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The only tourist in Moldova

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#241

Post by generic92034 »

kleton wrote: post #158
swozey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Russian friend who is adamant that I would really enjoy and have a great time in Russia. IIRC he tells me to go to St Pete more than Moscow. But I cannot imagine doing that as an American. It kind of makes me wonder if he's messing with me but he hates Russia and Putin and I don't know why he would. I feel like I would be so unsafe. I'm a very "American" looking person and I only know a handful of Russian wo…

They won't know you're American until you open your mouth. There is such a wide variety of phenotypes in SPB that people will just assume you are a Russian. Russians these days mostly have friendly excited reactions to foreigners speaking English in public.

> Russians these days mostly have friendly excited reactions to foreigners speaking English in public.

That does not need to be a good thing, though. :D

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#242

Post by [deleted] »

qingcharles wrote: post #180
krick wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they ever know if you won't outright tell them yourself (like being a famous person an posting your itinerary on the instagram)? They'll see you've been to Russia, if you use the same passport for both visas, which may be frowned upon right now, but not illegal. But which Russian cities you've been to (and de-facto Mariupol is just that right now) — who the hell knows?

Plenty of people have two passports for this reason. Lots of things in immigration require you to honestly self-report and have no mechanism to validate at the point-of-entry. For instance, many countries without visa requirements will still ask about criminal records in your native country, but have no access to the data to verify if you tell them you've never even had a parking ticket. But if you get caught later d…

[deleted]

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#243

Post by Muromec »

krick wrote: post #161
type0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traveling to Mariupol as a tourist is the real deal in 2024 except you'll be on occupied territory and will be breaking Ukrainian law, you might get a prison sentence if you ever go to Ukraine again

How would they ever know if you won't outright tell them yourself (like being a famous person an posting your itinerary on the instagram)? They'll see you've been to Russia, if you use the same passport for both visas, which may be frowned upon right now, but not illegal. But which Russian cities you've been to (and de-facto Mariupol is just that right now) — who the hell knows?

That's pretty easy: you cross the border, the border guard sees recent stamp showing you traveled to r---ia and you don't fit the profile of someone having a family there, which trip the alarm to look into you slightly more than usual (in normal days the only thing border guards do is check that passport is not forged).

Then the obvious question to "where you exactly you have been there and what for" will come out unexpectedly for you and you will start making up a bullshit story on the spot (after being on the road for the last whole day) and spit out enough signals to look into you even more.

At this point you are taken to a room for a talk and asked to show pictures in your phone, hotel confirmations, train tickets, etc, which obviously show you have been where you are not supposed to and you lying as well. If you panic and refuse to show the phone contents, you are likely just barred from entrance on the spot and put on a list. If you do show the phone contents and there isn't anything noteworthy, but your story is not coherent enough (or the opposite: coherent enough to the point you prepared for it), you get at date with a three letter agency who is supposed to not rely on feelings.

The "how do they know" is always a bad idea as long as people need to know and your actions leave extensive digital papertrail.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#244

Post by poushkar »

rodary wrote: post #190
dralley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt many Russians can tell the difference between Ukrainian and Polish either. I unironically think that some of them convinced themselves they were fighting Polish mercenaries just because they heard western Ukrainian accents.

Not true. Hearing Ukrainian for the first time, if you're Russian, sounds like you're hearing a Russian dialect you never heard before but understand 90% of, bar some words you've never heard. The languages are that close. Polish, otoh, would baffle a Russian at first, you'd grasp quite a bit but you know you're hearing a foreign language, Slavic but foreign.

There is a bigger lexical distance between UA and RU than between UA and PL: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/a-map-of-lexical-distances...

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#245

Post by TomK32 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #171
danayfm wrote: post #147

I was in Moldova back in 2013 for a university org summer course and for me it somehow felt like being in Cuba. There weren't many tourists but everyone was very welcoming. You could see even between students the difference in pro-russians and pro-europeans. Weird thing is cut the hot water during the summer. Best wine I've ever had and it was home made from my friend's parent's cellar. Loved the time there.

Old Soviet style communities get hot water from central plants, mainly used for heating but also for showers, so when winter is over, they shutdown the heating plants for the season and no hot water at all. Some places in Northern China hook into muni hot water for showers in the winter but use solar hot water in the summer, when hot showers can be a bit less satisfying (in my experience anyways).

District heating is common in many northern European cities, even Italy (e.g 55% of households in Turino). The USA has 2500 (as of 2013) such heating and cooling networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating district cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#246

Post by fishnchips »

rodary wrote: post #190
dralley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt many Russians can tell the difference between Ukrainian and Polish either. I unironically think that some of them convinced themselves they were fighting Polish mercenaries just because they heard western Ukrainian accents.

Not true. Hearing Ukrainian for the first time, if you're Russian, sounds like you're hearing a Russian dialect you never heard before but understand 90% of, bar some words you've never heard. The languages are that close. Polish, otoh, would baffle a Russian at first, you'd grasp quite a bit but you know you're hearing a foreign language, Slavic but foreign.

As a Pole I have a similar reaction to Czech and Slovak. Except it feels less like a strange accent (because we don’t have these as much) and more like baby talk. We get the words, just how they’re used feels unusual, and often funny.

From the other side, my Czech friends told me that Polish sounded to them like something from deep antiquity. Like reading an ancient manuscript where again you get the words but no sane person these days would use them like this.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#247

Post by fishnchips »

stychos wrote: post #172
dralley wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt many Russians can tell the difference between Ukrainian and Polish either. I unironically think that some of them convinced themselves they were fighting Polish mercenaries just because they heard western Ukrainian accents.

I doubt most of Ukrainians knows Ukrainian language.

Not a Ukrainian but I know a good few. The language is taught at schools so you if you’re not educated in the Soviet Union you will know it. Whether you choose to use it is a different matter. And data would suggest that the usage is on the rise.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#248

Post by sam_lowry_ »

petre wrote: post #184
danayfm wrote: post #147

I was in Moldova back in 2013 for a university org summer course and for me it somehow felt like being in Cuba. There weren't many tourists but everyone was very welcoming. You could see even between students the difference in pro-russians and pro-europeans. Weird thing is cut the hot water during the summer. Best wine I've ever had and it was home made from my friend's parent's cellar. Loved the time there.

They have good wines, as they can only compete through quality on the European market. Although before Russia set tariffs on Moldovan products they were only exporting awful sweet wines which they sold on the Russian market. I'm glad those days are over.

Purcari and Gitana are two staple names in the EU market.

I bought them for 10+ years from a friendly reseller. IMO they are still the best value proposition.

Re: The only tourist in Moldova

#249

Post by bgnn »

userulluipeste wrote: post #84

"Sergiu exuberantly offers up shot glasses of mulberry vodka, pine-needle vodka, strawberry vodka, “medicine” vodka, “78 per cent proof” vodka" Although Moldova has vodka-drinking Slavs in it, the beverages described are not vodkas. Vodka is made of cereals or potatoes, whereas these are nicer-flavored, fruit-based distilled beverages that locals call "rakiu", in English it would be schnapps: https://en.wikipedia.org…

Rakiya is closer, no? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia
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