Moldova

In 1996, I did a “whirlwind” tour of most of PW’s offices in the former Soviet Union – for me my first foray into Central Asia and Eastern Europe. There are dozens of stories from that trip, and I subsequently returned to several of the places I visited on my first tour. I was supposed to be rolling out a new Human Resources program that changed the way we titled people, so in addition to doing a presentation I was meeting individually with most of the folks in each office – so I would spend between 3 days and a week in each location.

I started in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, moved on to Russia, and then flew from Russia’s Vanukova airport to Moldova on Air Moldova. This has to have been the second scariest flight I have ever taken (see Kyrgyzstan for the winner), although at the time I hadn’t yet taken the scariest, so it made a big impression. The old Tupolev aircraft we were in had certainly seen better days, and the interior had been stripped of most of the nice plastic lining that just about every other jet I’ve ever traveled on has. In addition, the overhead bins were actually just overhead shelves, a la Amtrak. Finally, when they boarded the flight, they seemed to have none of the concerns about stowage of carryon bags that US carriers do – in fact, not only did your bags not have to fit under your seat, but you could put them in the main aisle if you liked! One woman carried on a crate with chickens in it and placed it smack in the middle of the aisle across from us.

On takeoff, the plane groaned and I believe nearly stalled, shuddering up to about 300 feet (I could see the vibrations of the “skin” of the plane, since we were missing the plastic on the inside). At that point, it leveled off, just about 50 feet above the treetops, for what seemed like miles and miles, until we slowly started climbing again. (I later learned that they routinely overload the planes with cargo and that they typically have to burn off a little jet fuel until they are light enough to keep climbing.) Meanwhile, several items that had been placed overhead had descended suddenly onto our heads at takeoff, and my traveling companion, Karen, who had not been outside the US before except for one trip to Europe, was sitting holding a small stuffed animal she had brought with her with tears silently streaming down her face.

When we landed in Moldova, one of the first things I did was ask my assistant there to find out if there were any other airlines serving the Moldova airport (none), or if there was any other way than getting back onto an Air Moldova flight that Karen and I could get out of there to Kiev Ukraine (our next stop). She made a few calls, and reported back that it was a 10 hour drive to Kiev by car (the roads were bad). I immediately told her to find us a driver.

Our drive was for the most part uneventful, although our driver kept trying to tell stories about his escapades with his younger girlfriend (he had a wife too, of course). Since I didn’t speak Moldovan, he was telling me these stories in French, which I speak a little bit of, although thankfully not enough to understand the gory details. When we arrived at the border between Moldova and Ukraine, however, things got a little dicey.

There were several armed soldiers at the border station, which was at a small town that featured an enormous silver statue of Lenin in the otherwise bleak square on the other side of the gate. They were all armed with kalishnikovs and had no qualms about pointing them into the backseat at us while demanding our passports. They then took our passports and disappeared with them into the guard’s barracks. Close to 2 hours passed, and no one came or went from the barracks (nor did anyone else attempt to cross the border in a car, although a couple of donkey carts did pass through the gates without even stopping). Finally, one of the soldiers emerged, and came to the car. He didn’t talk to us, but to the driver. I asked the driver, in French, to tell me what was going on, and suddenly wished that my French vocab was more extensive, even if it would have meant some pretty dismal mental images of the gold-toothed driver with his girlfriend. I got enough of a gist to understand that the soldier and his friends would prefer that instead of heading on to Ukraine this evening as planned, that we spend some time with them in the local bar having some vodka. Since American women have a (hopefully undeserved) reputation for being “easy,” it was also clear that he and his buddies expected they might get lucky as part of the bargain. I gotta say, those machine guns might be pretty persuasive.

Needless to say, we were pretty desperate for an alternative, and the most expedient in this type of circumstances seemed to be bribery, and fast (“No, sir, I don’t have the necessary border crossing papers, but will these little green papers help?”) Through the driver, we negotiated a bribe of about $100 American, enough to get the whole town drunk for at least one night. He took the money, left for an excruciating 10 minutes (we didn’t have any more cash) came back with our passports, and waved us through. I haven’t returned to Moldova since.