This Country Doesn’t Exist, But I Visited Anyway – Transnistria

This Country Doesn’t Exist, But I Visited Anyway – Transnistria

the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria. Transnistria and by extension Muldova itself needs to prepare for potential escalations. Not one single UN country recognizes it though. Now Ukraine is warning against quote destructive external interference in Muldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In the heart of Eastern Europe, there is a state that doesn’t appear on any map. It’s a region that broke away from Muldova and has been acting as its own country for over 30 years, recognized by no one, yet it is very real. So, what constitutes a country? At one point, does a state become a dictatorship? How will the future of the former Soviet republics look like amidst the war in Ukraine? Those are all questions that I don’t have the ability to answer. What I do have is a lust for places that barely anyone visits and yet are so intriguing, which is why I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to finally take a look with my own eyes and share it with you guys. Follow me on the journey to Transnistria. [Music] Good evening or good night, whatever. It’s 11:00 p.m. from somewhere in Romania in an old Soviet train. This is a very old train line going all the way up to Kishino Muldova and we are drinking Kissino beer. Cheers. Cheers. If that’s not the most Soviet experience for my very first former USSR country, then I don’t know what it is. Hi. And he drunk the beer. Yes, we did. So, it’s 5:00 a.m. here and we just crossed the Moldivan border. So, now what they’re doing is they’re changing the wheels of every single car in the train so they can adapt to the Moldivan railway, which is crazy. So, that’s how the trains work here. Good morning and welcome to Muldova, the Kissino train station. There it is after 15 hours of a train ride. That was pretty wild. But finally, we made it. And now we are heading straight to the bus station cuz we are not staying in Kissau today. I was going to say we’re not staying in Muldova, but that’s a contentious thing to say. So, we’re going to go to the breakaway state of Transnistria, also known as Pinestroia, and the city of Taspol. So, come with me and let’s try to find a bus to go there. 261. [Music] Okay. Much. Wow. So, this is what Muldova looks like. Feel like I went back in time here. You got the statues, you got the concrete buildings. Everything from the USSR times. Look at this. This is my first Transisrian license plate. Looks interesting. Like you can see kind of the flag, but there’s some elements missing and we don’t see the name of it. But the plates are still different from Muldovas. Uh bus to Taspole. Taspole two. Yes. Yesterday we found it. This is the bus that is taking us to Taspole in Transnistria. It’s the time we’re living in about 20 minutes and it’s only three bucks for a ticket which is wild. Anyway, let’s go inside. And that’s done. We made it to Transnistria and it’s capital Taspole after crossing the border. It was surprisingly easy. Like we got this paper uh which is funny. I’m allowed to stay for 2 days and he’s allowed to stay for 3 days. Yeah, 3 days. They just give us whatever they want. But I mean, we got more than enough time to explore this very little state. So, our first mission would be to exchange currency cuz they don’t take uh the Moldivan currency or any other currency. They use the Transnistrian Rebel kind of like the Russian one, but Eston Oh, there’s an Estonian card here. Whatever. That’s That’s a long drive to get here. You can’t use your European cards here. I think some Russian cards might work, but we don’t have any of that. So, we have to exchange cash. So, this is how it looks. I think this is a Russian Orthodox church right here in the middle of Tiaspool. Today, we traveled from the least visited country in Europe, Muldova, to a country that’s even less visited. Actually, in Transisria, there’s only about 20,000 people that visit every year, which is incredibly low for a country in Europe. And it does already feel pretty empty, to be fair. What is going on here? Not much. Hello. Uh, money exchange. Yes, we got our Transnistrian money. It looks a bit like Monopoly money. Doesn’t look very real, but I guess it is. And now we’re looking where to spend that money in that gallery. H, it’s funny. There’s no one here. Where are the people? Where are we going, bro? Yeah, I think he’s taking us to the best part of the city. Welcome to the back rooms of Transnistria. Nice. You found the hidden way. Okay, now that we finally have some cash, we’re going to head to the hotel where we’re going to spend the night here in Lenin Street. Mhm. Wow, look at this view. We can see the whole city of Taspole. People just living their lives, walking around. And yeah, it’s time we actually go out and explore that. So, let’s get out of this pretty nice hotel room we got here and go explore the city. There it is. That’s the place I wanted to see the most, the Suvorov monument. So, there’s the this big statue of this guy, but what intrigues me the most is the flags all around it. I don’t know any of these flags. I don’t know what they are. Probably some like regions, but you got those two. While the left one is the flag of Transnistria, red and green alongside the hammer and single symbol. If you consider that Transition is a country, then it’s the only country in the world that still has this symbol on its flag, which is wild. That’s really a remnant of the Soviet times and they keep the Russian flag next to it which shows well I guess the friendship between them. You can see the Russian flag everywhere in the streets alongside this flag of Transistria. So from the gist of it looks like Transisia is kind of like a puppet state of Russia. I don’t know. You make your own opinion. Flag quiz. You’re a geography nerd like me. So, you’re going to have to name those three flags here. Uh the first uh almost there. The one on the right is South Soita and the one on the left is Acasia and of course the one in the middle is Transisria. So those three are you might not know about any of those. I mean you know about Transisria now but the other two well they are in a similar situation. They are breakaway states in Georgia, South Asia and Acasia. They are two secessionist states that started to exist after the fall of the Soviet Union. The thing that unites them is that they both have really good relations with Russia obviously. And when I say really good relations, it means that they could almost become like republics within Russia. Those flags show the friendship between those three. And they’re actually the only one that recognize each other. Like the only few countries that actually recognize the sovereignty of Transnistria are countries that aren’t internationally recognized either. This one looks like the flag of Macedonia for some reason. It says Gri Grigo Grioropole. I guess that’s the name of like a city. The really weird thing with Transnistria is like its ethnic composition, you know, because like the rest of Muldova, well, obviously it’s mostly comprised of Moldovvens or Romanians, which are basically the same people, right? But Transnistic specifically, it has kind of a strange mixup, you could say. It’s about 30% Moldovven, 30% Russian, and 30% Ukrainian. So, it looks like the starter puck of a civil war. And I guess that’s kind of what happened with Transistria. I wonder if there’s a lot of tension between the Ukrainians and Russians here since the war in Ukraine. Alas, this is how this country works somehow. And yeah, I think it makes it pretty interesting to be fair. And there it is right in front of this eternal flame which represents probably an unknown soldier. I guess everything is written in Russian. Nothing is written in English here. And like I guess Russian is like the de facto language of this place because apparently speaking Romanian here is frowned upon. They prefer to speak Russian here. But anyway, right in front of it is this big tank, a big old Soviet tank that maybe was used at some point in the Cold War. This whole place is a big memorial for soldiers that have fallen during the USSR times. I mean, here you can see a a picture of a soldier like living his wife, I suppose. But yeah, there is one about World War II here, and there’s one about the war in Afghanistan here, which of course involved the Soviet Union, and well, Muldova was a republic of the Soviet Union, and Transnistria was a part of it. I mean, it didn’t really exist at the time. So yeah, they really keep their Soviet heritage here more than in any other place around the world probably around the old Soviet world. Like the Soviet Union is pretty much the whole identity of this place. They say that the mic she dropped the mic. You proud? Yeah. Good. Did he drop the mic as well? Who is this? Yeah, it’s Lenin. Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Of course, he has his own statue as well. And it’s probably like the biggest statue in the whole city, probably. Like, it’s really big. Ukraine dim. I don’t know what that means, but it’s supposed to be something called the Ukrainian House. It’s not called the Ukraine embassy because well Ukraine doesn’t recognize Transnistria like no one actually does. But Ukraine they still created some kind of um representation of the country in Taspole because as I say there’s like 25 30% of Ukrainian living there. You could so easily miss it. There’s no flag of Ukraine. This is supposed to represent like the Ukrainian people. What is going on here? This building is scary. Is it like a driving school right here? Yeah, that’s literally a driving school. Like, how does that make sense? Isn’t that supposed to be the Ukrainian house? And who are those people? H, this is so weird. Okay, let’s get out of here before we get arrested. So at this point you may be asking me like why is transition even a thing if no one recognizes them? Well it started as you could guess during the Soviet Union times when we got close to the end of the Soviet Union. So at the end of the 1980s, the possibility that it would collapse started to arise which was a problem for the people in this place because if it did then Muldova would become an independent country and the Muldovan people they thought that they would want to unite with Romania and the Russian and Ukrainian living in this place they wanted none of that. So what they did was they declared the independence of Transisria but not as an independent country but as a brand new Soviet Republic. So technically they were like the 16th Soviet Republic for like the last one or two years of the Soviet Union but they were never recognized by the USSR itself. So when the USSR ended up collapsing, well, they kept this. I want to say hello to people, but I don’t even know what language I’m supposed to speak. Am I supposed to speak Russian? You know how to say hello in Russian? Uh, bat. Bat. No, I don’t think I don’t think that’s it. So, what they did when the USSR collapsed is they remained independent. The situation has well stayed the same still pretty much. Man, look at the Taspool football field. I guess it’s like the hangout spot of Taspool. They probably get a bunch of money from Russia, so they could use it for that instead of putting statues everywhere. How did you like the Soviet gym equipments? Yeah, you just had to do it for the camera. What? Finally made it to Paris. There it is. I don’t know why they build this. Why are they stealing from us? I’m going inside the Eiffel Tower. Guys, I’m in a Transisrian prison. I’ve been arrested by the Russian army. Please send money to release me. Thanks. Link in description. I have to mention in this city there’s so many soldiers walking around. I’m not going to film them too much cuz yeah, it’s not a good look. But they’re everywhere. Probably Russian soldiers just roaming around. It’s a bit scary, but I guess they keep the order in the city, I suppose. So, this is Cantina USSR. I mean, look at this. It looks so old. Maybe it’s just a design, but I mean, we’ll see. Is it possible to eat here for two people? Two people? Uh, only meat. Only meat if you want. Yeah, I mean, sure. You take this. Uh, so I’ll take the chicken with cheese. Yes. One of these past. Okay. Okay. Here you go. Well, got to say that’s disappointing. I mean, look at this pizza. Like, does it look tastier at all? No. And it’s not good. So, yeah. But I mean, we arrived too late. I think they have a lot more dishes like at noon. Do you agree? This is terrible. But at least the decoration is nice. So, well, obviously it’s a Soviet Union themed restaurant. I mean, like the the whole country, the whole state is Soviet Union themed. That’s crazy, guys. That was so bad. that I’m going to do that instead. Okay, whatever. We’ll find something else to eat later. No. What do you Yeah. Okay. Okay. What? I have no idea what’s up with this guy. It’s crazy. I was just asking for plastic coins. France. Yes. France. Oh, you want France coin. France. France. I mean Euro. France. You know we have this in France. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. I still don’t get it. But I got my plastic coin. That’s really the thing I wanted. I heard of I heard about the plastic coins of Transnistria and here they are. Look at this. I don’t know if there’s any other currency in plastic like this. Okay. Yeah. Oh. Oh, okay. It’s free. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. My pleasure. Bye-bye. Yeah, coins. We got the two coins. But literally like they have coins of tree and they have like they have big notes of 25 too. Like that’s so random. That’s a bit cursed. Not going to lie. Is this the night market of Taspool? No, it’s the day market cuz at night everything closes it seems. I don’t know. We’ll see if there’s a night life in the in the city, but I doubt it to be honest. Check out the night life in Tiaspole. So much going on here at midnight. Now we just went for beers and some whiskey and he’s completely drunk. We’re drunk. But yeah, I mean there’s really cheap here. It’s really really cheap. Yeah, we got like two whisies for like €350 something. But yeah, the night life isn’t that great. There’s not many people. There’s not much to do. Just like one or two bars around. And I mean, this city, to be fair, it’s really weird because this city doesn’t really have a city center. Like, there’s not a place where, you know, you can just walk and have shops and stuff. It’s just the street everywhere with with cars. Anyway, tomorrow we’re leaving this city and going to the rural parts of Transnistria. I’m intrigued to see what it looks like. So anyway, I’ll catch you guys tomorrow. Hey, the stray dogs of Tas Mall, guys. We’re not stopping. We’re running through. So beware. Yo, we just bought some souvenirs before leaving Taspol. I got this flag of Transnistria. They had like magnets all around of well the biggest figures of the Soviet Union like Stalin and Putin. Uh well, no, I mean Stalin and Lenin, but they also had Putin, funnily enough, which shows that well, in case you haven’t noticed yet, they are very friendly with Russia. It’s full of like Russian products everywhere. I feel like what’s this beer? I don’t know any of these brands. I mean, this one is probably famous, but yeah, I’m just not that good at beer. You know, they still have like the biggest brands like Pepsi. So, it’s it’s not completely cut off from the world, you know? You still have the normal brands. They probably have a lot of products from like Russia or like the Russian world in general. Yeah, they have Oh, I love this. They have so many monsters. This is surprising, actually. We are going hitchhiking. We got the groceries. We are going to hitchhike north and say goodbye to Taspool. I feel like the biggest [ __ ] in existence right now. Do they even know what this sign means? Maybe they don’t and they’re like, “What the [ __ ] is he doing?” Yeah. So, little update. We’ve been doing this for about an hour and a half and no one has stopped yet. I mean, the only people that actually stopped, they were asking for like huge amount of money. So, yeah, that’s not really the point of what we’re doing right now. We’re actually trying to hitchhike. Maybe it’s not really a part of the culture here. We’ll try a little bit longer and see what happens. 2 hours later. It’s been almost 3 hours. We just took the bus to change spot. So, we’re a bit further from the city center, but yeah, doesn’t really change much. So, I guess hitchhiking in Shrria, it’s not really a good idea. That’s not the best day of the trip. We gave up after 3 hours. We’re done with that. And look at this building. The windows are broken. What is going on here? Not much. Not much. Probably some old Soviet factory. But yeah, this is the kind of building you can see in Taspool. Anyway, we’re just walking down to the bus station and we’ll see what we do from there cuz we don’t really have a plan B. This is what the train station of Taspo look like. Pretty big. There’s many tracks, but not a single train. There used to be trains going all the way to Kissau or even to Ukraine. You could go all the way to Kev, but all the trains have been suspended. It looks pretty abandoned, but hopefully traffic will start again someday. And we found a bus here in the bus station to go to Dobasari up north. We should probably have done this from the beginning instead of trying to hitchhike, but it doesn’t matter now. I’ll catch you guys later in Dobasari. Welcome to Dubosari, a city or town, I don’t know, in the middle of Transnistria. So, yeah, we drove about an hour in the bus to get here. I don’t think there’s much going on here, but we’re still going to explore a little bit. At one point during the ride, we even came like a few meters close to the Ukraine border, so we could see Ukraine from the window, which was interesting. Even though there’s not much to see. Anyway, follow me and let’s explore Dubasari. Oh, this is prime Dubosari. What a lively little town. Why did we even stop here? Wow. There’s only one hotel in town. And there it is. So, I really hope there’s a room for us. Otherwise, we’re going to have to sleep in the streets at like -1°. So that’s not great. Okay. Hello. English. English. No English. Uh you have twin room. Two bed. Yes, please. Okay. Okay. Okay. No light. Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Hey, little spider. Is it? It’s not even a spider, is it? And that’s a pretty nice hotel room we got here. Look at it. Oh, I got scared by the TV. But yeah, this is a room in Dubosari. There’s no lights. Anyway, we’ll take it. We don’t really have a choice. Look at this great view from Dubosari’s hotel. Look at it. This is the best view in the city. We might be the first tourists here, right? Let’s have a little drink. Going to try top water of Transnistria. Cheers. Honestly, it tastes pretty good. It’s It tastes a bit salty, don’t you think? Yeah. A bit salty. Like that’s so weird. We got Russian TV at home. Well, they only have like three or four channels. We got to Russia one. Let’s go out and explore Dubosari. The first tourist in Dubosari. Let’s go. Wow. There it is. The most impressive tourist attraction of Dubosari. Look at it. Cute car. Okay, now we got to hurry up because we want to go to the beach and it’s already night time and we want to get there before it’s pitch black. So, let’s get there. And yes, there’s a beach in Dubo. Sorry. You’ll see. You’ll be impressed. Yo, what’s up? You going to the beach, too? You want to come? Hey. Okay. Okay. I’m out. I was just kidding, guys. I was just kidding. I hope you guys are ready. Right in front of this cliff, you will see the beach. Get ready. In three, two, one. And there it is. Look at it. The river. This country’s real name is Pinestrovia which means well on the other side of the Nest River. So basically this river serves as the border between Muldova and the breakaway state of Transnistria. So what you see on the other side of the river is well Muldova proper. It’s quite empty except for a few fishermen here and there. People are fishing here. Yeah, it’s really cold. If you cross this by swimming, you’ll probably get arrested. And there it is, the end of our journey in Transnistria. We made it back to the river after we crossed yesterday. This is it. We’re actually leaving tomorrow, but that’s the last interesting thing we’re going to do here. So, I think that’s a good moment to conclude this video. But in the next one, we are going into Muldova proper. So, if you’re interested in seeing that, you know what to do. Subscribe, like the video, ring the bell icon. I’m just leaving you by a little swim in this river. Bye-bye.

The Soviet Union is a thing of the past, but there is a “country” that decided to stick to it and make it its whole identity. You’ve probably never heard of it, as this breakaway state is recognized by nobody. Yet, when you get in, you leave Moldova behind and meet something new. Or rather, something old that has yet to evolve. Follow me on a journey to discover Transnistria.

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:05 The journey to Transnistria
00:04:04 Exploring Tiraspol
00:18:37 Night life in Tiraspol
00:21:15 Hitchhiking in Transnistria
00:23:11 The first tourists in Dubossary