Psst, hi from Transnistria. Remember me?
I’m the guy who travels the world with content creation money.
And now, with AI taking my job and me having no money, the “travel” part of my story is a tad depressing.
So instead of going to the Maldives this summer, as most content creators do apparently, I took a flight to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.
And I’m not having any regrets because, quite frankly, this has been one of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve had, period.
From exploring Moldova’s chic but very brutalist main city, to going over the border to Tiraspol and Transnistria and having the driver try to hook me up with a Ukrainian girl named Tatiana, this holiday trip has been nothing but… a lot!
Part 0: Bucharest
Otopeni is the main airport of Romania. It’s also one of the most impossible places to go to in the world.
While in construction mode, the airport is just a big no-no. But unavoidable, since my layover with HiSky, a Moldovan company which proved to be clean, reliable and professional, was in Bucharest and for a few hours.
Landing in the capital, there were 32 degrees Celsius at 9:30 AM. So I took a bus, the wrong one, to Băneasa for a mall day, mistakenly failed to get a bus ticket on the wrong bus, being charged 80 lei for a “suprapreț” ticket by the “controlori” at the last stop of the bus to Therme.
If this was a precursor of what’s to come in Moldova, I thought for myself, then it’s going to be a fun one!
It wasn’t.
A few relaxing hours at the mall later, reading Pandora’s Star and having some spicy chicken strips from Popeye’s (they do be spicy!) I was landing in Chisinau in the beautiful sunset PM.
Part 1: Chisinau
Finding a cab was hard, and it hit me right then and there that Moldova was not as cheap as I’d thought. In fact, the Bolt was as expensive as it would’ve been from rusty Otopeni Airport to downtown Bucharest.
Ok, I’d thought, I’m going to need more Moldova Lei, which are about 0,25 x 4 for one Romanian Leu.
Apart from being smaller and much, much greener, and very clean, Chisinau is a mini version of Bucharest.
It has the same gruesome traffic jams, bad roads, terrible sidewalks, and so on.
The women here?
Probably the prettiest I’ve seen in my 15 years of travels across the planet.
Food? Good and somewhat cheap. Services? Not bad! Buying a bus ticket for Tiraspol from the local station? Impossible, as the cashier was dead drunk.
At 7:45 in the morning.
Chisinau has a long way to go, to make a long story short. While the city is split between modern and ruin, glass skyscrapers and malls and brutalist Soviet-era abandonments, the people felt undecided.
Russian is widely spoken everywhere, and there’s hardly any Romanian spoken at large, despite being the official language.
As for my day trip to Tiraspol? Travel agency it is, since the girl at the bus station was just… niet.
Part 2: Transnistria
So on my second-to-last morning, I visited a country that doesn’t exist.
A strip of land that believes itself to be something it is not.
Transnistria is any nostalgic person’s dream.
You have statues of Lenin, even though no one can explain why he deserves a statue; you have tanks aimed at Moldova, even if they haven’t worked in 30 years; you have a completely useless border control, and, as fits any invented “country”, you have Russian “peacekeeping” armed forces at the state’s imaginary border.
Though the border is imaginary, the weapons are real!
As with any Eastern European Christian country, nothing is done without God, as suggested by the frame of the tank placed right next to the gold-plated church.
For all those Romanians who believe that things were better before.
For all those who claim that Europeans are the slaves of Ursula.
For all those who have nothing to say, yet will say something anyway.
For all those who declare themselves sovereign, yet vote for the same thing for 36 years, failing to realise they are part of the problem.
Go and live in Tiraspol for a week.
And if, upon returning, you still have uncontrollable urges to put semi-literate “daddies” at the helm of the country, because you know better, because the truth was revealed to you, or because the West is Satan Country?
Move there permanently, because people there are already living exactly the way you dream.
How? Everyone has their own truth, but only the supreme leader’s word is the law.
Visas are cheap…
Part 3: Tatiana
„So do you enjoy sex?”
I’ve been to 35 countries so far and am not easily impressed by what people say or do.
You slowly get to know it all.
But there’s always something about when you’re on a deserted road heading towards Tiraspol, the capital of a country that’s under Russian command, with no cell service or any way to defend yourself, and the driver asks you if you like having sex.
Especially since he’s almost 2 meters tall and his name is Dimitri.
Heading to Tiraspol, as Dimitri was sipping on his third Coca-Cola Extra Coffee Vanilla drink, luckily, this time, the question sort of had a legitimate purpose, other than an actual invitation.
Thank God!
Here I was, on my way to Transnistria, going 70 kilometres per hour thanks to Moldova installing speed traps literally every 10 miles or so, but having no actual roads, talking about sex with a stranger who’s also a licensed travel agency guide/driver.
Awesome!
All of my fears of being abducted in Transnistria, and then some, faded after he finally said, well, there’s this girl he knows, Tatiana.
“Tatiana is my niece; she’s from Basarabia! She lives in Bucharest but will fly to Chisinau today. You are single, enjoy life, why not meet her?!”
Glory to the Heavens, Dimitri was just trying to hook me up with his “niece” Tatiana.
Of course her name’s Tatiana.
And she’s Ukrainian, blue eyes, blonde hair, shorter than me.
Long story short, Dimitri was incredible. We got to see everything in Transnistria in about 2 hours time, for 100 euros, which is EXACTLY what I’d asked the agency.
Sure, the sex part and the whole “pimping” game were just extras, and a bit uncomfortable at times, but this is a part of the world in which, unfortunately, stuff like this is not even taboo.
It’s just daily life, and there’s not much people can, or want, to do about it.
In fact, most Eastern Europeans are simply so confused, lied to, angry and sad, not to mention poor; these mishaps are the only things they live for.
Yes, even hooking up their “nieces” for some rich Romanian journalist.
I’m the rich Romanian Journalist.
At least I’m rich by Transnistrian standards.
In fact, I can’t even blame them.
Why? Because they’ve been exposed to a systemic lack of civic education for decades.
Part 4: Mind Control
It’s not their fault, but the fault of decades of corrupt stupidity, served as propaganda, which scrambled the brains of tens of millions in the region, for the greater good of the tsars.
Look at Romania.
A country in the European Union in which a large part of the population believes a guy who said that the name of the Gaza Strip has something to do with gases, or that the Danube was stolen by the French or the Austrians, has almost won the presidential elections.
Romania has been electing the same people in parliament since the Revolution, thanks to the same indoctrinated older folks, and scarily some of the new ones who are benefiting from party-protected jobs, and money, expecting the country to flourish and blaming the others when it doesn’t happen.
Blindly telling the same failure story over and over again.
Not being able to understand that they are writing the story.
I’m not sure where Transnistria, Moldova, or even Romania will be in 10 years time from today.
But I am certain that, without a change in mentality, these countries will keep telling the same stories for at least another decade to come.
It will take an actual change in demographics, for the old generation to simply meet its natural end, for these countries to head in the other direction for good.
I know I’m being a bit radical, or dramatic, but if you live in one of these countries, just looking around you, at the people around the table, colleagues from work, neighbours and so on is usually enough for you to silently nod and say “yup, that’s exactly how it is.”
Part 5: Sex?
So, did I ever hook up with Tatiana?
Does she exist?
Is she as beautiful as her “uncle” said she was?
Yes, Tatiana does exist.
And yes, curiosity killed the cat, so I messaged her, and she was really sweet.
Blue eyes, blonde hair, about my height but a bit shorter.
Tatiana was perfect.
Romania perfect, Transnistria perfect, Moldova perfect. Just perfect.
Well, at least according to her WhatsApp profile picture.
What about the having-fun part of the night?
Please subscribe to my OnlyFans to learn more about my last night in Chisinau.
P.S.: This last part is obviously a joke, but just in case you can’t tell, here’s your line of text that confirms it for you without any ounce of a doubt.
P.P.S.: I’m still not sure if Tatiana was Dimitri’s niece or just his, you know… But again, nothing happened between us. I just simply said hello over text to see if she was real, and that was that. I’m sure she’s a great girl, but as for letting a pushy driver set me up on a blind date, I’m simply not that guy.
