The first thing I saw after leaving the train station was this little park. It was slightly less of an eye sore. The park is called Kirov park, like the one in St Petersburg. I’ll go out on a limb here and assume it was named after Sergey Kirov, an early Bolshevik leader. Someone is free to correct me if I am wrong.
The main street of Tiraspol is called 25 October, named after the day the Bolshevik revolution started. This street is where you can find many of the bars, shops , restaurants and other stuff in Tiraspol.
This is a common intersection in Tiraspol. It is the intersection of 25 October street and Lenin street which is another fairly long street in Tiraspol, it atleast felt like it when I was walking from the bus station to the main intersection.
It is no secret that Tiraspol remains nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union. It was the original claim for wanting to separate from Moldova. The majority of the education focuses on a handful of the history. One of them being the defeat of the Germans, defeat of the Moldovan/Romanian fascists in the early 90s, and the glory days of the Soviet Union . There seems to be little else that is focused on. There also seems to be various elements of historical revisionism in how these narratives are told. They sort of leave a lot out the atrocities committed by the soviet union and themselves when they separated from Moldova . They aren’t the first and only to have a selective curriculum in history. I can give 100 other examples, especially from my country. But either way, these historical memories don’t do much to help facilitate any desire to officially reunite with Moldova . Their loyalty remains strongly to Russia . After the Crimea annexation, they sent a formal request to also be annexed. Russia did not return the favor, but still gives them their support by giving them free gas ( then sending the bill to Moldova), paying for some pensions and sending them some troops.
I found out from my couchsurfers and other research that Transnistria does not receive so many Russian tourists. In fact, a lot of them are often backpackers that come in for the day from Chisinau and sometimes Odessa. In a way, it is sort of a “Soviet Disneyland”. In a ironic way, they found a way to capitalize off this notion which would make Mr. Lenin very pleased .There are many stores where you can buy various trinkets and souvenirs from the USSR . There are a couple of companies that offer tours around Transnistria as well. Tiraspol even has a tourism office which I didn’t know about until after I left. It either opened just recently , wasn’t open when I was there, or I just didn’t get around to find it. It also appeared that Tiraspol was not out to play that day on account of the weather being shit. I didn’t see many people out and about. I did my own walking tour along and and here are a few things that I saw before my battery went Kaput.
If you do something kind of cool, you get put on this.
The ” State University of Transnistria” and a memorial to the students and teachers that were victims of the second world war.
The house of the Soviets with my usual travel companion posing in front of it. Everyone, meet Dieter!
One thing you cannot miss if you go to Tiraspol is going to one of the local Sherrifs. Sherrif is a company in Transnistria that has a monopoly on nearly everything. They have super markets, petrol stations, a mobile network, own tv channel, spirit factory, and even a damn football team. They even have had a playing hand in the politics when Igor Smirnov was president until 2011. They have less political power since Smirnov was voted out, but it still remains to be a large presence in much of Transnistria. Going into one the grocery stores can be a bit entertaining experience to say the least.
(Sherrif Picture credit goes to my travelling Dutchie friend that is interested in de facto states. Thanks buddy)
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the memorabilia shops , the parliament and the local history museum 🙁 That is what happens if you never charge your phone or forget to charge your battery pack while sleeping. I decided to go in a cafe to warm up and charge my phone. The waiter was really friendly and when he found out I lived in Prague, he was excited. He said it was his dream to go there. When I told him I was American, he brought over a couple of his friends and they want to talk to me about Game of Thrones or some other series that I have no idea about. I was more curious about them because the majority of the population in Transnistria is either pensioners and small children. The country is very similar to Moldova in the problem with a brain drain. Most younger people leave because there are very few opportunity for jobs and higher education. They have a state university, but as is not really recognized it is hard to do much with a degree from there . Many leave for Russia to pursue work or studies. There are a fair amount that go to Odessa which is right around the corner. There are some that go to Moldova, but it can be noted that the average salary is sometimes recorded to be slightly higher in Transnistria than it is in Moldova. It is one of the propaganda ploys used actually to keep the area separated. The media plays on the poverty and exaggerates other problems in Moldova to make those in Transnistria feel better about being separate. I didn’t have enough time to ask the kids much about themselves. My host in Rybnitsa sent me a message and told me that the next bus heading there leaves in exactly 6 minutes and another one wasn’t leaving for a while . I decided my sightseeing for the day was done, so I took off like track star. Luckily while sort of jogging and huffing down Lenin street, I was able to jump on a bus and catch my minibus to Rybnitsa