Motorhome Trip to Russia

Day 38: Saturday 19th September

 

It’s much colder this morning, not helped by being parked in a bit of a shady hollow. I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, about 5.5 hours – but early hours workers arriving have prevented a snoozy lie-in. Either a train or a combine harvester went by very close and very loudly at about 6.30am.

 

By 8.30am we’re on the move and dump grey water along the roadside. My fingers are numb – is that the cold or poor circulation? But it’s far from freezing and once the sun is up we are in for another beautiful sunny day as we drive to Moldova, very soon hitting a busy border settlement that does not appear on the map. A stop in a produkty with helpful English-speaking staff provides all that we need including fresh salmon, milk, beers, bread and chocolate cakes. Then it’s down to the border crossing.

 

It first takes 45 minutes to leave Ukraine. Then on to the Moldova control where we complete immigration and emigration cards and during which we are taken into a room by two of the border guards. The whole interview is surreal, starting with these two uniformed men giggling like schoolboys after one of them sneezes and says ‘Excuse me’ in English. They have a good laugh at my name, and then indicate a payment of 200 grivna is needed to speed things up. It’s about £15 and they say that once paid we can go straight through. I ask for a receipt and one guy starts to scribble something on a piece of paper -we pay and the cash is placed loose in the desk drawer. No receipt is handed over. Our papers are returned and we move on to the next booth – customs – and here we are told to take the van around the back to another building for customs duties to be paid. We begin to fume at this point, having been conned by the earlier guards. Once in the customs building we show the dokumenti and are then told we will have to pay €28 to import the vehicle. I express my displeasure at this, having already paid the circa €18 earlier on. An Italian guy also being charged helps with some translation. He’s with a professional cycling team (Lance Armstrong’s I think) and says the €28 we are being asked for will be the last fee we pay. He says to call him if we need any help. A passing official asks what the problem is and I protest also to him about the money paid over to the immigration officers. He expresses his anger at this and storms off – though whether he will do anything about it we don’t know. Then we pay at the cash desk and we are released to go through. In total then we have paid over £40 to get into Moldova – for one night!

 

But are we really through? We pass one gate and are then confronted by another called ‘Boundary Control’. Passports are checked again. Then there’s a military checkpoint – camouflage kits and guns – but we’re waved through after stopping at the first sign. At last we’re clear and having a good chuckle at the bureaucracy when 100 metres down the road another control set-up comes into view!

 

Here we are questioned again but when the guy realises we are English he goes off and calls his senior – a young man with fluent English who quickly does the checks. I ask him why there are so many checks in such a short distance and he explains that we have not been in Moldova at all but in Transdniestra – a break-away country that they had a war with in 1992 after the Soviet collapse. (The bulk of Moldova aligns itself with Romania on its western border but on the east side of the Dniester they connect more with Ukraine and Russia.)

 

We still haven’t quite got our heads around who we paid all that money to and whether the two border controls have a tacit agreement to work together when, half an hour later, there is yet another border control near Tiraspol and the emigration card is collected from us!

 

Moldova is a lovely country to drive through, certainly at this time of year with the trees turning, but pleasant too with its smaller fields, rolling hills and more interesting landscapes. It feels more Western-than Eastern-leaning. The capital, Chisinau, turns out to be a bit chaotic, with huge markets in the centre and crazy driving, but lively and welcoming. Once we had left Transdniestra (which does seem more like Ukraine than Moldova and perhaps ‘naturally’ belongs to it) the country felt very welcoming – the English-speaking policeman at the ‘border’, the lad at the garage giggling at being given Euro coins, a car that went by hooting and giving the thumbs up = welcome to the crazy Brits? Good wine too after the execrable Ukrainian stuff.

 

We saw a Camping sign at a motel about 25 km south of Chisinau, with tents visible but had no need of it.

 

Beyond Tiraspol, near Balti, we find a perfect field for our stopover – 200 metres from the road (which is in any case very quiet) – and with a clear view of the fields around. Another wonderfully starry night, the best to date, but also our first cold night.