Transdiestra

Today wasn't really the day I expected but it was good. I went to the bizarre breakaway Communist and Russian backed breakaway state within Moldova called Transdiestra. It was always part of Moldova and still is as no one apart from Russia recognises their declaration of Independence. I had all the tales from Lonely Planet about corrupt 'border' guards hassling westerners and locking them up for non existent crimes and extorting money from tourists but w had none of that. I did have to pay a bribe of 20 euro to get in but our guide just took our passports at the border along with our money and took care of the transaction in private. That annoyed me, if I'm gonna pay a bribe to some dodge guard I at least want the satisfaction of doing it myself!

Once over the ' border' it wasn't quite the stepping back in time' I expected, more like crossing the border into a poor part of Russia. All the signs and shops became Cyrillic obviously and Moldovan wasn't heard any more, just Russian. But the paranoia and sense of being watched all the time just didn't happen and i was very disappointed, I was looking forward to it! I wanted to know what it might have felt like to have lived in Soviet times and this surely couldn't have been it. Policemen barely gave us a passing glance, nor did the Army who were dotted around and shop keepers were more than happy to serve us. We had to be very careful not to take any photos of public buildings or army/police personal, our guide kept mentioning this. I did sneak a few shots at a few buildings, namely the Presidents Place and House of The Soviets but it was a risk, even with my little camera phone. The Japanese woman with us had no such fears, she took lot of photos with a professional SLR digital camera!
Trandsniesta operates itself as in independent country and basically ignore the fact that no one else recognises them. They have their own money and postage stamps which are worthless outside the region. I changed up some Moldovan cash for Trandnistrian roubles, what I didn't spend will be a nice souvenir. I also sent one postcard although with the stamps being worthless and unrecognised outside Transdiestra it's debatable whether it'll ever get to it's destination.
So overall it was a little disappointing that it felt so relaxed, it's not often you want to feel paranoid and feeling like you're being watched or followed or to have people wary of you just because you're a foreigner but today was one of them, I paid good money for that privilege and they let me down!