The Month of June, Part I: Chisinau to Istanbul

Shortly after last November’s Mason Jennings show, Emilie and I went our lonely separate ways and ended up not talking for more than five months. Then, at the end of April as I was getting ready to leave for Russia, to the astonishment of some and the “I-told-you-sos” of others, we reconnected. We stayed in touch as I trekked across the Trans-Siberian and throughout the month of May, and then, as her plans to be a nurse for the summer among Australian Aborigines were slowly dispelled, we decided she should come for an Eastern European adventure. She flew into Chisinau at midnight on the last day of May and I made it there in time to find her wandering through the train station in the morning.

The original plan had been to meet in Moscow, take a train down to Sochi, and then on to the Georgian coast, and eventually Armenia. I had scheduled to visit certain villages of Armenia in the middle of June to see the LDS Charities Clean Water projects and do a story on the Church’s humanitarian efforts in the region. But as Emilie unexpectedly ended up in Budapest and amazingly managed to make her way to Chisinau, we decided we’d skip the Sochi trip and stay in Moldova for a week before heading the long way around the Black Sea to Armenia.

The real adventure began when we boarded an overnight bus to Bucharest. We didn’t really know what we were doing except that we wanted to get to Istanbul. The bus ride across Romania wasn’t unlike other bus trips I’d been on, but Emilie ended up sleeping most of the way with her head in the aisle and feet up on the window. Our bus must have been the luxury cruiser because it featured a small TV in the front (that played an Eddie Murphy movie in Romanian) and got us to Bucharest two hours ahead of schedule. After wandering the streets desperate for some breakfast, we found the train station and immediately bought tickets for an Istanbul train in the early afternoon.



The scenery of the Bulgarian countryside was stunning and it felt horrible to be merely passing through without the time to stop and explore for a week or two. I’ve promised myself a return trip to Bulgaria sometime in the near future. Our one Bulgarian experience involved a creepy train stop in the late evening, three scrappy-looking dudes repeatedly peering into our train compartment, an enthusiastically helpful transvestite named Evelyn, and an angry Turkish train conductor that emphatically insisted that if we wander by ourselves in these parts, we would surely end up dead. Definitely a place I need to revisit.



Since this account is more of a summary of what we did, I’ve left out most details and little stories of things that happened. But the story of how Emilie and I crossed the border into Turkey is worth telling. When we boarded the train to Istanbul, we made an assumption, based on previous train experiences, that there would be a dinner car or onboard vendors or some means of getting something to eat on the way to Turkey. No such luck. Not only were we super hungry, we desperately needed water. Luckily, the car attendant was a friendly man and by agreeing to read the Turkish tourist brochures he gave us, we quickly got in on his good side.

As we continued to gripe to him about absence of food and lack of stops long enough to jump off and find something to eat, he casually invited into his coupe. From his own stash of goods, our car attendant had prepared plates of carefully cut pieces of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and bread with two tall glasses of mango juice. We were, in turn, shocked, delighted, overwhelmed, and endlessly grateful. An hour later came the return favor. The attendant, a middle-aged Turkish man with a bushy moustache, came into our compartment and closed the door behind him. He refused to sit, but instead guarded the window to the hallway with his back. He explained slowly and in a hushed tone how Emilie and I were going to buy him whisky (he was very specific about brand, proof, and size) at the Duty Free shop on the Turkish border. Turkish law only allows each person to bring a certain number of liters of alcohol across the border, so Emilie and I were to aid him in his smuggling. He thrust the money into my hand and left as Emilie and I sat staring, debating whether this was such a good idea.

We got to the border at about two in the morning and immediately realized that neither of us had enough money to buy the $20 visa to enter Turkey. We scrambled, dug through bags, pockets, bunk mattresses, and came up about three Euros short each. While others were standing in line at customs, we ran around the train station looking for an ATM, but everything was closed and we were told the closest ATM was in the city, however many miles away. Finally, after intense deliberation, we reached the point of completely justifying using the whiskey money. Our smuggling friend was nowhere to be found, but we decided to go for it anyway. Miraculously, he had given us just enough money to buy all the whisky he wanted from the Duty Free shop and to have change enough left over to get our vises—three extra Euros apiece. At about 3:15 a.m., Emilie and I happily boarded the train into Turkey with our new Turkish visas and two liters of J & B whisky in each hand.