T
oday we exchange drivers. Vasily Peretz has driven all night from Khust, 640 kilomoters to Kisheniv to take Victor Pavliy, Victor and me to Khust in Transcarpathia, close to the Rumanian border. But, first we must leave Moldova to re-enter Ukraine. We leave the security of John and Lydia's flat in Kisheniv at 11.0 am with farewells.Before finally leaving Kisheniv we met Dennis Gablenko for a short tour of the old city. A cathedral is being converted back to its original condition after being an art museum under the Soviet Union. Buildings are shabby and delapidated and much work needs to be done. Their work ethic has been undermined. Work is not seen as honorable, but then who anywhere would work for an unsustaining pittance. The result is the very high incidence of alcohol related illness. The economy must be upturned to pay decent wages, but it will not upturn until people work--a dilemma indeed.
The almost empty roads out of Kishinev are wide, but unmaked and gradually deteriorated. Our loaded Saab Toledo grinds and jolts its way to the Moldovian-Ukrainian border 300 km
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away.
At 5.0 pm we stopped at the shabby border post of Crivea, the broken red and white unveven barrier held together with a makeshift wire hook. A very slow moving uniformed border officer beckoned to our driver and Victor Pavliy to bring all the passports and they all disappeared down the road somewhere for half an hour.
Vasiliy Peretz and Victor Pavliy return with the alarming news that the officer will not let us cross the border because he says we have entered Moldova illegally and he could have arrested those two in the back, thats Victor and me.
It appears we entered Trans-Dniester legally, but when we crossed the Dniester bridge in Moldova proper the solitary Moldovian officer standing in the road waved us on without stamping our passports. We think he saw the Moldovian car number and thought we were all Moldovians. We all sat quietly and thought about this crisis -- trapped in Moldova forever. We drove back into Moldova away from the border post about one mile. The atmosphere was outwardly calm but inwardly tense.
We intended to telephone Lydia to contact less officious authorities. I fingered the visiting cards of an advisor to the President of Ukraine, heads of law departments anywhere and anyone with influence. I was instinctively in East European mode. I was suddenly one of them!
Vasiliy Peretz jumped out of the car and spoke to a Moldovian woman by the roadside. If we gave her a lift home, she said, she would show us another way across the border. In she squeezed. After twisting down several country back lanes she opened the car door and pointed to a mud track alongside a huge maise field.
"Ukraine is over there."
"Thanks"
We set off with the exhaust scraping the rough ground. Victor was inscrutable. "We could get shot," I said. "Yes," he replied. After two miles the track became a lane and the lane a narrow road. Then suddenly we were in Podvirne. We saw the Ukrainian trident on a government building and the yellow and blue national colors of Ukraine. A few soldiers ignored us. We were delighted to see them.
Soon we were on our way to the Carpathian mountains. All we needed was bandeleros and sunbreros. The problem now was having reentered Ukraine unintentially illegally how were Victor and I going to get out? One problem at a time. We shall see on Sunday. We may still
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need those visiting cards. Around midnight we crossed the Carpathians. The potholes are so big that it will be necessary one day to rebuild the roads. There are more potholes than road and the car takes a beating. Exhausted, we arrived in Khust and the home of Vasily and Svetlana Mondich. It is 2:30 am.
Victor and I ask you all to pray for us as we pass along the Ukraine/Hungary border at Chop at about 11.0 am Sunday 29th June. This is a serious request.