8th August - Moldova to Ukraine

Awoke in Moldova, in our hosts humongous penthouse apartment. The NGO furnished her with a huge apartment, Felix and I had our own beds in our own room! It is right smack bang in the centre of town, you can see the Parliament building. She is working as an architete for an NGO and has a pretty varied life. She also lived in Berlin when she was my age, however she worked as a street clown and lived in a squat. An illegal street clown, no less. She has also lived in Rockhampton and went sailing on Yeppoon with the Keppel Bay Sailing Club. Me being from Yeppoon was pretty helpful in getting her to accept my Couch Surfing request.

The big picture of me wrestling with how to open a container of Moldovan milk. Don't let it fool you my friends, it is the Rubik's Cube of dairy products. People will say things like "Hey, it's not that hard, there's a tab just there and...". They lie. They lie knowingly. Half the problems eastern Europe would be solved if common people would access to calcium instead of being forced to undergo fiendishly difficult calculations in order to have a white coffee, an omelet or other things that people use milk for. Anyways, I though I should inform u of the possible dangers of calcium deficiency in the east of Europe.

Robyn took us for a brief tour of the centre of Moldova, showing us a round and giving us insider knowledge on the recent riots and the corrupt politics (they recently decided to refit the entire Parliament building, even though only a small part was damaged in the riots for a cost of 30 000 000 dollars. Who owns the construction company? The son of the President). Was very interesting and I wasn't quite sure what to make of the place. The government hasn't been able to pay tram drivers or teachers for the last month, but the place still seemed to have a healthy bustling air about it. She then took us to the open air markets. They were crazy! Hold onto your wallet and plunge in! Every kind of product was crammed into narrow little alleys ad there seemed to be every citizen of Chişinău was there. Quite possibly was. There were disorientating things like just we left the markets I passed a girl on the street with a python wrapped around her shoulders. Why? I have no idea. There seemed to be no reason. And some others things of this nature. Robyn gave us 50 Moldovan leu (like 4 euros) for minibus ride out of the city and we felt confident to spend the rest of the day with this money. Its a cheap country. But its also fucked. So, we arrived at the Airport and walked down the road a bit and hitched a lift after a while with two Moldovan guys. One was pretty drunk (not the driver thankfully) but they were harmless. Of course, the guy was a terrible driver. Also, not only was there nowhere to clip the seat belts into, there were no seat belts! But this is something that you also become accustomed to in east Europe. And it is pretty rare to see any drivers wearing seat belts. What can you do? After they dropped us off, walked through a small town called Causeni. Took us a long walk up a hill before we found a suitable spot. Pretty picturesque view of another tiny town. After quite some time managed to get a lift with a couple of Russians to the border. We walk across the border and get a stamp from the Moldovan guards and as far as we knew we are in the Ukraine (stay tuned for how that turned out). So, we eventually get a lift after waiting for around two hours, during which time I changed some money. The people in the car were friendly and talked to us incessantly in Russian. Just after we got picked up we went through some kind of checkpoint (were told to keep quite, I am under the impression that they were smuggling drugs, i saw a very small pouch getting passed around) where the driver gave the guard a ticket. We didn't pay much attention at the time. So as we get into Odessa, not only do Felix and I realise we have no information about where we are supposed to be meeting everyone and have no map, but that we have also gotten a ride with another hidden taxi. Shit. So we get to roughly where we need to be, and the guy asks for some money (like 200 Ukrainian hyrvnia, which is 20 euro, highway robbery) and i check my wallet anyways and realise that I have changed 20 euros into shitty Moldovan money at the border. This is because i walked back into the border checkpoint to change the money and walked in the direction of Moldova. It is 10.30pm on a sat night. I start swearing extremely loudly and violently, which seems to put the taxi man of his guard. In the end we give him 100 Moldovan leu, around 8 euros. We wander around for ages, hop on a tram and it is other hitchhikers from the meeting, going down to the beach for sleeping and partying! Man, we got lucky to bump into them. So, we went with them and started meeting everyone. I set up my sleeping bag and went to sleep to the hypnotic sounds of bongo drums and waves crashing on the shore...