Jacob Resneck’s

ODESSA, Ukraine � It was the most pathetic shake down attempt I’d ever witnessed.

It wouldn’t be a bribe, they explained, but I must pay money if I wanted to leave the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

�In Transdniestria must give– give geld!� the border guard insisted in a mix of tongues.

I’d been told to prepare myself for such a ritual if I ventured into Transnistria, a curious Russian-speaking territory that brought a brief but violent war of secession in 1992 that’s led to de facto independence of a strip of land wedged between Moldova and Ukraine.

Unrecognized by every nation except Russia, this renegade province runs its own affairs in every respect � it even prints its own rubles � which a Transnistrian I’d met observed has the same exchange rate as a paper napkin � absolutely nil.

I’d made a Swiss friend in L’viv, Ukraine who’d been shaken down for 10 euros, a tidy sum in this part of the world. I was determined not to suffer the same fate. The border guards continued to finger my passport.

Where did I intend to travel to after Ukraine?

Georgia � Gruzija � across the Black Sea, I replied.

Ah, you’re a journalist! they insisted. No, just a tourist. For a second I felt the flash of shame I experience whenever I fib. Then I realized that I was telling the truth; I am unemployed, and this realization depressed me.

I’d spent the past three days in Moldova proper. Its capital city, Chisinau, was the birthplace of my great, great grandfather but the zealous Hassidic Jews I’d met at the last working synagogue said they couldn’t help with any insight on the family for any less than 200 euros. Still, it’d been a curious mix of discoth�que drinking with Moldovan ex-commandos, picking through the ruins of a Yeshiva with some vodka-scamming workmen and generally ogling at the disparity of wealth between the German-car driving elite and the destitute in one of the poorest nations in Europe.

But no visit to Moldova would be complete without the visit to Transnistria � unrecognized by all even its principle benefactor, the Russian Federation � which boasts Soviet-era marble busts of Vladimir Lenin that stand watch in front of public buildings.

I’d made arrangements to meet up in Tiraspol (�the capital�) with a 21-year-old woman that I’d contacted through an internet hospitality forum. I sat with this fellow �CouchSurfer� as she explained her frustration of living in a republic that has purposefully isolated itself from the rest of the world. That didn’t mean she had any illusions about western nations being a beacon liberal freedoms. To her western media � even supposedly objective voices like the BBC � are propaganda machines for western powers.

As a press officer for government ministers she is part of the local machine that puts a positive spin on the doings of local officials. Her job sounded no different than any other public information officer one finds in the United States. But she’s sick of it and is also working with a non-governmental organization to work with her counterparts from other European nations. Her initiative and pluck has already landed her at least one �interview� with the internal security folks. She didn’t go into much detail on that except that it wasn’t a pleasant experience and I didn’t press the issue further.

There were obviously limits to the state’s repression as she blew off a meeting with local officials to sit in a cafe in the middle of the afternoon with a visiting foreigner.

We bid farewell and I caught a marshutka � minivans that run short- and long-distance trips between towns � back to Ukraine and it was at the border between Transnistria and Ukraine that I found myself the target of a half-hearted attempt at extortion.

They kept fingering my passport and trying to explain that I had to pay them. Something. Anything.

�Tran-zit,� I insisted. My plucky Tiraspolian friend had told me to stick firm; that I didn’t owe these guys a red cent if I stayed less than 24 hours. I just kept repeating the word �tran-zit� until the lead one began to look tired.

�Good luck,� he said as he handed back my passport. I exhaled with relief and stifled a triumphant smirk � or at least tried to.

Back in the marshutka or, as I like to call them, Moldovan limousine, vodka had been purchased. To a kindly looking passenger, I strung together half of my Russian vocabulary into a single sentence in a lame attempt to ask which bus station we would arrive at in Odessa.

He cut me off. �Maybe I can help you with something?� he said in rather good English.

The next hour was spent shooting vodka and talking about how nice it is that the Cold War is finally over. My English-speaking chum, a retired merchant seaman from Siberia, and an ex-cop from Ukraine and I made short work of the vodka as our limousine lumbered through the darkness toward Odessa.

Two hours later I was in full tourist-mode, running up the famous Potemkin Steps.

Never a good idea with a bellyful of Russian vodka and Transnistrian brandy � as I soon learned.

Jaco out

Our story so far: After three relatively glorious years in Saranac Lake, New York the author liquidated many of his assets and set off back into the world to claim his fortune � or at least stave off boredom as he enters his thirties. After a grueling pace of travel that took him through a half-dozen European countries, the author finds himself in Ukraine where the adventure begins as he makes his way east.

CHERNIVTSI, Ukraine � After elicited a blank look of stupid incomprehension that has become my signature expression as I travel east, the Slovak border guard switched to English.

�For what purpose do you travel in Ukraine?� she asked.

�Tourist,� I offered lamely.

Nearby, a leather-clad Russian who looked like he could be Vladimir Putin’s scruffy nephew guffawed with derisive laughter. There was about a dozen of us bus passengers queuing along the Slovak-Ukrainian frontier on the furthest fringe of ‘Fortress Europe.’

Did I mention it was snowing in the bus? I mean inside the bus it was snowing. While the sour-faced driver sucked his life away on cigarettes, us passengers sat with teeth chattering as snow poured from the overhead vent. A kindly faced Ukrainian woman sitting across from me gave me an apologetic smile which I interpreted as ‘It’s not usually snowing in the buses.’

Twenty minutes later the bus rolled into Uzhhorod, a bustling border town that prospers as a trade center on the doorstep of the EU.

The first thing I notice are the dogs. Scruffy dogs everywhere. There are no dog catchers in Ukraine so these half-tame, half-wild creatures are denizens in their own right. Some roam solo, others in packs of three or four. A few pairs stick together. All walk with a swaggering purpose and look both ways before they cross a busy street. These canines were streetwise. They weren’t wild enough to look fearsome yet you know better than to try to pat them on the head.

The crumbling Austro-Hungarian architecture is impressive though many of the 17^th century buildings have been renovated into building supply shops � presumably for thrifty Poles and Slovaks who cross the the border to buy linoleum and plumbing supplies.

Another notable feature was the teenage girls dressed like go-go dancers who walked with an air of confidence � making eye contact with strangers on the street � that was a marked contrast from the reserve of young people I’d grown accustomed to in Slovakia and Austria.

After several hours later on a Soviet-era train that was remarkably comfortable � each wagon featured a drop down shelf with a bedroll and clean sheets - I was in L’viv, the cultural capital of western Ukraine. I’d prearranged to stay with some strangers-from-the-internet and my hosts took me to a Ukrainian nationalist partisan theme-bar for dinner. Costumed guards ask for the �password� (�Heroes of Ukraine!�) before allowing patrons to descend into a subterranean dining room where militia-uniformed women brought us mushroom soup and a honey liquor that reminded me of mead in that we drank out of tin cups, partisan-style.

What follows was three packed days in the city that was surprisingly free of harrowing ordeals and therefore not worth writing too much about. There was the trip to the banja � a traditional sauna in which you beat yourself with oak branches to cleanse the skin; a drinking bout with a hostel owner that ended with us retreating from an all-night cafe bar after a loquacious bar patron inexplicably smashed a window with his fist (then, to his credit, immediately offered to pay for the damage); and general delight of losing oneself in a country where everything is written in a foreign alphabet in which I can read with the proficiency of a first grader.

A night-train brought me to Chernivtsi � an ancient town that’s been traded back and forth between Romania, Ukraine and so forth � and after a night spent in a vacant hostel there’s an early morning to Moldova where things, I have been promised, should get really weird.

Jaco out

SARANAC LAKE, New York — Back in June I wrote about getting popped - twice - in Canada. The first time was by a CN railcop in the Charny yard outside Quebec City on my way to Halifax. Second arrest was in St. Leonard, New Brunswick after my 48′ container car was flooded by a dozen dreadies just as the train pulled outta’ Halifax.

They were climbing the stacks and waving at school buses to it seemed inevitable that we’d eventually get collared. We did. CN stopped the train and RCMP cops pulled us off and dumped us about a mile from the Trans-Canada highway.

While the Quebecoise gendarmes cashed my $141CAN fine some months ago, I’d been playing phone-tag with the RCMP corporal who busted us to get a copy of the group photo he’d taken of us. He told the photo had been accidentally erased (yeah, right) but then went on to inform me that he was working on getting me my money back.

Excusez-moi?

Well, he explained in his French Acadian accent, it seemed the tickets had been written improperly. They wrote us up for a provincial crime on a federal ticket (or vice versa) and so he asked the station commander to refund my money.

Today a brown envelope arrived in my post box. As long as the Canadian post office is willing to cash the money order, I’ll soon have $100CAN and the best part is, the Canadian dollar has increased in value. So, my $100CAN money order which cost me about $93USD earlier in the summer, is now worth about $98.60USD and is increasing…

Not a bad investment, eh?

Jaco out

ST. HYACINTHE, Quebec — Get caught or get stranded. Neither was certain but I’d have to move soon or else that train would pull without me. No guts, no glory, I kept telling myself. I was in the wrong part of the Halifax railyard when I realized how little time I had.

Between me and my train was a second locomotive full of workers with radios. It was a suicide mission to run out into the open with no cover.

Peering through three stationery junk trains I could see my freight idling, my ride back toward Montreal. I’d been caught and ticketed a few days prior and didn’t want yet another court date or hefty fine. I resolved not to risk it, doubled back on my word and leapt out into the open. Scrambling over a couple of lumber cars, I was just around the bend from the idling locomotive. My freight began to roll.

Car after car passed on the highway, I was in the line of sight of the locomotive now and the yard office was around the bend. I willed myself invisible as I counted each unridable pass me as the train picked up speed. It was at the very ass-end of the train that I saw my ride. Running with my pack, I drew up to the ladder and jumped. I caught the railing and clung for dear life before vaulting over it and landing with a loud thud inside the well between the container and the coupling of the rail car. At the moment we passed the yard office, not 10 feet from my car, I pressed myself against the wall praying they wouldn’t see down to my hiding place. We lost speed and began to slow.

The train stopped.

Quieting my breathing, I listened. There was the distinct crunch of gravel as someone approached my car. Busted for sure, I realized.

A dreadlocked head popped up peering into the well; I don’t know which one of us looked more startled.

“Mind if we ride?” he asked.

How many are you?

About eight, plus dogs, he said.

I told him there was another ride further down– but as I answered the train lurched forward. We were aired up and rolling.

“Please don’t trip,” he said as my bucket began to fill rapidly with guitars, dogs, girls, boys, packs, beer and the usual accoutrement of a freight train journey.

In all there was 10 people and four dogs. That’s exaggerating — two of the dogs were puppies.

I was conflicted. While I welcome their company (and their Moose Dry Ice beer) nothing brings heat down on you harder than 11 people and four dogs crammed into two freight cars. Whatever, it was a party and I was glad to be a part of it.

Several had been recently bailed out from the jail in Halifax having smashed up part of the downtown in a protest of the Atlantica economic summit the week prior. All had been at the protest which the Halifax newspapers and locals in the taverns were still talking about in disbelief: there hadn’t been running street battles in Halifax between riot police and black-clad Anarchist protesters in quite awhile.

I don’t know what we were protesting, I just wanted to smash things, the youngest told me.

When the booze had about run out we crammed into a puppy pile and tried to sleep. I dreamed of vein thrombosis with their deadly blood clots as I tried to shift my legs. The sun rose the next morning and New Brunswick was before us. Mist rose from the glens and valleys and roared past small lumber operations and minor towns as we headed toward Edmundston.

The group wasn’t exactly discreet, nor was I. We took turns riding on top of the containers though we ducked down for major crossings and for railworkers. But we were waving at school buses and little old ladies. It was only a matter of time before Jean Law appeared to pull us off in some small French town.

When we spotted the same worker twice traveling in a van spotting us, we knew it was trouble. Our train slowed shortly after midday and there was two RCMP police cruisers parked. Damn federales, I muttered.

End of the line, we realized.

They climbed up the coupling and peered down at us. We tried to look unthreatening.

“Do you have any firearms?” the eldest federale asked with a clipped Acadian French accent. We had a hearty laugh at that.

“It’s just regulations,” he said apologetically.

One by one we were searched and questioned. The lead cop was good humored and took our ribbing well. The other cops, a man and a woman. were young and our tickets were more on-the-job training for their benefit than to teach some grizzled dreadlocked Anarchists with rail tattoos a lesson.

One listened to our guitar playing with interest and offered that he was a musician.

The CN railworker who’d spotted us was there. I asked him what the big deal was — why bring the heat down on us?

“It’s very unsafe If that train derails, we’re the ones that have to clean up the bodies,” he said trying to sound like a protective parent.

Come on, you’re a railroad man, I told him, you know that statistically speaking rail travel is a lot safer than automobiles on the highway.

Being a railroad man, he couldn’t argue.

We were issued with tickets for $100CAN each. I was stupid enough to give a real name and address.

We were run for warrants. A few were smart enough to use an alias. One girl who protests a lot, turned up a restriction that forbids her from carrying a crossbow, concrete or chicken wire. What she had done with any of the three to earn that restriction, I wouldn’t want to imagine.

Then we each had our picture taken. For reasons not clear, the RCMP wanted a big group photo. Perhaps like fishermen documenting a big catch, they wanted it for their wall. We were enthusiastic and all smiled. We begged for a copy. Finally, he passed around a sheet in which we wrote down our emails and he promised to send us a copy.

The lead cop then made a speech — in French — explaining that he had pulled us off the train because he was answering a complaint from the railroad. Hitchhiking was illegal in the province but he recognized that we had few options so he wanted us to leave any way we could without generating any complaints from residents, he said.

Stuck in the minuscule town of St. Leonard, New Brunswick about a mile from the Trans-Canada highway, Edmundston — the next crew change for freights — was a good 40km away.

I bade farewell to my new friends and hit the highway. It began pouring and I was glad I’d packed full raingear.

It wasn’t easy getting picked up at first, but two long lifts later I had made it to Drummondville, Quebec about 40km from a good friend’s town. I called for rescue and and sat up on a hay bale waiting for my ride while working on a 12 pack and Stephen King novel. Watching the sunset over the farmland straddling the main highway, I reflected on this year’s miserable 0-2 record for getting busted on Canadian freights.

Now I’ll hafta get me a job to pay my debts to Canadian society.

Jaco out

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A little after 6 in the morning and everything was in place. Ensconced under an overpass in Montreal the tell-tale signs of success surrounded me: soggy cardboard, recent trainriders’ tags and a sleeping homebum told me that the site was well-known as a portal east to the Maritimes. Like clockwork, my train pulled in at 10:30 a.m. and I made camp. Stringing my hammock inside the rail car, I popped a still-cold can of beer and felt pretty smug about my trip east. 

We rolled over the Pont Victoria railbridge at 11 a.m. and I couldn’t have been happier. 

Four hours later, holding a bilingual appearance ticket from the Le ministère de la Justice on the outskirts of Quebec City I wondered whether my luck had changed. In the past two hours, my hat had been taken by the wind, my hammock had snapped under my weight and now I was looking at a hefty fine for trespassing. 

It all went down as we pulled into the Joffre Yard outside Quebec City. I took a peak to see a police cruiser charging toward the train. Crap, I thought, maybe someone had spotted me even though I’d ducked at virtually every crossing. 

We ground to a halt and I heard a car door slam and the crunck of gravel. Not even breathing, I almost prayed and tried to think quietly. Slowly a long pole with a mirror rose up over my rail car. It was like something out of War of the Worlds as I looked at the cop looking at me through his panopticon-on-a-stick contraption. 

“Get out guy,” he ordered with a slight French accent. He seemed happy to greet me; I was less enthusiastic. 

I asked how he found me. He answered that he “always” checks this train in the summer. Its relative speed to Halifax (about 24 hours) and the fine weather makes it attractive to riders, he said. So for the last three years, Canadian National has had the railcops check each car. I watched him as he did just that with his parascope, checking each 48-foot and even 53-foot rail cars. 

That said, a $141CAN fine is still cheaper than buying a passenger ticket from Montreal to Quebec City. And people say Amtrak is a rip-off. The rail cop laughed heartily when I pointed this out. 

Declining his offer for a ride into town, he agreed to take me to the highway. I fished out a piece of cardboard from a Dumpster and scrawled Nouveau Brunswick with a magic marker. Those French-speaking Gauls ate it up. I didn’t have to wait more than five minutes for any rides. 

Somewhere in eastern Quebec I got a lift from a grizzled and tanned older guy in a minivan. He was “affiliated” with Hell’s Angels and trying to make good time to see his son who had been hospitalized in a mountain bike accident. He was a generous sort, sharing his cigarettes and booze as we took turns almost-falling-asleep-at-the-wheel in rural New Brunswick. 

“I can’t read these fucking signs they’re all in French,” he grumbled at the roadsigns. 

The highway signs said ‘Nouveau Brunswick’ — it might’ve been written in Russian as far as he was concerned. 

Dawn was just creeping up when I found the railyard in Moncton. By this time I was close to delirious from a lack of sleep. I wandered around the yard - it’s layout confused me - looking for a friendly worker to ask which trains go where. I didn’t want to end up back in the Joffrey Yard in Quebec staring at a cop through his mirror-on-a-stick again; I knew that much. 

I sot of wore out my welcome in the yard. The few workers avoided me in my cart. After I was still hanging out after a long junk trail had left the yard, someone called the cops because there they were. Two federal Mounties (they ride Ford Crown Vics now, unfortunately) called me over for questioning. 

I spun them a yarn about being dropped off hitchhiking by a railroad worker and getting lost in the yard trying to find an exit. For the third time in my life, I was in the back of a Canadian cop car being driven to the highway. 

It’s not too bad being an undesirable in Canada. While U.S. cops might drive you out of town, in Canada they chauffeur you. 

I saw my train again, rolling fast south of Truro, Nova Scotia. It was in the distance, hugging the shoreline and I felt bad for not being on it and good that I was going to beat into Halifax despite all of my screwing around in Moncton. 

Halifax itself is a pleasant enough place. The seedy port has been largely converted in condos. It still has a slight air of being an imperial outpost of the British Empire but more often it’s like a leafy college town you’d find in New England. 

Last night an old Scotsman nicknamed “Scotty” told me how you used to get 10-pounds of fresh fish if you stood a fisherman a couple draught beers. The fishing fleet’s all gone now but there’s still the port. The second-best deepwater port in the world, a bartender tells me. 

Time to get off this bloody computer and see the sea. 

Jaco out 

VIENNA, Austria – Forgive me, gentle reader, for I am about to stray into adult territory. For that is what I did one weeknight evening on a trip through some of the seediest places purely for journalistic reasons.

I had made acquaintance with a fellow journalist, whose identity I shall protect, who was investigating the underworld of Vienna’s Gürtel. The inner belt of the city, the Gürtel is lined with dozens of brothels, wrapping the inner city with a belt of vice.

Geographically, Vienna is well-positioned to absorb young economic refugees, fleeing the eastern fringes of Europe that is – in many areas – still an economic wasteland. If only that was the whole truth. Criminal gangs also operate a cash-on-delivery operation where they import these human beings from the former Soviet Union, Balkans, Africa and elsewhere.

The first joint was one of the most well-known. It was done up in a Grecian style with faux statues of Venus, red lights strung across the bar, and surly men – one with a grotesque tattoo across his neck – staffing the bar.

The women sat at small tables, looking pensive and smoking Marlboro Lights. In their hands were drinks of various colors. Most of these supple-bodied, sad-eyed beauties were very young.

In the center was a single pole. Ink-neck, as I believe his mother calls him, would point to one of them. She’d stub out her cigarette and then do a strip on the center pole, in a lurid attempt to drum up business. Aside from a few child-molesting arms dealers in the corner, we were the only johns in the place.

After each dance, the women would come at us, a phalanx of lurid grins and greetings. We told them, no we were not interested in their wares, we’d only stopped in to enjoy a quiet round of €8 bottles of beer, but thank you all the same.

Looking around, I noticed the place was multiracial. At a far corner were a trio of African women sitting by themselves.

“You’d think in a brothel at least you’d have some racial harmony,” one of us quipped.
 
The first dancer came and introduced herself. She couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. She was from a small city in Bavaria, near the border with Austria, she told us.

Gastarbeiter, (guest worker) quipped one of my companions.

The second dancer came up to us. She had look pretty pissed off when it was her turn to dance. She said she was from Hungary and didn’t linger around for conversation.

The whole interaction was watched closely by ink-neck and his fellow pimps. It was like a sales office in a car lot. If the salespeople didn’t put appropriate pressure on the suckers, they’d get pulled into the sales manager’s office later. I didn’t want to imagine.
The Africans were the next wave. They tried to put their hands on us, I politely shooed them away, explaining lamely that I was “shy.” They spoke impeccable English, probably better than their German. They asked us to buy them drinks. At €8 a pop, our sense of chivalry failed us and they went back to their solitary table, empty-handed.

The second place was more subdued. It was named after a major American city and had a few clients. One was a well-dressed man in a business suit looking very pleased with himself. Someone in our party recognized him as a successful car dealer with two children and a wife. He was chatting amiably to an anorexic girl about half his age in a private booth. She looked very bored. He pretended not to notice or just didn’t care.

The other john was an elderly man in a dirty red anorak. He looked like he had just enough cash to hang out, but not enough to purchase services. Most of the women were from Romania. I asked one, she said she was 30-years-old, how long she’d been working there.

Three weeks, she said. Your German is very good for three weeks.

I’m learning every day, she replied.

My companions needed photos to go with their story. They used me as the dumb American holidaymaker and said they wanted a photo that I could take back home. She assented after my companion bought the old codger in the red jacket a strip tease. The face would be blocked out, my friends said.

We continued our travel, armed with a list from an informant that my friend had earlier interviewed. One was just a small shack, above the tracks leading to a main train station. We opened the door. Loud, Turkish pop was blaring out; there were about half-dozen hostile looking Turkish men and maybe two girls.

Our fearless leader stood in the doorway, letting the cold air waft in.

Are you coming in or not, the bartender asked, not unreasonably.

I was… but it looks too dangerous, he replied. They didn’t really argue. We moved on.

The next place was the last stop for the evening. Usually the Gürtel is thronged with streetwalkers and others outside the pavement to attract business, I was told. This club had a couple of women out front. They immediately seized upon us.

How much does it all cost, our drunken leader asked. One hundred and twenty euros for twenty minutes, the girl said. His face was one of shocked disbelief. But that includes the room, she offered. Yeah, it’s too cold without the room, he replied.

So why was she out there? The boss says I have to wait out here, unless you want to go inside for a drink. It was awkward. Clearly she didn’t want to mill around on the pavement in thigh-high boots, but we didn’t want to get sucked in either.

Uh, maybe later… I’ve had too much to drink, our leader slurred.

She was disgusted and, it appeared, with her own situation in general.

You young men all drink too much! she blurted in Romanian-accented German before it accelerated passed my level of comprehension. (My German sucks. To illustrate: Earlier in the evening I was asked if I wanted any “company” but thought the girl had asked my profession).

Inside the only consolation to this sad place were the photos of D-list celebrities on the wall. My favorite was of an Austrian television actor I hadn’t seen since 1999.

She show, Commissar Rex, centered around a police detective and his crime-fighting German shepherd, Rex. And yes, in the picture was the actor and Rex. The girl was smiling, patting the dog.

Less than four hours later, I was at the Parliament building watching the Finance Minister unveil next year’s budget. Even my terrible German could understand the main points: fiscal responsibility, preserving social security for the future of our children, yada, yada, yada.

Political grandstanding sounds the same, whatever the language.

All the while I couldn’t stop thinking of those sad-eyed people who looked so homesick under the garish pink glow of Vienna’s red light district not more than a mile away.
 
Jaco out

VIENNA, Austria – Journalists in the United States jealously guard their sense of independence. In order to avoid even the appearance of bias, we’ve invented all kinds of rules silly rules for ourselves.