Shitting through Eastern Europe

Ciao tutti,
This is a very, very short update just to let you know what's going on. No pictures yet, unfortunately, but I promise I'll post them soon. Bottom line, we're still alive. Bucharest was unexpectedly quite nice. It wasn't as square and rigid as we had imagined this former Communist city would have become under the influence of the Soviets, but actually very green and beautiful. Its cracked side streets and enormous building projects all over the city reminded us of Berlin more than of pictures of Moscow. Moldova's capital Chisinau was a lovely small-town community that looked a lot more developed than Bucharest and where the people were very friendly. We didn't speak a word of Romanian (or Moldovan which, contrary to the official position of the Moldovan government, is not a separate language but just a dialect of Romanian) and not many people there spoke any English but Romanian is pretty much like Italian pronounced gutturally with endings like 'chzch' or 'zkh'. We thoroughly enjoyed both cities.

But there was trouble ahead. We had booked a very early bus from Chisinau to Odessa in Ukraine around the Moldovan runaway region and self-proclaimed country Transdnistria, but after getting up very early and waiting for a long time at the bus station the bus didn't show up at all. It turned out that it had been cancelled just hours after we had bought our ticket! So they gave us a choice either to transfer to the next bus which would take us through Transdnistria or to wait a bit longer for another bus around it. We chose option number 1. Big mistake! Che errorone!

At the Moldovan-Transdnistrian 'border' our bus was pulled over and we had to get off in order to discuss our terms of passage. While threatened by three soldiers carrying guns who searched our bags we were treated like shit because we were missing the Moldovan exit stamp (well *duh*, there is no country in the world that recognises Transdnistria as an independent country and Moldova is the last of them to be inclined to do so, wherefore we hadn't left Moldova and hence had not yet gotten an exit stamp!!!!). Nothing really happened except for the fact that they took 50 euros off us - and we had expected them to ask for some money although not necessarily this much - it got me really angry. I just don't get people like that. They were actually enjoying it. What's happened to the basic premise that you always treat people with the respect they deserve. Does just thinking that you have a right to piece of land and proclaiming it your own give you the right to treat people who don't live in your country like shit? To enjoy extorting them? To make them beg? To threaten them with guns? They didn't actually point their guns at us but they were waving them around obviously trying to scare us. Well, they succeeded, hallelujah, hurray for the assholes!

When this was over and we got back on the bus I was just angry and started wondering about why the international community doesn't just recognise Transdnistria as a country. I may be stupid and may not understand anything about international politics but if a group of people want to have their own country why not just give it to them? That way things can be organised, there will be an official border and it would be so much better for trade! If they want their own country and make such a fuss trying to claim it, just give it to them and let them rot in it! Anyway, we weren't finished yet. When we tried to leave we were searched again and once more reminded that we didn't have a Moldovan exit stamp. After a lot of waiting, discussing and them walking around shouting trying to impress us they made us pay another 50 euros and told us to walk across the border. Our bus had already passed the border and all the other passengers were waiting for us and a British family. They made us wait in the scorching heat for an hour while the line wasn't moving much and we had all run out of water. The Ukrainian-speaking wife of the British family had to go into/fake a fit because her 6 year-old son was burning alive to get the attention of the border guards. Once she went crazy it all ended very fast. They took us into the office we would have gone into anyway after we had come to the end of the queue, and quickly gave us all the stamps we needed. You'd think the Ukrainians would know about the asshole Transdnistrians by now and be a bit more lenient and helpful.

Anyway, I don't care that we had to pay some money to get through Transdnistria but it's the way they made us. If they had just put up a sign saying 'passage 20 euros' or something it would have been OK, we would have paid and all would have been fine, but instead they threatened us and denigrated us trying to show us their superiority and abusing their power scaring people and making them insecure for no reason but the enjoyment of the little power they have. I didn't know people like this still existed - and in Europe! They make me puke.

And you may call me a hippy or a communist and I really don't care, but I just don't get this claiming a land for yourselves! Seriously, get a grip! The world is big enough for all of us, isn't it? I thought we were well underway shaking this concept of separate nations. All over the world countries our forming unions to obliterate borders and they're claiming a piece of land just for them?! This area is obviously not ready to be a part of Europe yet. My advice to the world is give them their country, build a concrete wall around it, torch it, bulldoze it and continue to more important matters!!!!! Oh, and did I tell you that I was suffering from diarrhoea? I would so much have liked to shit all over those Transdnistrians - and almost did too!!!

Thanks for letting me ramble on. So, continuing the story, we finally got to Odessa and it sucked. Maybe it was just because we were so angry with the Transdnistrians or because we were tired or because I had imagined the city completely different but we didn't like it. The fact that all hotels were fully booked except for a very expensive one didn't help either. Anyway, we were happy to be able to leave the next day and head for Kyiv. Kyiv, lovely, Kyiv, where we have been staying until today. Kyiv is beautiful, green, spacious, with a very nice mixture of architectural styles and many, many churches with shiny golden cupolas. We're leaving for Kamyanets-Podilsky tonight.

Oh, and it's still diarrhoea galore (and I'm not the only one now), so we're still farting and shitting our way through Eastern Europe!!!!!!

XXX, Fe

PS Don't let this post deceive you! Except for those hours in Transdnistria, I've been having the time of my life!

Pre-holiday exhilaration

Ciao tutti,
Just one last short update before we leave for Romania tomorrow morning. We had a lovely time at the lake with Belinda and Enrico. Here are some pictures:

Belinda, Enrico and me

Enrico and Belinda

Wherever we go we always take exactly the same picture

Beautiful skies over the lake...

And at night, we could see so many stars... It was a gorgeous old house, a beautiful lake and very good company. Friday night, we went to a local festival where the world-famous Valentina band were showing off and rocking the house down. The old folks living in the village decided that it was their turn to shine as well and treated us to some very interesting line dancing. Valentina was quite versatile but it didn't really matter what they played, rock, Italian pop songs, ballroom music, the old people just wouldn't stop line dancing! Olaf and Belinda joined them at some point and were obviously the stars of the evening...

We didn't have any plans for yesterday evening, but then Meghan facebooked that her new Dutch beau was in town and we just had to go out. So we went to La Padellaccia, stuffed up on pizza and subjected the poor lad to a questioning the Spanish Inquisition would have been envious of. Luckily, we approved of him so after finishing copious amounts of La Padellaccia's tasty house wine we decided to go dancing at the Johann Sebastian Bar. We hadn't been there for quite a while but Barbie still knew who Olaf was and we had a great time. Afterwards, we went back to our place to consume some more alcohol until we called the kids a taxi around 5 am. It was a lovely evening.

Naturally, we slept late this morning and have been spending most of today cleaning and preparing for our trip. Gotta go, gotta pack. I wish you all some very lovely weeks and hope you won't miss me too much. I'll be in Holland from 4th until 10th September, hope to see all you Dutchies then. But first things first, it's holiday time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XXX, Fe

How lovely lazy life can be when all you have to worry about is applying enough suntan lotion...

Ciao tutti,

I am happy to be able to report that the sweating has lessened. And it's high time for another update before I won't get around to doing it because of all the holidays. In between visits from friends and holidays, I must say I haven't been doing anything. I swim, I read and generally relax. Almost everybody has left town now, which kind of sucks because the temperature has finally gone down and I would be up for meeting people, oh well, alas...

The week after we went out with Nina and Anto, I finished my last lessons and was surprised to be offered a couple more in August by CTL, even though my contract with them ended on 31st July and we're not going to renew. It was just a substitution for three lessons, but hey, that's E 50,- more than I expected to earn in August! That Friday, just before Marike and Rosie arrived from London, I went out for an early aperitivo with Bruno who was leaving for Puglia the following day and who I hadn't seen for a long time. We had a very interesting chat and gossiped a bit about his classmates (he is a former student of mine). As he came by car, this gave me the opportunity of looking at Milan from a driver's point of view and I'm telling you, it's not pretty! I'm glad I don't have to drive and find parking space in this city.

And then Marike, my former study mate and flatmate in college, arrived from London where she's doing a PhD at the moment. And she brought a friend we had never met before: enter Rosie. Well, we had sort of already met on Facebook, but that doesn't really count, does it? Anyway, it was lovely. I hadn't seen Marike since last November and we had loads to talk about. You see, Marike likes talking and always incites me to talk a lot more than I usually do - and a lot faster. I'm afraid we may have gone a bit overboard there and I sincerely hope we haven't annoyed Olaf and Rosie too much. We did the usual tour, relaxed a lot and obviously ate and drank too much. Here are some pictures:

Marike & me

Me & Rosie

Marike, Rosie & me at Wasabi (the girls are sushi freaks!)

The weekend Marike and Rosie were there Olaf got an email from his long-lost friend Bart who turned out to be coming over to Italy with his girlfriend Tineke that week. Consequently, we could start entertaining some more guests on Tuesday. It was only a short visit but Olaf of course wanted to do the tour so I had my days to myself. I got really angry because they closed the outdoor pool on Tuesday because of 'maltempo', which is supposed to mean 'bad weather' but in this case it just meant 25 degrees and a bit of rain. Italians are crazy! That evening we experienced a short thunderstorm though, which presented us with some amazing views from our window. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, so it must remain kind of a 'should-have-been-there' moment. Having Bart and Tineke over was of course a perfect excuse to eat and drink well again... Well, it's safe to say that when we got up at 6.30 on Thursday to send Bart and Tineke off to Toscana and to catch our own train there, we weren't as rested as we could have been...

But that was OK, because we had a 5-hour train ride ahead of us, a train ride that would take us to the lovely country town of Castagneto Carducci in Toscana, where were meeting Stefano and Elke who were staying in a house down there. It gave me a lot time to read and that was quite necessary because - and this is a little confession I regret I have to make - even though Harry Potter 7 had already come out, I hadn't even read number 6 yet. Reading HP6 immediately before starting HP7 turned out to be a good idea though, because it had been a long time since HP5 and I couldn't remember who all the characters were anymore. HP6 was wonderful and HP7 was downright amazing, although it did turn into an interesting gorefest at the end which I'm not sure is suitable for young children. Anyway, chapeau J.K. Rowling!

The advantage of leaving Milan really early was that we arrived just after midday and still had a lot of time to spend at the beach, which we obviously did. We worked on our tans, slept a little, read, talked and had a great time in general. The first day the sky was blu dipinto di blu as was to be expected of a Tuscan summer, but Friday was a strange day. In the morning we took a long drive to get to Calaviolina, a very secluded beach they don't allow more than 250 people on and where the sea is as transparent as in the Caribbean. So we parked the car, took a long walk to the beach, spread out our towels on the sand, took off our clothes, lay down and... it started raining and hailing as if the monsoon had arrived. We picked up everything and made a run for the nearest cafe and hid underneath the cover together with many other people.

The rainstorm lasted for about an hour and when it finally seemed dry again we started our ascent towards the car. Once we had passed over the top of the hill, the weather was lovely again with blue skies and small white clouds. We thought it might have been a local thing and decided to drive on to the next beach and have lunch there. On the way there, however, we noticed that the black skies and thunder were following us and we arrived just in time to be able to dive into the sea before the bad weather arrived. Here we are on the beach - and yes, that is a lightning flash behind us!

The rest of the day we spent trying to outrun this stormy weather and we managed to get to one other beach where we could tan for about 10 minutes before all hell broke loose there as well. So we went home, had a shower and waited it out. In about two hours the storm had passed, the plants had been fed and we were ready to go again. That night we went out to Castagneto Carducci, shining on a hilltop after the storm...

in order to do some wine tasting at a local festival. Unfortunately, this event had been cancelled due to the bad weather and we just had some wine outside criticising tourists' outfits and trying to avoid the herds of Dutch people that had seemed to invade this poor, poor little town. The next day we went to the beach in the morning and it was so hot that we got sunburned completely. Well, that was our going home present, I suppose, because I have been as tanned as a Californian bimbo ever since. Here are some more pictures:

We got home again quite late Saturday night and unfortunately I had planned a picnic with one of my students Sunday afternoon so we didn't have a lot of time to rest and regain our strength. It was a nice barbecue (Nissrine was there as well, as it was one of the students who had been in our shared course) and a good opportunity to practise our Italian (as none of the guests spoke English that well), but we were really tired and were home again by 5 pm. Olaf has gone back to work again now and I have gone back to doing virtually nothing the last couple of days. Belinda is in town and we had a girls' night of watching bad videos with beautiful men taking their clothes off (at least we thought we would but were sadly disappointed) and tomorrow we're going to meet her and Enrico at their house on the lake to spend two days there with them. And when we come back, it will be holiday time for real...

XXX, Fe