The closer crossing point was from Reni in UA to Galati in RO. In the way I visited Izmail, where a dozen of pensioners gathered under a big Lenin statue to cry their utopies, with red communis flags… I walked 10 kms to the border. Then, something unbelievable happened, the Ukrainan guard asked me for my Moldovan transit visa. But I am not going to moldova - I replied. The man laughed, and showed me in the map that it was in fact a triple border where the road traversed 1 km of Moldovan territory…
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So I had to go back the way I came, 80 kms because of just one. I walked trough the most boring landscape I had ever seen before or since. The area near the Danube Delta should be declared National Park of Monotony. A joint offered by some young ukranians shortly improved things and I started to take interest in the two dimensions provided by the windows… The nations with budget problems should not dismantle their plane cariers, they should donate them to Ucrania. To Moldova. To Ucrovia, maybe if we play with her name she gets angry, and red…and the landscape changes!!
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To reach northern UA I allowed myself a train. Buying the ticket took half an hour. The woman in the ticket office seemed to be angry because I didn’t speak russian. The train dropped me in the city of Vinnitza, where I was expected by HC member Vitaly. The next day I folllowed by hitch hiking, covering 320 klms that day. The employees of petrol station in Cernivitsi, 40 kms away from Romanian border, held their heads when I mentioned I was from Argentina, and even if at first they lok at me as if I was a llama or a irregular polygon, they end up offering me dinner and a room to sleep. They get as involved as to start trying to palm down romanian trucks.
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Next day I found very early a truck bound for Bucarest, the Romanian capital. The driver was called Florian and drove with difficulty due to the coincidence of the wheel and his prominent stomach. In spite of this he illustrated, hitting the wheel with his fists, the marching pace with which Vlad Tepes troops tried to intimidate the Turkish invaders. Two nights in Bucarest in the house of Petre and Mihai, great HC members, and on to Istanbul…

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