Thursday, March 01, 2007

So March Is Here, Why Not Let Me Sleep Till June?!?!?

While I know that I said wake me up in March, I decided March here sucks, as does the end of February! The weather is awful (it was like -18 a few days ago, tons of snow). Now all the snow is melting and well it is a little different than the states. See they don’t clear the roads or sidewalks from snow, so there is melting snow every, which has taken on this putrid toilet brown/ blood in your stomach black look! Which you trudge through no matter where you are (even inside sometimes I feel). But enough about the weather, only people who aren’t really friends discuss the weather right?

Moving on, February came and went…with one huge event…MY BIRTHDAY! And we celebrated it like Moldovan’s know how…canned veggies, pan-fried chicken, and a ton of cognac. It was a small gathering of my family a Moldovan and a few Volunteers, but it was a great time. I got a cactus, some cologne, a book, and…A BOTTLE OF COGNAC! But enough about that stuff, onto a few interesting things that have happened throughout the long but short month of February.

To begin, I got out of Moldova for the first time! I took a trip to Chernovtsy, Ukraine. It was a great getaway even though it was for work. There we attended an OSCE (Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe) conference which was being held to draft legislation for cooperative management of the Nistru River Basin. It was really cool, but a long and arduous Russian weekend. While I spoke very little during the conference, at lunches and dinners I was a hit! Out of every adventure comes at least one great story, and this had to be the bus ride to Ukraine. So here it is…oh man I don’t even know where to start.

We got to the bus station at around 9:00am. The temperature was a blustery 2 degrees, with a humidity of “wet sauna” and a wind speed of “I didn’t really need that hat anyways”. Enough to say our party of 7 was an incredibly happy and chipper crew when we met. As we approached the bus, I could not help but laugh. I mean, this was by far the worst bus that I have ever seen. I mean I have seen some buses, in movies that they try and make look like the worst nightmare on the face of the earth…but this one beat it. I mean I couldn’t have imagined a bus any shittier than this. It was a Hungarian, circa…well…Stalin, and was, but of course, USSR RED. I believe that every single member of our party at one point before entering that bus made some statement to the likes of, what the &^!(^#!@+ is this. In addition to which as I entered they asked…do you have buses like this in America. I couldn’t help but laugh and say no!

So as we sat down, I realized…this bus is ridiculously cold. But it had been sitting all night in the frozen Moldovan bus station, so I figured it would get better. This was confirmed by our bus driver, and also by the fact that we each took a little nip of Cognac for a little “fire in the stomach”. This was followed by eating an open faced sandwich with Sala, which is in essence the layer of fat from a pig between the skin and the meat…with some seasoning on it. At first I said no as I try and stay away from seasoned pig fat, but an anecdote made me change my mind. That was, “When there was a conflict between Russia and Napoleon, each had cognac (insert second shot here). Because of that the soldiers were willing to fight. However, Russia had Sala and Napoleon did not, and because of that the Russian Soldiers were ABLE to fight, and therefore won”. Next thing I knew I was gnawing on some seasoned pig fat…who could argue against that.

As we set off for Ukraine, we began what would become an 8.5 hour, well, nightmare. An hour into it, we had gone roughly 20 Km, and I was wondering if the bus would ever warm-up, or stop smelling like gasoline. Quickly I realized no, when I looked into the back of the bus and saw that two windows were broken and gasoline enriched wind was blowing freely through the cabin. At that, I hunkered down, and got ready for a long day. 6 hours later we came to the boarder, where we had to go through border control and the routine of passport stamping. The process was going pretty well, until I looked out the window to a Ukrainian Soldier holding my passport and talking to our bus driver, next thing I know I was in a Ukrainian military outpost, with snow beginning to fall, trying to explain in Russian why I had been in Moldova for so long, why I was traveling to Ukraine, what my business was, and why I was with 6 other Moldovan’s including 4 from trans-Niestria! To say the least it was a bit intimidating…but at least it was warm!

When we finally got through the border, and began our way through Ukraine, the snow really started coming down…and also blowing into the freakin broken windows! Here I am, 7 hours into a freezing bus ride, and suddenly snow start settling on the seats in the back! I was not happy. Despite all these problems, we made it, and maybe in my next installment I will tell you some more about the city.

Hope you enjoyed this installment; I enjoyed reliving that fateful bus ride all over again. Much love!

CJ