To the fruits of the land, to the beautiful women, to eternal friendship. Tiraspol, I toast thee!

Chişinău itself was an oddly surreal place, somewhat like I had expected yet different in other ways. As ridiculous as this may sound, you definitely seem to realise you’re not in the EU anymore, not that I am in any way expounding the wondrous virtues of EU membership.

On the overnight train from Bucharest, I shared a compartment with a German named Daniel and a Moldovan named Slavan. Slavan told us that upon arrival in the morning, he would take us to our respective hotels and then show us one of the city’s finest cafes. But life in this part of the world rarely goes according to plan.

Barely had we alighted onto the platform when we were nabbed by the militia. Daniel and I were both thinking, ‘terrific, welcome to the 3^rd world’ when it was Slavan they were after. His crime, in this land of carcinogens, alcoholism and general slovenliness? Smoking a cigarette on the platform. We were all hauled into a small room at the police station, awaiting a severe beating. He, for his transgressions, we for consorting with such a rogue.

Plomped down onto chairs and given the 3^rd degree, we were. Shouted at in our early morning haze. Poor Slavan had a thick Soviet-era manual – no doubt put together by the party’s finest apparatchiks at its finest hour – slammed in his face, as the eager militiaman quickly thumbed through somewhere near the middle, pointing out the fine print, regulation 7.12 – 6a (3): ‘Smoking on the train platform is illegal and punishable by a fine and severe beating.’ Daniel and I were ordered out after being interrogated, details noted down in the registry. Should we have left poor Slavan to his sad fate? Or insisted on sticking around to back our comrade up?

As we waited on the platform, we watched the same militiaman who had hastily bundled us into the small room approach other smokers and drinkers, grabbing a few by the lapels, others by the ears and trudging them off for their beatings.

Slavan escaped ‘lightly’, with about a 600 Moldovan lei fine (‘only’ about $45, which probably represented a good week’s wages for this IT technician). How about this for Byzantine logic? The fine was calculated as 20 lei/day times 30/days = 600 lei. This was Soviet logic at its finest, surely.

But this wasn’t the Soviet Union, of course: that was next. The rest of the Chişinău story will be revealed at a later time.

Proving that old shibboleths haven’t died away is the breakaway region of Transdniestr, where life seems to be at a standstill, where a land that time has forgotten, frozen in a state of inertia for posterity to enjoy marches on to the beat of its own drum.

Even now, it’s all still a blur and I struggle to recollect all that really happened. Or even if it did happen. I’m not sure. Is it even a real place?

In attempting to put all the pieces back together…with the incident from the Chişinău rail station in mind…and the fears and warnings I had heard about getting over the border of this region that no one in the world recognises except Abkhazia, I came prepared. So when I was hauled off the bus at the ‘border’, I failed to fret and maintained my calm.

I brought a peace offering to smooth my passage and inveigle myself into their good graces: some of Moldova’s finest spirit. The soldiers in the stygian little border hut seemed pleased as I cracked open the bottle. That was only the beginning of the cracking.

Hours later, as I staggered into the glaring sunshine after a few hours of pummelings and lashings, fragments of tooth stuck in my throat, blood all over my clothes, my passport and money gone, and my glasses nowhere to be found, I wondered as I wandered where it all went wrong. The first couple of toasts – to eternal friendship, happiness, the beauty of Moldovan women – went down a treat. But at some point, probably at around the same time that I realised the bus had probably got tired of waiting for me and had left with my luggage onboard, it all went a bit hazy.

It started with a sharp, dull blow to the back of my head as I stood up too quickly. Only I hadn’t actually stood up. I felt shards of glass in my hair, blood trickling down my nose and neck. It all went bright white for a brief moment, only for the bulb to flicker out and go black. My forehead was the next to receive the blow, though it was involuntarily self-inflicted. Later, as I lay there and saw them through goggly eyes rifling through my backpack and money, it wasn’t only my suppurating wealth that I was worried about, but the blood and guts oozing out of my prostrate body lying in a pool of its own mess.

After all that, I remembered only one vague warning: do not, under any circumstances stay more than 24 hours. Recalling that advice, and not wanting to miss out on Transdniestr’s charms, I said to hell with the dentist, to hell with my bankcards, and to hell with my passport: I would deal with all that later. I first went to the bus station to see about my rucksack, and luckily for me it was there. So at least I could stumble through town wearing my contacts. Time was already a-ticking away, so I quickly threw on a fresh pair of clothes, not even bothering to shower. Then I hit the town.

And what a motley cast of characters I encountered. Tiraspol, the capital of the region, has little to offer in the way of ‘sights’ – architecturally, that is. Though the women in Chişinău were beautiful, in Tiraspol they were out-of-this-world. And foreigners being in short supply, I had plenty of attention, though no doubt people must have felt sorry for poor old me, with a few chipped teeth, a blackened eye, lacerated face, broken nose, keeled over like a crippled tortoise – people probably took me for a wizened old professor, here to research the ways of the natives.

What a hospitable, funny lot of people. There was the woman at the bus station who thought I was hitting on her, refusing to sell me a ticket for my onward journey and the woman who helped me with translations, telling me exactly what the ticket seller thought I wanted – her number, which no, I didn’t, only a ticket, that is all, for the following day, to Odesa, the next stop on my journey, but I was told that not today, only tomorrow, come early to buy a ticket, but only to buy a ticket, not to talk to me, but then the translating woman suggested I do ask her for her number, maybe she was trying to instigate something, trouble perhaps, but no, she said, women in Tiraspol do this all the time, at first act offended and refuse something when what they really mean is yes (so no = yes), but I took leave of the station and went to find my accommodation, but that wasn’t as planned, was sent elsewhere much later but it all worked out, and then it was onto the city, the teenage boys behind the apartment block shaking my hands, thrusting a 2 liter bottle of Tiraspol’s finest brew in my face, insisting I drink and so I did – I wasn’t taking chances any more after the earlier incident – and then the long trek to the outskirts to see that fine football stadium that local team and perennial Moldovan league champions FC Sheriff Tiraspol play in, what a gorgeous complex in a city of decay and squalor and though I don’t know what Russia is like, or better, the old Soviet Union, surely this was it I thought to myself as I wandered past the bland conurbations on the outskirts, whose sameness and repetition (the functional Soviet style blocks of flats, so ugly, but pragmatic, not aesthetically pleasing, but do-able, and they work, most of the time, iffy plumbing and lighting notwithstanding) offend the eye, thank goodness for the local beauties, such sights for sore eyes, hardly fail to disappointment, but as I looked at that majestic stadium I thought to myself that here is the post Soviet-east encapsulated in this city, such a microcosm of the splendour and excess that pervades these places, wealth in the hands of the lucky few, that spiraling divide between the haves and have-nots, people poor and starving, struggling to get by while those at the top squirrel it all away in offshore accounts ('behind every great fortune lies a crime' - Balzac), some oligarch funneling a ton of money into FC Sheriff (and me supporting it by buying their home top) – whose history I should look into – for his own personal pride and mark of ambition, a team of a few local homegrown pieces of talent but also four Africans in their usual starting eleven from last season…

But I digress yet again.

I somehow talked my way past the overly eager security guard who didn’t want to let me through, and how was I supposed to explain in my awful Russian that here I was in front of a stadium which Uefa has lavished with praise and that I just had to see it and take photos and he said I could only go to the fan shop, nothing more, still I managed to sneak a photo or two, which he noticed, but on the way out he was thrilled I had bought the top and we talked about the upcoming World Cup, each offering our predictions (he said England, I didn’t, I will reveal my pick very soon in my pre-World Cup piece) and then I left him, that happy man, and traipsed back into town where a couple of crazy drunk women accosted me while I was innocently reading at a café, they were stunned I was reading, they said people don’t read in Tiraspol, and they insisted I join them, one of them going on and on about living in the Soviet Union – where are you from, I asked? – the Soviet Union! she exclaimed – but where were you born? – here, in the Soviet Union! – you mean Tiraspol? – no, Ukraine, the Soviet Union! – (oh dear), ah, so when it was the Soviet Union? – no, it is still the Soviet Union, this is the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is still alive! – and here we go, out with the mental journal, let me try and take all this down, but she rattled on and on and I sat there listening, then the vodka came, the toasts to the Soviet Union followed, then to England, then to my reading (?), and then it was onto the park to pay my respects to Lenin over and over and a bit later dinner at a whacked-out Sovietesque ballroom of utter kitsch, with yet more locals wanting to talk to me, shopkeepers, bank tellers, women on the street taking my picture – come here, boys, if you want instant fame and celebrity (girls may also like this place, but something tells me they wouldn’t be the same objects of curiosity) and so, for a nightcap, some new friends, I could barely sit down on my own with a beer at the café in the park before being invited to join a table of 8 lovely young locals (young, or not so young, they were all 24-28), 4 boys and 4 girls, most of them spoke great English and we had a lovely chat, of course I wasn’t allowed to pay for my beer(s), and we talked politics – they brought it up – and I wanted to know more about FC Sheriff, two of the boys were big fans, but the girls shushed me and insisted we talk about something else – and who was I to argue with such pretty girls after all? – and the rest of the details aren’t necessary, but even before my fun-filled day of adventure I was trying to convince myself to move here and find work (but really, not really such a thrilling place to live, I imagine, not much to do here, the curiosity and novelty factor wouldn’t last, surely) and then one of the girls, an English teacher in fact, said that her school really wanted a native English teacher – male preferably, coincidentally, not so ironically – and would I like to come in the following morning to meet the head of the school, because they legally can’t recruit from abroad, but have been waiting to see if teachers looking for work would happen to pass through – a sign! a sign! and I was thinking, yes! yes! but then remembered the border guards’ warning (vaguely remembered, but definitely remembered) and said that I couldn’t, besides, I’ve got myself another job lined up (I think, not sure, still ironing out the details), and need to give English teaching a break, but this was all so tempting, and earlier I had told myself that I would no doubt be coming back to Tiraspol, at the very least to see an FC Sheriff match (they usually qualify for the preliminary rounds of the Champions League), but next time I will drag a friend (male, no doubt) along with me to share in the fruits of my revels, but there I was earlier so tempted anyway, and now this, these nice people, having a laugh together, and as if I needed more convincing, there was the ever-so-lovely – stunning, really - Tanya (not the English teacher, but a different one, who works in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) pleading for me to consider staying, or at the very least stay another day to take her for dinner and I heartlessly had to turn the offer down and not risk the wrath of the border guards and there is more I can say about all of this (and her/them/others) but it is only to be discussed in person from this point on. I’ll leave it there.

It was a great day and night, and I can state without any compunction whatsoever that it was one of the most memorable 24 hours of my life.

I made it out okay the next morning. I did have to pay a small bribe upon leaving, for failing to ‘register’ in Tiraspol, but I didn’t complain about forking over the small sum of $5.

I also made it in okay. There was no blood, no smashed teeth, no blows to the ribs, no real shellackings of any kind. In fact, it was all so smooth and painless that I almost felt robbed. Five minutes at the border, and we were on our way. Hardly any questions. They didn’t even ask where I had planned on staying.

The next morning (this morning, in fact), I went to purchase my bus ticket for Odesa. And there was that same woman, giving me that same far-from refulgent smirk as the day before. I emphatically approached and bought my ticket. She then rattled away something in Russian, which I barely understood. When I asked her to repeat, she told me that I knew exactly what she was saying because my Russian was so good. No, it isn’t, I responded, so please repeat that. She did – it was all logistical stuff anyway – and I still hardly understood. I said my thanks and walked away.

But then cheekily – I was on such a high at this point – turned around and promptly asked her for her phone number. Her face turned a deep crimson and she then barked something at me. I turned on my heels, mirthfully chortling to myself, and then boarded for Odesa.

Tiraspol: highly recommended.