Transdniestria and Jonathan Seagull

It's been pretty cold in Moldova, and I write this looking out through a single-glazed window onto some spindly hawthorn trees and clusters of apartment buildings. I've been keeping warm by jogging around the muddied paths circling concrete towerblocks in the morning, and going with my host Tania Tiutiun to the Israeli Embassy for dance classes to some sort of Zorba's-dance/techno fusion...

I'm on my way back from a few days in Transdniestria: a republic which declared its separation from Moldova in the final days of the Soviet Union. You can catch a minibus there from Moldova, squashed between women snuggled in their padded coats, debating whether the foreigners' entry permit to Transdniestria will cost $20 or perhaps even $50. One of them asked the driver whether he could drop me off in a nearby field so I could smuggle myself across and avoid paying, but in the end the major hazard was delays while various soldiers took me to their offices to ask me what on earth I was doing visiting them.

Arriving in Tiraspol city - and being careful not to photograph any of the Russian 'peacekeeping' troops - you notice the number of Lenin status occupying prime sites, and the Soviet trolleybuses rumbling along the streets. I've been staying with the Gavrilov family in a small house by the Dniestr river, where bitter redcurrants grow in the garden, and the toilet is a cold wooden hut past two fearsome wolves (on rather weak chains) which somehow they are convinced are household dogs.

Yesterday I had a couple of meetings with local NGOs: one involving a rendezvous by the river and a conversation in the backseat of a Lada; the other lasted some time because the person thought I was a DfID representative and rather important. Igor, one of the Gavrilov sons, took me to see his medical college, and without warning I found myself presented to a class full of white-coated 17-year-olds as a "real English man". Some of them doubted whether this was indeed the case, mainly owing to my Swiss family background rather than questions about my masculinity (although my hair is several inches longer than the Russian crew-cut in fashion here, and I was asked "what do you think about gays?" just to check).

Has anyone else read Jonathan Livingston Seagull? It seems to mean a lot for people here - a bit clandestine though.

[it's me on the train from Budapest to Sighetu Marmatiei (Romania)]
[Ceaucescu's palatial balcony in Bucharest - though he was executed before he managed to speak from this new one]
[my hosts Tania and Alex in Chisinau, Moldova]
[election time in Transdniestria, but all the posters have a strange similarity]
[if this is the first Englishman they've met, I apologise on behalf of my country]
[selling pumpkin seeds on the road in Tiraspol]
[that's the Sheriff casino, owned by President Smirnov's son, just like all the petrol stations, and various other lucrative bits & bobs]

[Moldovan wine - good in moderation?]
[last night's meal]
[Igor is learning English]
[view from my Moldovan window, where I started this email!]