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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Last Cereal

This post is dedicated to a wonderful web comic www.lastcereal.com created by Andrea B. Previtera during 1999-2002. I came across it after seeing a review of another comic by same author 10 years ago. Somehow this was effectively saved in my brain, and recently (for whatever reason) it resurfaced - and I was happy to see the website still exists.

The series is sort of autobiographic, or at least pretends to be so. The protagonist, calling himself "H." (very Kafka) lives his life in an anonymous and veritably demonized metropolis.

H. and the city.

The format is classic: 4 images in 321 strips, grouped in four seasons. Strips were created with the windows paintbrush (now: "Paint") program, which inevitably gives the strip a distinct style. The quality and level of detail increases as the series progresses, at some point colors are introduced, but falls back into black and white again. At one point also a few hand drawn strips appear.

The universe is "the city", featuring among others a few friends (of who one is killed), a sadistic job agent, a mysterious sandspire, cryptic figures such as a raging Rastafarian, and most of all a lost love named "M." which keeps recurring, effectively preventing H.'s wounds to heal. The conflict with H.'s love and drug addict M. is mostly treated in the "Silent Serenade of Spirits".

Amazingly few words and a few simple drawn digital brush strokes conveys the conflict effectively and sparked me with emotions. I had similar feelings when reading strips by the danish multi-artist Nikoline Werdelin, in particular her Homo Metropolis series, yet with the notable difference that her work is not as dark or autobiographic and rather pictures the absurdness of society as such.

Last Cereal is a tribute to depression, and when I recently rediscovered the site a few months ago, I realized, it is truely expressionistic. It portraits fears (here partially existential fears), but yet one finds beauty in the misery and plight. In expressionistic paintings you may have a white building in an elsewhere dystopian scenery (Marianne von Werefkin - Die rote Stadt); in expressionistic lyric you find humor which disarms an elsewhere apocalyptic scene (e.g. Georg Trakl - Noch ist Polen nicht verloren), in Last Cereal, this is embodied by the witty dialogues with the psychiatrist H. is visiting.

H's psychiatrist, struggling with his patient.

One of the coolest characters is clearly "Oriental Eyed Man", a notoriously drunk oracle of wisdom. More or less passed out behind a beer bottle, he occasionally gives a blip of concentrated divine insight.

Last Cereal is highly recommended to anyone worshipping miserabalism and anyone who needs a break from happy go lucky narcissistic facebook culture.

The same author also created a comic www.escaped.it, again touching fundamental fears in life. The page, alas, was lost over time in the endless ocean of bytes in the internet. The wayback machine couldn't help either. Hope the author didn't get sued, some of the strips were quite gross.

Author seems to be ok, though, he seems still to be active on a related (but un-linked) forum. Perhaps someone should ask him to fix some of the links.

Just to prevent this mishap again, I made a backup of www.lastcereal.com for my own archives. And surprise... I discovered two un-linked frames: one of the strips has a 5th frame. Another lost frame is related to the Silent Serenade of Spirits, which appears to be dead - but it's not. :-)

Dresden II - Wasteland Tourism

Ok, this is it.

The previous post covered my attempts to find any interesting dilapidated buildings near the city center of Dresden. On my way to Pirna, I stumbled across this building:

Elbtalzentrale

Let's get inside to see what "gems" it may hide...

Plenty of green colours from the moss, and algea on the left wall.

Leftover of a circuit braker / fuse box.

Wonder if the artist suffers from nightmares.

 

Window was broken, the curtains were slightly moving in the wind.

Wonderful textures!

Newspaper as tapestry. Full of GDR propaganda.

Textures, textures, textures!

Strelok was here.