ukraine
On The Way to Odessa: The Road Is Life
The road caught us, flexible and free like a cat. Its yellow, silently smiling eyes followed us. Sooner than I realized, we were guided by the flow of the events.
Again and again the magic of things revealed itself in any rides and in the simple beauty of our encounters. Angels and savers, monks and royals arrived to us. Speaking without language, skipping the barriers of words and indifference. The embarrassment of the hugs at the end of each ride and the laughs of the non-understood are an exercise of mimic: training for gesture and instinct.
Un-pre-dic-ta-ble. The road is life and it is a teacher.
The Importance of Border Stamps
Still filled with happiness in our hearts from the last ride, we walk up to the Ukrainian border guard. Hmmm, we could have known better. We give him our passports and as he flicks through them he says: "Where is your arrival stamp for the Ukraine?"
"We didn't get one", I answered.
"Impossible", was his simple reply.
A couple of days earlier, while hitching from Moldava into the Ukraine, we ended up in a weird Moldavian transit zone. That's how we didn't get an arrival stamp when we got to the Ukraine, we explain. Apparently this is a big deal in the Ukraine. We got to sit on a wooden bench, while they drank beer, let Moldavians through, and sort of checked out our story.
Border crossing in Transnistria
Today started as early as possible. I had no time to waste. I was heading to Odesa (Ukraina) from Chisinau (Moldava) for the 789 hitchhiking festival, a trip of only 180 kilometers. But I was up for a big challenge: crossing the borders of a country that officially doesn't even exist and that has scary stories attached to it.
I am talking about Transnistria, a region of Moldova located in the east of that country. From one day to another they declared independence and put borders around their self-declared state. I had heard many stories about the border, it would be nearly impossible to cross. As I am always up for a new challenge, this seemed like just the right mission for a hitchhiker like me.
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