Transnistria: what you need to know before going

Well my first post here definitely has to be about the craziest place I´ve visited so far, Transninstria, which is a pro Russian breakaway republic in eastern Moldova. I went there on an 11 hour long guided tour in the middle of September this year from the hostel I stayed at in Chisinau, Moldova. I did consider the option of going there by myself but opted for the tour instead since I speak very limited Russian and on top of that no western embassies can give you help in case something serious happens there since this piece of land is caught in a limbo between Moldova and Russia.

Besides that the area is extremely safe and clean and I´d definitely recommend anyone visiting Moldova to go there, but to stay on the safe side I´d recommend anyone in my situation to go there on a tour. Besides if you´re going there on a tour you´ll hopefully see places that you can´t reach with public transport (as we did), but that might not be the case for every tour company.

Transnistria has only been recognized by South Ossetia and Abkhazia (the flags to the right and left on the picture above), which are two other similarily not internationally recognized Russian backed breakaway republics but situated in Georgia.

Anyway Transnistria operates as its own country in every possible way even though it lacks recognition. This is especially noticeable when crossing the border from Moldova, because on the Moldovan side there are no checkpoints, just a couple of police officers standing by while letting everyone pass, but once you reach the Transnistrian side there´s a heavily militarized border control. Not only are their workers checking your passport but there´s also a couple of Russian soldiers with machine guns standing by. They also had a tank parked behind the checkpoint, which I wouldn´t have noticed if our guide didn´t point it out for us. Instead of stamping your passport they will give you a piece of paper that you must show while you leave the area, which you can see on the picture below.

During our time in Transnistria we visited the city of Bender, the capital of Tiraspol and the town of Chițcani and the huge monastery located there, all of which I´ll tell you more about in my next posts since I feel like this post would be way too long otherwise.

When leaving Transnistria you´ll have to hand in the paper to the border guards and from what our guide told us they´ll sometimes keep it but usually hand it back, luckily the latter was the case for this time.