No Visa Required - Part 2: Kiev - Chişinău

This post describes the best train part of our "No Visa Required" trip from Kiev to Chişinău, i.e. going from Ukraine the beautiful country of Moldova.

The main purpose of this trip was to experience the famous 3TE10 trains and derivatives. Any fan of Russian diesel trains appreciate its distinct sound, though it is not up to date with respect to the European emission standards:



My travel companion Gilbère recommended a special route, which goes straight trough Moldova, 10 hours of train ride for less than 300 km. Yes, this is going to be a very slow ride.

Again, as usual with the travels which Gilbère books, some dramatic accident happenes quite closely to our trip. In this case this particular train derailed and crashed into a freight train a few weeks after we took it.

From Reuters.

So, at 1:30 in the morning we were waiting at the railway station at Kiev. We had a shared compartment for four people and no idea who the other two would be. Looking around me at the platform, I mostly saw various versions of dodgy training suit wearing youngsters, ceaselessly spitting on the ground, I feared the worst.

Things turned out very positive though, a very nice Moldovan couple from Israel were our companions. The guy immediately offered us vodka and bread with cold meat. After a few shots, the mood was better and the lady told him off to keep it low.

After a nice sleep-in there was breakfast:

In the morning, we were also approaching the Moldovan border, and officers with very cute looking dogs entered the coach.

As an officer I would really feel my authority compromised by all the passengers addressing the cute dogs.

We crossed the Dniestr river, which separates Ukraine from Moldova. Housing and villages looked more shabby in Moldova I must admit. Ukraine seems to be better off.

Dniestr river.

This was also when the electrification of the tracks stopped, and a 2TE10 was pulling us across the country side. Beautful!

Unfortunately windows could not be opened, except for the one in the toilet, where I could stick out a hand to capture this scenery.

2 or 3TE10 pulling us uphill.

At a first stop in Ocniţa, I tried to blend in with the locals, meaning wearing plastic slippers, unfortunately I did not bring a training-suit.

"Technical stop" (Yes, those slippers are intentional.)

A scent of coal hangs in the air, since the coaches are all coal fired.

Coal furnace for the coach.

During the stop, babushkas try to sell their goods. In particular suspect where the shrimps, far away from any natural sources.

Shrimps, anyone?

Scenery was epic, though. A bit fantasy like, possibly close to Ungheni, the mountains at the horizon is possibly already Romania.

A stop at the train station of Ungheni was only 300 meters from the Romanian border. I felt tempted to run there, but the stop was too short. Our diesel trains was changed to a 3TE10 but only 2 units. Gilbère notes that Moldovans tend to mix all the train sub-units up.



We will make a decent video of the entire trip later, hopefully.

And the ride goes on and on and on...

And finally in the evening (19:35) we arrived in Chişinău!

Chişinău, possibly the least known capital of all European countries. Gilbère was talking for ages about the blessings of the "Hotel Cosmos". This wonderful marvel of a reminiscent communist era, is a functioning time machine. As soon as you enter the main entrance you are taken 30 years back in time.

An astonishing lift took us to our rooms (checkout Gilbère's Facebook profile for more stunning pictures of the lift at Hotel Cosmos.)

Hallways of Hotel Cosmos could probably provide a suitable location for various gory movies.

Redrum. Redrum. Redrum.

The interior reminded me of wallpaper artwork from Windows 3.1.

During our trip in Ukraine, I noted a systematic absence of toilet paper at most lavatories. Therefore, as a rule, we always kept some rolls with us in stock. Staggering with the superior quality of the rooms, along with the very affordable price tag per night (I somehow suspect a money laundry here), I momentarily abandoned this fundamental law of traveling in eastern Europe.
After checking in and entering my room, I indeed found a very decent toilet, which was a very pleasant surprise. Cheerful and enthusiastic of this marvelous hotel Gilbère has discovered, I found comfort at this wonderful spot to do my serious and urgent business.

Now take a close look at the picture below. What is missing here?

After a proper formulated text message ("Where is the f*cking toilet paper!") Gilbère organised a rescue team which eventually resolved my plight.

But Chişinău is not just Hotel Cosmos, yes it is hard to believe, but another gem is the Hotel Chişinău, located just 100 meters away from the Hotel Cosmos.

Hotel Chişinău, "Stalin's style hotel".

You simply got to love their commercial video!
In the opening scene they blatantly boast of being a "Stalin's style hotel" , and the personnel are really making a genuine effort to act natural and make you feel at ease. The movie itself is truly a master piece on multiple levels, a hybrid of Stalin and Gheorghe Zamfir. Highly recommended! Five hammers and sickles!

Watch it and give it thumbs up, they surely deserve it:




Our commie architecture genes were truly pleased when passing by the interesting reminiscences of ancient times.

True Asberger people will notice a little break in the symmetry in the top right, where a barrier between two rooms where removed.

One part of the so called city gates of Chişinău. Concrete on concrete.

The gate of Chişinău. Or at least one side of it.

We did not stay long in Chişinău. For dining we highly recommend the "Pegas" restaurant. Excellent!

Not much to tell here, but coming up: Part 3 - Tiraspol, an open air museum for commie lovers!

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No Visa Required - Part 1: Kiev

During easter, Gilbère and I went for a little round trip in eastern Europe, covering Ukraine (Kiev, Chernobyl, Chernivtsi and Lviv), Moldova (Chişinău) and the rouge nation Transnistria (Tiraspol).

This will be the first post in the series, covering impressions from Kiev.

Flying from Warsaw, I arrived at the Boryspil airport in Kiev, where Artem (PhD student at a laboratory) picked me up. The ride to Kiev central station took us past an enormously large area of commie blocks, of which I unfortunately do not have any picture of, only some video footage. (Gilbère and I work on a full movie of the trip btw.)

The main railway station is truly a massive sight as well. Overwhelmingly, both from the inside as well as from the outside.

Kiev railway station

Subway system is build in the usual communistic neoclassicism, Kiev also features one of the deepest of the subways world wide, possibly only surpassed by Pyongyang in North Korea. However no official records exist of that, surprisingly...

Entrance to the subways are equipped with blast doors in case of nuclear attacks. This way the subway system also serves as a bomb shelter.

Blast door, not sure if door is sliding in from the side, or raised from the ground.

We moved down to the Maidan square, to take a look at the barricades. The transition is quite sudden. Kiev is a beautiful city, and looks totally normal, and suddenly you round a corner and run into a war zone full of barricades...

"I will not move, nor will I be moved."

Gilbère noted that most of the tents, represent various villages all around Ukraine.

Euro trash, possibly.

The building of the labour union. Employees have a day off, it seems.

The feeling at the square was very peaceful, felt more like some weird festival going on, where some people were wearing camouflaged clothing. The only real threat where people with tame pigeons and those guys dressed up as bunnies approaching you, trying to convince you to give them money. You must stay clear of them, no matter how sorry you feel for them walking around in silly costumes.

Gilbère prefers (just like me, most of the times) to what we call "minimize cross sections", meaning, trying to act locally and reduce possible vectors of approach for people targeting tourists.
This means, for instance, Gilbère takes pride in not to run around with a tourist camera and a sky blue jacket, but with a polyethylene shopping bag and dressing shabbily.

This time, though, he sticks out:

Hey Gilbère, recheck your cross section... 

Not surprisingly, the Sberbank Russia has a hard time.

On the entrance only a very laconic message was put up:

Handwriting says "Putin - fart"

Leaving the Maidan square, things got very civilized again. A few of my best pictures:

Governmental building. Note guard to the lower left.

Hotel Kiev, not sure if it was still being used.

During the grey spring time, a coffee franchise stuck out with their "space-cake" pink snails, forming obvious targets for hostile missiles from abroad. Someone should warn those people.

Most of the trip was just usual sightseeing. Going a bit further outside the most touristic parts, you can still find very beautiful houses, most of them in good state. Also (at least seen with Danish eyes) astonishing little trash is lying around. My hometown Aarhus is a filthy mess compared to the general cleanliness of Kiev.

Random corner somewhere just north east of the city center of Kiev.

At the end of the day we went to a faboulous Geogian restaurant Gilbère recommended, the НІКАЛА РЕСТОРАН. Place was deserted, yet the food was great indeed, and we got our personal live musician.

Those where ხინკალი, a famous Georgian dish. In order not to offend people, you must eat them in a special way, not spilling the liquid phase inside, Gilbère insisted.

(...)

We went back to our commie style hotel "Експрес", after a detour to the railway station and a strange posh karaoke bar. Hotel was great, I give it three hammer and sickles out of five.

Not much to be told, next day we had to get up early for the trip to Chernobyl. Stay tuned...

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Full picture album available on picasa and google+..

Dresden I - A Wave of Capitalism

Yes, I finally bought myself a new camera, a Nikon D3100 with a 18-55 VR lens, which was recommended by several people. I got it just in time before I continued my tour across Europe. After finishing my work at CERN, Geneva and visiting Brussels, I went to Dresden and Bratislava, and wanted to do Berlin. Tour ended rather chaotic though:

• checking into a Hotel in Bratislava, I realized I left my passport in Aarhus. I've been crossing 4 countries with no passport. (I will not refer to the concurrent Danish-German border issues here.)
• going back from Bratislava to Dresden: Slovakian train conductor checks my ticket, says it's no good. I need a new one. I protest, but have to pay. A bit later new Czech train conductor arrives, says again ticket is no good. Ticket from Slovak colleague is also no good, even after heavy protests, I have to pay again.
• In Dresden I also lost my fairly new mobile phone. It was a HTC Desire, and what really bugs me is all the data which is gone with it. Of course, I did not encrypt it. Wish it was my laptop which got lost, which is fully encrypted. (Tracing it from phone company not allowed. Weird: after all those apps which main purpose is to trace where you are and what you do. But if I want to access my own data...!? Wtf!)
• Last day in Bratislava I got a bad flu, which still persists. This made me cancel the Berlin part and a course I wanted to follow in Mainz.
• One credit card was recently lost in Brussels, another forgotten in Aarhus, my last one hit the VISA 30 day limit the last day of my travels. So, suddenly I was in Dresden with no credit cards and almost no cash! Never felt so free...

Anyway, what I wanted to tell about was how the face of Dresden radically changed since 1989. Former chancellor Helmut Kohl was speaking of "Blühende Landschaften", which characterize this transformation process, but note the subtle double meaning of it, as it also can refer to nature taking over deindustrialized and depopulated areas. :-D

Dresden was more or less obliterated at the end of the second world war, and much of the voidness was filled with socialistic type architecture. Just north of the main railway station there is the Prager Straße, which more or less looked like this in 1986:

Prager Straße, 1986, with the "Inter Hotel" and the "Restaurant International".
Taken from http://flic.kr/p/4A6gVS

More or less the same buildings are there, however massively renovated and now full of "standard shops" you find in any city in Germany.

Prager Straße, 2011.

A few more impressions:

Prager Straße 1991. From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastgermanpics/2197012589/in/photostream/

Same street 2011, guess the fountain was turned and moved a bit further to the north.

Prager Strasse 1991: Aluminum padded building which served as a central store.

Panels were partially reused for a new building.

Over the socialistic soviet-style reminiscences, a wave of capitalism crushed, cladding the dilapidated buildings with its usual representatives: Karstadt, Douglas, Jack Wolfskin, McDonalds, Deutsche Bank, Esprit... they are all there, effectively removing any uniqueness, rendering the shopping street identical with that in Frankfurt, Stuttgart or any other medium sized town.

I searched for a few remanences which still prevail from socialistic times. Some are easy to find, but they get less:

A crystal tree at Pirnaisches Tor.

Robotron was the chip and computer manufacturing company of the former GDR.

Blühende Landschaften, in its other meaning. (Note the GDR typic lanterns.)

I was somewhat surprised how difficult it actually is to find some industrial wastelands. Way over 90 % of the entire city is renovated in some way, I spent an entire day on bike going through clean streets without finding what I was looking for. Even asking the locals did not really help much.

Almost all of Dresden is fully renovated, and streets look like this.

But then, after roaming the city for an entire day, I finally found somenthing:

Dresden 2011, somewhere near Zwickauer Str.

Garages with characteristic "droplet" shaped lamp.

Those lanterns are mostly mounted on poles made of concrete.

Black graffiti says: "Here a MURDER happened! A piece of art was destroyed."

Dresdner Frauenkirche, 1991.

... and again, as in 2011. That part seen in the former picture is the darker left of the church.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Dresden was how easy it was to get in contact with people. Nomatter where I were, people came to chat, and they openly discussed anything about their lives, the former GDR etc.

I had a very long chat with this guy at a flea market. Note the cylinder of mono-crystalline silicon at the lower edge in the middle of the picture. (He wanted 10 € for that.)

Reminiscences from second world war can of course also be found, this one I found interesting:

"Museum, do not bomb"

I could not understand what it said, my very limited knowledge of the Russian language only identified "Museum, do not...?", so I decided to wait next to the inscriptions until I found some Russian tourists to help me out. I only had to wait one minute, a group of young Russians gave me the answer  (I even asked in Russian, and they understood what I wanted, feel very proud :-).

Anyway, this concludes more or less the first part of my Dresden visit. Thanks to Alina for hosting, being my tour guide and holding my cup of coffee while taking the picture below.