Killing Batteries

Chisinau (ki-shi-no), the capitol of Moldova, ascended to the top of my list of all time favourite cities within 24 hours of my arrival.  Strangely, there are very few items of tourist appeal to indulge in here (even less now as they have closed one museum and merged two others), yet I deeply enjoyed myself.

To start, the people are just wonderful.  Friendly, helpful and genuine.  Ask directions from someone in Bucharest and you probably won’t get much more than a grunt and a head nod in a vague direction.  In Chisinau, the person you’ve beseeched for help will come out of their store, take your arm (like the Romanians, Moldovans can be very tactile) lead you to the street and give you specific, careful instructions.  This would have been endearing enough as a traveller, but as a guidebook researcher, this mentality saved me untold time and hardship.  Merchants, hotel staff, museum directors, strangers at bus stops, whether there was something in it for them or not, they all dropped everything, offering me information, coffee, the use of their telephones, whatever.  It was an absolute joy to work there.

Also, they have a restaurant and nightlife scene that is so grand and extensive that it’s going to kill me to have to cut those sections of the book down to a reasonable length.  The downside is the hotels are absurdly expensive and not all that great.  But there’s a number of ways around that, namely home stays, which brings me to yet another Chisinau rave.

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Without the benefit of TV or radio, I nevertheless enjoyed the entire range of emotions from last night’s Eufa Cup semi-final game between Steaua Bucharest (Romania) and Boro Middlesbrough (England). That’s soccer for my fellow Americans. 

I was sitting in my apartment quietly enjoying a dignified Kvint cognac from Transdnistria (served in a used, plastic cup: I’m elegance all the way here people) when at about 10:15PM the first wave of noise swept the city.  The roar of celebration rose simultaneously and swiftly, coming from all directions and climaxing when a guy in the building across from mine shrieked “Goooooaaaaaaalllll!!!!!” out his window.  Bucharest 1, Middlesbrough 0.

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I am delighted to report that I have completed my road research!  Even though I’ve had the luxury of breaking the research up and retreating to my apartment between trips, my time on the road was nothing short of cruel.  The horrendous weather in February and March took all the fight out of me, not to mention the fantastically long hours I spent driving on the second worst and worst roads in Europe.

I returned from Moldova last night and I’m suffering from the usual post-trip exhaustion and brain damage.  I have anecdotes upon anecdotes to share, but I won’t be able to marshal the motivation or wits to type them out for a few days.  Besides, I have seven bottles of exquisite wine and a bottle of some of the best cognac available in Europe vying for my attention.

I will say this though, the Moldovan police are unequivocal dicks.  I have never seen police so shamelessly devoted to bribe shakedowns.  Indeed, I wonder if they have any time to enforce the law what with them padding their drinking budgets.  Once I was stopped twice in five hours, both times for ludicrously bogus offences.  I was an easy target though; an American in a mirthfully old and ailing Romanian car.  Though in all fairness, police target locals just the same.  They don’t even wait for drivers to do something potentially wrong.  The instant they say ‘goodbye’ to one victim they flag down the car that happens to be passing at the time and go to work on them, like they were working an assembly line.  Their favourite made-up infraction is running a red light, which is something you can never effectively deny, even with the accompanying evidence of 57 other cars running the “red light” with you.  It would be comical if it weren’t so infuriating. 

I’ll leave you to absorb that morsel for now.  More stories in the coming days.

I leave for Moldova in the morning and I’ve gotta admit, I don’t think I have ever been more nervous about going somewhere. Usually Moldova can be challenging and the breakaway region of Transdnistria, which I’m also obliged to visit, is one step above chaos, but things have worsened recently making the overall picture none-too appealing for an American journalist, travelling alone, in a Romanian car that’s not in his name and insured by a third party, without a single word of Russian in his vocabulary.

Relations between Transdnistria, the Russian-backed country that doesn’t exist, and Moldova have never been great but various moves by self-absorbed fat-heads, resulting in consequences largely felt by the already long-suffering citizens of both regions, have hit a new low and Transdnistria has called for Russia to send more support - the bulk of their defence is supplied by Russian troops, sympathetic to the region clinging to old Soviet ways. I’m already being told not to drive the car into Transdnistria, though if I do, don’t dare go without a smooth talking local in the passenger seat or the guards will have a field day with my sorry ass. I’ll have to see if anyone in my large group of contacts in Chisinau will be willing to take a short road trip with me. Guides are surprisingly expensive (15-30 euro per hour), so that will have to be a last ditch option. Hopefully, there’ll just be a friendly local in Chisinau, preferably with relatives in Transdnistria, who’d like to come along for the ride.

With Communist ways in full force in Moldova and people extra touchy right now, I imagine that fact gathering will be even more difficult than here in Romania, where paranoid suspicion of questions, no matter how benign, particularly by older, Ceausescu-era generations can be like pulling teeth from a starving crocodile (e.g. Q: “What time is it?” A: “Why do you want to know? Who are you?”).

The good news, as I’ve already mentioned, is that pre-trip emailing has brought me a windfall of excellent contacts in Chisinau. I’m in touch with two motivated guides, a dedicated blogger, the enthusiastic host of my LP predecessor, the business partner of some acquaintances of mine and a Fulbright scholar from Arizona, teaching a journalism class who I’m meeting en masse to talk about freelance travel writing in America. My cup runneth over with help and hopefully all the local wine my liver can endure.

I’m planning to stay 10-12 days. No more than 14, as my insurance will run out and I don’t need to give anyone additional excuses to harass me at the border.

Updates here will undoubtedly be scant and brief. If I go silent for more than two weeks call the embassy, stressing of course that I’m too cute to die.

(I apologize in advance for the length of this post. As is all too common with me, once I started writing, I completely lost control. If I were being paid to blog by the word, I’d be a squillionaire.)

I thought I’d take a break from my lengthy complaining and ongoing tales of woe to write down a little personal insight on being an LP author, both for you, the curious reader, and for me when (if) in the future I find myself considering another LP gig and I want to refresh my memory about the highs and lows of this work.

Very early on - post-contract, pre-road research - I got a little taste of the supposed glamorous part of this life from other authors. One told of frequent encounters with “Lonely Planet Disciples”, who either went limp with veneration or very nearly peed themselves from excitement once their cover was blown. Another author described ‘travel writer’ on the list of all-time coveted vocations at number four, below ‘rock star’, ‘movie star’ and ‘TV star’.

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Anyone reading this blog from beginning to end all in one go might notice that my attitude toward Romanian drivers, authorities and postal employees is hovering dangerously close to racist. And they’d be right. On a side note, anyone reading this blog from start to finish in one sitting should consider getting a hobby or a new job or what have you.

Yes it’s true, my tolerance has been put to the ultimate test over the past ten months and been thoroughly vanquished. I fear and loathe all outwardly deranged drivers, I despise all people in authority and I have fantasized at great length about burning down the post office (all three of them).

Before you pass judgement, in my defence, I’d like to offering the following evidence: First, I have driven (or been driven) through 40 countries now, including such heart-quickening places as Morocco, Portugal and Duluth and I have never seen a group of drivers even as remotely dangerous, inept and foul tempered on the whole as the drivers in Romania. The prevailing attitude here is that flying along at the very edge of disaster is the pinnacle of skilled and commendable driving.

Furthermore, anyone not conducting themselves in this manner is inviting all manner of unadulterated verbal and horn tooting abuse. Combine that with a blanket “I’m-the-centre-of-the-universe-and-I-can-do-whatever-I-want-whenever-I-want” mind-set and you have the makings for a theatre of sustained horn-blaring, curse words and wrecked cars. Spend five minutes at any busy intersection for irrefutable proof.

Second, on the subject of dealing with authorities, I challenge anyone to come to Romania and buy a used car.  If you can; a) Complete the transaction in less than a month while maintaining a full time job, b) Avoid paying a single bribe and/or c) average less than two hissy-fits a week (I’ll spot you the odd nervous breakdown), I will buy you a Lada.

As for the post office, well I don’t have proof, but I’m pretty sure that the palpable tension and arbitrary abuse meted out there has something to do with why Romanian citizens can’t buy firearms.

Finally, I hereby invite all Romanians reading this to comment. Complaining about driving, bureaucracy and personal injustices suffered at the post office are as regular topics of conversation here as the foul weather is in Minnesota. I believe I speak not only for all long-term visitors, but indeed all Romanians when I say that my sentiment is mainstream. If one were not to vent in this manner, they would inexorably find themselves flying off into a frustration-induced, violent rampage and end up institutionalized for the rest of whatever. It’s a self-preservation response, because really, as bad as the above topics can be, nothing is worse than Romanian prison.

Thank you for your understanding. And the first person to smuggle a year’s worth of Zoloft to my front door can have my car.

I don’t often get the opportunity to pair up two people so deserving of each other’s company, so when I had the pleasure of matching up two social deviants on the last heinous night of my recent spirit-crushing research trip, I was so full of pride afterward, that I still think fondly of it almost daily.

I was at a dead stop at a three way intersection in the middle of the northern Romanian countryside at 11:00PM puzzling over conflicting road signs when a guy more or less let himself into the passenger seat of my car.  I had seen him hitchhiking a few hundred metres up the road and seeing as how I was racing home to Iasi in pitch-black night, near-sleepless, in bad driving conditions in a car with headlights dimmer than most keychain lights, I figured I had a full plate without adding a weird hitchhiker into the mix.

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