“...I’d like to do you in the back seat of my car…”

On second thoughts maybe I wouldn’t. Those aren’t my words, but in fact some of the lyrics of the latest hit that was playing in all the cafes in Tiraspol, Transdneistr.

Tiraspol was an unusual destination. The capital of an unofficial country which declared independence from Moldova in 1991 to try and remain a piece of the Soviet Union. It’s touted as being the last hard-line communist regime in the world (outside of North Korea), but there were a couple of adverts there, Coca-Cola was available in the cafes, there were cafes (and they looked to be privately owned). The bureaucracy was straight out of the USSR – it was impossible to stay in any hotel before we acquired a registration permit from the MGB (the re-vamped KGB) – which involved standing in at least 4 different queues filling various pieces of paper in.

Me, Mark and Shiz stood out a mile everywhere we went, but I enjoyed the attention that we got. Things very nearly turned nasty when it looked like Mark was not going to be allowed out at the unofficial checkpoint. I had a 10Euro note tucked in the back of my hand as a bribe, but the ‘border guard’ eventually let us go without much of a fight. I suppose one of the few benefits of being an official in a country that doesn’t officially exist is that you can do pretty much do as you please (Big Pete take note). But then you don’t get an invite to the Eurovision Song Contest or Qualification rounds in football. Or Markstock. I'll try and do a bit more of a detailed report on Moldova-proper in a few days.