Wednesday, 15 August 2012

 

Start: Tiraspol 10:30

Arrival: Odessa (UKR) 14:00

Total: 123 km

 

 

 

 

The next morning after a good breakfast, we were back on the road, heading east. Transnistria is not a large country, just a thin strip of land between the river Dnestr in the West and the Ukrainian plains in the East. In less than an hour we reached the border to the Ukraine. A few months earlier, a football fan from Luxembourg had been to the UEFA Euro Championship in Kiev and he had told scare stories of terrible roads, worse drivers and random road checks where you had to pay money on trumped-up charges. What would await us in the borderland to the East?

 

The customs checkpoint looked rather innocuous. An officer wanted me to open the hatch so he could check the car. I obliged and he asked where we were from, then started to chat to me - in German! His German was about as good as my Russian, basic but fun to dabble around in. He told me - I think - that a friend of his was working in Strasbourg, so not too far from Luxembourg. After some more friendly chitchat and a furtive glance into the back of the car, he seemed satisfied and I was allowed to proceed to the registration line. We exchanged friendly smiles and I, already quite enamoured with the people of Ukraine, steered the car to the line a few meters ahead.

 

Strangely enough, the cubicles in which the officers sat were located on the passenger's side, so Sonia started to talk to them. The lady shook her head and motioned for me to get out and talk to her. Strange, but OK. I showed her our passports, but she asked me to spell my name, address, telephone number and a host of other things which she typed, letter by letter, into her computer. It took a while.

 

Meanwhile, I glanced at a large announcement prominently displayed to my right. It proclaimed, in English and Russian, that all officials were required to be polite, efficient and that all kinds of bribery were strictly forbidden. The text further urged travellers to rat on anyone who did not follow these procedures by calling the helpline number below. This did not sound like a government that encouraged corruption. In fact, quite the contrary. The current government seemed very determined to weed out the bad apples among their state employees. Commendable. I also liked the newly passed language law, as explained on billboards around town: use the language you're most comfortable with, be it Ukrainian or Russian. Sadly it got revoked right after the coup in 2014.

 

Meanwhile, the border employee had finished my file and was now looking at Sonia's passport. "Kto ona?", she asked. I motioned to my sister. It was her, obviously. Sonia got ready to get out of the car, but the lady gestured for her to stay put. She repeated her question. I was non-plussed. "Sjestra," I said, she was my sister. That seemed to satisfy her. She typed a few letters into her computer, presumably "sister" or maybe "there's someone else in the car too, looks nice and innocent and I've already spend too much time typing in French place names" or some such, then handed me the documents with a summary "Good luck". Again! Later, we figured that maybe this was the Russian way of translating their Счастливый путь, "Have a good trip", literally "lucky way", into English. In any case, with Sonia remaining quite unregistered, we were on our way to Odessa.

 

 

 

The highway to Odessa was indeed less well maintained than the roads in Moldova and Transnistria. Not as bad as in rural Romania, but there were bumps and potholes and in many places, the tarmac at the edge of the road curled slightly upwards into a sharp, tire-piercing wave. I had never seen anything like that before. We encountered this all over the country, but never anywhere else. A case of sloppy roadworks? Or was it done on purpose, to encourage the cars not to veer too much to the right? We actually liked the Eastern European custom of lorry drivers to keep all the way to their right in order to let the faster cars pass. Not so easy to do with this tarmac crest. Still we made good progress and soon arrived on the outskirts of Odessa.

 

As we only had two weeks for the whole trip, we had decided against spending a whole day in the city. In retrospect, Sonia and I think that was a mistake. We didn't get to see the beautiful 19th-century buildings, the impressive Potemkin stairs, actually I cannot say that we saw anything much of Odessa at all. Instead, I wanted to spend a day on the Black Sea and then head North to Kiev. Maybe not the best choice, but there you have it.

 

I had booked a hotel on the outskirts of the city, a few blocks from the beach. Odessa is a major city on the Black Sea, and traffic was accordingly dense and chaotic. Soon we were stuck in gridlock. I looked into the rearview mirror. The car behind me was getting dangerously close to my bumper. Cars behind were starting to form a third lane out of the two existing ones. It seemed like they were trying to get out of the way. Was there an ambulance behind us? Suddenly, I saw two big black jeeps pushing their way past the jam, ploughing quite fast over the sidewalk, past pedestrians and, a little further on, veering around trees and past the gridlock at the roundabout. Too bad all this happened so fast, we didn't even have time to take a picture.

 

We had trouble locating our hotel, because Sonia couldn't read the street names. This had nothing to do with the Cyrillic script, but with the fact that the streetname plates were not located at the street corner, but instead were attached to the facades of the houses and most houses in this area were gated behind walls or high bars. It seemed like the residents were really afraid of burglars. Or maybe they were playing pickaboo with the tourists.

 

When we finally found the hotel, it turned out to be quite a kitschy faux-medieval building. Still, it looked nice enough and the owner's son even spoke some English. Strangely enough they didn't want to see our passport at all. We didn't even have to register, they just wanted us to pay upfront for our stay. Well, why not. We let them know that we would be leaving tomorrow around eight, as we wanted to arrive in Kiev before nightfall. They handed us a key and we made our way to our room, walking along a strange corridor with unusual rounded corners. The architect had sure created an usual space there.

 

Our room was quite large and the bed was alright but as soon as I opened the door to the bathroom, a wave of nauseating smell engulfed me. We inspected the place. I had never smelled anything so musty, it felt like you were breathing in the fungus spores of Mirkwood! There was no window either to let in some fresh air. We quickly retreated to the bedroom. We would not be needing a shower tonight.

 

 

 

We quickly changed clothes, then I took some deep breaths and steeled myself for a quick apnoe-pee. Number two would have to wait until Kiev as well. Suddenly, I heard Sonia give out a squeek. What had happened? I dashed back into the bedroom. She was holding the hotel dossier in her hand. "They are offering a special "half-price" if you use the room for only one to four hours." She giggled. We were spending the night in a Ukrainian love hotel! Maybe that explained why they hadn't bothered with our passports.

 

Be that as it may, it was almost three in the afternoon and we wanted to get to the Black Sea. We set out on foot. It was a warm and pleasant day, and the residential area where our hotel was located was quiet and deserted. Suddenly, we came to a gaping hole in the tarmac. What had happened here? A sinkhole? Treacherous groundwater? An ineffable plan gone wrong? It looked most intriguing. I do not want to imagine if we had driven along this road at nighttime.

 

At the end of the street, a spectacular view opened up over the Black Sea. There, far on the horizon, not even 150 kilometers straight ahead, lay the Crimean peninsula, a place that I definitely want to visit in the future. And when you turned your gaze to the South, you could see the majestic minarets of Istanbul rising up before your inner eye. I have a very good imagination. The Black Sea, for me, has always been a crossroad from the wind-swept steppes of Europe to the fabled cities in the East, from the legends of the Greek to the lore of the Georgian mountains and the mystifying marvels that beckon beyond.

 

There was a steep wooden staircase leading from the street down to the beach. To each side, heather and brambled weeds danced in the wind. The path had seen better days, many of the planks very broken or missing. We cautionsly made our way down to the shore. This was no fancy Nicean promenade with shops and posh restaurants, but thankfully it was no overcrowded tourist trap either. No loudspeakers blaring out annoying summer hits, no Dibblers vying for your money. Instead, we found a row of battered and barred-up beach houses and a delightfully clean and fine-grained sandy beach. There were about half a dozen families enjoying the august sun, bathing, picnicing and playing ball. We took off our shoes and found a quiet spot all for ourselves. The water was too cold for me to swim, but I'm happy to say that my ankles have felt the chilly waves of the Black Sea lapping around them. After a while, a slight drizzle set in and the temperature dropped noticeably. We packed up and called it a day.

 

Yes, we could have driven to the city centre for a nightcap and a walk around town. But we had seen so much during the last few days, it was hard to believe that barely six days ago, we had scrambled up a forest path in Slovakia, and since then had driven through the Hungarian Puszta, braved a Romanian mountain pass, fallen in love with the capital of Moldova and been to a country that officially did not exist. We needed a quiet lie-in. So we spend the evening in our hotel room, watching a funny Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin movie, Biodome. Trying not to drink too much water so as to limit the visits to our very own private biodome next door.