May 6 - June 13, 2010
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Stage 4: Ukraine, TranDniester, Moldova, Gaugazia and Crimea
While at the Budapest airport, our iPad was stolen when we left it unattended for a few minutes! This was a major event for us because we had stored many, many maps and other kinds of information on it about the many countries and cities on our itinerary. All of a sudden we were "on our own" with no maps and only sporadic internet access in hotel lobbies and internet cafes. One positive note in all this is that we were forced to reach out and ask for help, particularly from young folks who tend to know more English than their parents, and, as a result, we had a chance to meet many wonderful people.
The first order of business upon arrival in Odessa, Ukraine, was to book sleeper train tickets to Simferopol, the capitol of Crimea, for two days later. We found it too difficult to do alone since the clerks did not speak English so we put it off until later.
We went to McDonalds for lunch instead!
This is the view from our hotel room.
The next morning we hired a driver for the day to take us to several nearby places. This was one tough dude. We were glad to have him on our side as the day progressed.
First up was TransDniester, a breakaway province of Moldova which is famous for its continued allegiance to the Soviet Union, and illicit trafficking in drugs, arms and human beings. We had to pay a total of $160 in "tips" to the officials at the border as we entered, then exited on the other side, and then later in the afternoon, returned through the same checkpoints on our way back to Odessa.
Next stop was Moldova.
The third destination was Komrat, the capitol of an autonomous region within Moldova called Gagauzia.
The next day we did a little sightseeing in Odessa while we waited for the evening departure of our sleeper train.
The day before we had asked these young folks who spoke some English to help us buy our tickets to Simferopol, the capitol of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. We all went to the train station to get round trip sleeping compartment tickets for two. It took forever, but they assured us everything was all set. We were allowed to wait in the first class waiting room where we had purchased the tickets so we knew we had achieved our goal.
How wrong we were!
Our "space for two" was a small table and two bunks along the aisle of this sleeper car!
Clearly not what we expected!!!! ... But we did meet lots of pleasant people so it was not as bad as it seemed when we first climbed on board.
Among those we met was Nataliya who took us under her wing. She helped us get our tickets straightened out for the return journey, then got us into town and even hunted up a place for breakfast at an early hour.
We spent the day seeing the sights of Simferopol and then found our way back to the train station for the return journey.
Nataliya had come through for us and we had a very comfortable night.
Upon our arrival back in Odessa, we found that we had shared the train with lots of young soldiers.
We had several hours before our flight back to Budapest so we toured many of the major sights of Odessa.
The Hungarian landscape as we came in to land in Budapest.
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