Or should it be Moldova and I? Maybe “Me and Moldova”?
One way or the other, I’m hoping it’s not really something I have to worry about, because Moldova’s not a place I’d like to return to anytime in the near future.
Not that there’s anything with Moldova — far from it. My impression of Moldova, gathered from approximately 33 hours in the country (8 of which were spent driving and 8 more of which were spent sleeping), was that it’s a perfectly decent place. I ate good food while I was there, saw hummus and peanut butter in the grocery store, and went to a fairly interesting museum (where I saw dinosaur bones!). Nevertheless, I hope that if I ever return, it’ll be under entirely different circumstances.
If you read my last post, you’ll remember that I was preparing to take a quick trip to Moldova to renew my visa. Those of us who were going to Moldova gathered in Kyiv on Sunday evening. There were 26 of us and we were accompanied by two Peace Corps staff on a chartered bus. The trip was supposed to take about 11-12 hours and we were told that Peace Corps Ukraine had done their best to communicate with the Ukrainian Embassy and the border police about our arrival and visa issues, the possible hang-up being that nearly all of us had expired visas (they expired about a month ago, and due to some dramatic changes and confusion about the new visa laws, we hadn’t been able to get them renewed yet).
So we got on our bus at 7:30 p.m. and left Kyiv. We were all in a fairly good mood, enjoying the company of friends we hadn’t seen in a while and the prospect of a unique road trip ahead. By the time midnight rolled around, though, we were all fairly uncomfortable. It’s hard to sleep on a bus under any circumstances, but the roads in Ukraine are absolutely not smooth enough to enjoy a comfortable night of sleep, even if you try to knock yourself with 3 Benadryl, an eye mask, and ear plugs (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…)
At around 3:30 in the morning, we arrived in the border town. Most of us were awake at this point, and if we weren’t, we quickly woke up when the border police got on the bus and started asking us questions. It turns out that they weren’t expecting us after all, and in fact they appeared to have no clue what to do with a bus filled with Americans attempting to exit Ukraine on expired visas. Oops.
So we sat on the bus, which was pretty chilly once the driver turned off the engine to save gas, waiting at the border for somebody to figure out what to do with us. The administrative assistant who accompanied us spent most of that time on the phone, communicating with Peace Corps staff and God-knows-who-else. We saw the sun come up at the border around 7:30 in the morning. And that was around the time that they appeared to have come to a solution for our border issue — each of us was given a written warning, documenting our attempt to cross the border on an invalid visa. This required us to go inside the border station in pairs to fill out paperwork. I don’t know exactly what took so long after that, but it was another several hours before we finally pulled out of the station.
When all was said and done, we spent eight hours just at the border station. We still had another four hours ahead of us on the way to the capital city. We finally arrived in Chișinău at around 4:30 in the afternoon, approximately 21 hours after we’d left Kyiv.
Needless to say, we were all fairly relieved to get off the bus. We spent the evening seeing a little bit of Chișinău — I ate dinner with a group of friends at a really cute little Moldovan cafe and then we all gathered at a bar for a beer. The next day we wandered around the city – went to an interesting museum and ate some pretty decent pizza.
And then it was back on the bus — just barely 24 hours after we’d arrived in Moldova. The return trip was significantly less eventful and significantly more subdued, considering how tired we were. It only took 12 hours for us to get back to Kyiv — which certainly made us happy.
I finally got home this morning at 4:15 a.m., after taking the train home from Kyiv last night. I slept almost the entire 12 hour ride and slept another 5 hours after I got home. Guess I was a bit tired after all that travelling.
So now I’m home and ready to go to school tomorrow, and rather excited to have a one-day school week! Then next week it’s back to school for one week, and then off to Kyiv again for the upcoming HIV/AIDS training. Hard to believe that January is nearly over and soon it’ll be February. Time really flies when you’re spending half of it travelling to and from various places!
