The rusting two-lane bridge over the Dniester River could have been anywhere on Earth’s vast plains—middle of Nebraska, perhaps, spanning a branch of the Platte River lined with scrubby cottonwoods beneath scrawny bluffs. The bridge, the setting, and the landscape itself, were all unremarkable, save a fresh prairie breeze from the Eurasian Steppe. But this bridge led from Moldova into Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist enclave in the middle of nowhere, barely bigger than Long Island. My travel companion Jay shook his head decisively.
No.
Transnistria was a no-fly zone.
“But when will we ever have this chance again?” I persisted. Only two other quasi-countries recognize Transnistria’s half-million inhabitants as citizens of an independent “republic.” The rest of the world giggles. So Jay frowned at me with a well-honed Midwestern dismissal. He’s from Milwaukee. Wisconsinites base their daily lives on Midwestern common sense. A mid-bridge checkpoint with armed guards didn’t make it on the roster of common-sense excursions, no matter how sleepy the guards seemed. Our guide advised that a $50 “contribution” would easily ease any border control issues. No passport stamps, though.
“If you are unavoidably compelled, I'll stay here and watch,” Jay declared, accustomed to my cockamamie schemes.
I reflected. Compelled? No. And so six years ago Transnistria never made it on my country tally, currently at 67 and counting.
Jay would reject visiting Nagorno-Karabakh. He'd be right.
But one need not visit war zones to garble your understanding of humanity’s tribal hegemonies.
My own travels to Wales, Scotland, Jersey, and the Vatican—and to Transnistria’s doorstep—have led me to intellectual self-tinkering with very interesting questions. What is a country/nation? Who says? Where’s the line between geopolitical pragmatism and local aspirations? Do people have an unlimited right to say who they are? If so, when, where, and how do we honor it?
For example, if you’re in Barcelona, are you in Spain? “No!” barked Catalan friends when I visited years ago—and by the way, although I can speak “Spanish,” I am actually speaking no such thing. “It’s Castilian,” they sneered politely. Then we had dinner after midnight, which at my island farm is as close to breakfast time as supper time.
But even if the daily schedule is unique, Catalonia isn’t on any recognized country roster, and I don’t count it.
OK, the basics: The United Nations counts 193 nations (not Catalonia). FedEx delivers to over 220 countries, probably including Transnistria. But extreme traveler country collectors have a list of more than 1,500 distinct places to visit. Russia has 86; the United Kingdom, 30. The United States, 79; no Greenland yet. Panama Canal, debatable.
Consider Vatican City, usually cited as the world’s smallest country. (Just over 100 acres, exponentially smaller than Transnistria.) The Vatican isn’t a member of the U.N., but it has “permanent observer” nonmember-state U.N. status, which means … Who knows what it means? Not me. But I have visited the Vatican, spent a day there gawping at mega-famous monuments such as the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, and marble stolen from the Colosseum a few handy blocks away. Religious capital it may be, but “imperially opulent” is my description.
Random tourists can’t stay the night in Vatican City, but I nonetheless include it on my country list even though I generally follow the widely accepted dictum that you haven’t “visited” a place until you spend the night there. One may ask what good definitional rules are if I won’t even follow my own; send your inquiries to my attorney, please, Robert Bulloch Esq.
Consider Wales. Its history, language, culture, and emotional heritage are neither English nor British, whatever that means. It’s part of the United Kingdom, but if you think Wales is not a country, try this: Walk into a pub (an English term) in Aberystwyth, a gorgeous mid-Wales seaside town, home of the Welsh Language Society and the National Library of Wales; proclaim in a loud voice that “Wales is not a country!”; and see what happens.
What about contiguity? Wales is contiguous to England, and most parts of most countries are adjacent to other parts—but then that rules out Hawai‘i, Alaska, Northern Ireland, Kaliningrad, and many other bits and bobs of land around the world. Interestingly, such places are often distinctly different from their mother countries. I’ve not been to the last two, but I’m intimately familiar with Hawai’i and Alaska. Each would make a fine stand-alone country. Both are much bigger than Transnistria (Alaska is bigger than almost any place). Both have substantial military defense abilities, though the bombs and bombers are technically U.S. property. Same is true in Greenland.
Back in the UK, there’s Jersey. This charming small island, officially known as the “Bailiwick of Jersey,” is called a “country” by Wikipedia, and is technically a self-governing British crown dependency in the ocean about 14 miles from Normandy, from whence a lot of trouble came England’s way 1,000 years ago. Today, HRH King Charlie is the ultimate poo-bah; the local poo-bah is the bailiff. It’s a constitutional democracy under Charles or whichever extant Windsor. But if you ask: “Oh, we’re just Jersey,” says a sales clerk at a tailor shop in St. Helier, the main town. He shrugs like a high school science teacher asked to explain Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Jersey is currently known for two things. The local eponymous dairy cows are wonderfully handsome, gentle beings that produce what advocates consider the world’s best cream, with which I agree. And Jersey’s banks have long harbored billions in assets for Russian oligarchs ducking taxes—money the British government would like to get, but … Well, thanks for your inquiry.
I’ve not yet been to Guernsey, Jersey’s sister island, which claims that their cows are much better than Jersey’s; but I am hatching plans to go this coming spring. I look forward to awesome animated discussions about which cream is better, Jersey or Guernsey, to use to make clotted cream, the world’s most delightful mid-morning indulgence.
Jersey and Guernsey are undoubtedly on the inventory of Charles Veley, a San Franciscan who believes he is the most-traveled American, having visited 1,268 places on the Extreme Traveler list. At just 67 places, I have a long, long way to go to compete in these rarified heights; but I have no desire for that.
I do, however, dismiss the notion that such lists are mercenary ego exercises, though that’s the view of many, including a former spouse who regularly asked me why I keep count. To that, I ask, would you keep track of how many dollars are in your checking account? Veley says he is collecting knowledge, not numbers. I can get behind that.
The bottom line is that keeping a roster of places you’ve visited induces useful wonderment about the way geopolitics and culture reflect the human condition—and isn’t that the point of travel? See how tribal we still can be? And how it’s humanly possible to insensibly fight over such things—or look past them and live in cooperation. Not a soul in Jersey or Guernsey (both of which fell under Nazi occupation in World War II) would consider going to war with anyone over their geopolitical status. What a complicated, contradictory species we are!
Transnistria came into being, such as it is, following a brief “war” in the early 1990s between Moldovans and separatists, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The “war” lasted about two years with 700 fatalities; a 1992 ceasefire has held ever since and Transnistrians travel and trade freely in Moldova. Moscow recently snubbed Transnistria by cutting off natural gas supplies for a couple weeks, so the region’s dream of joining Russia, um, temporarily ran out of gas. In other words, it’s all kind of a geopolitical fairy tale.
But wait. Not so fast. Here’s an enclave in which tribal conflict has been held at bay for two whole generations by … common sense. Not a fantasy at all.
Looking back on my proximity to Transnistria, considering my lifelong desire to find out how, as Rodney King put it, we can “all just get along,” and how oddball out-of-the-way principalities, republics, enclaves, states, dominions, commonwealths, territories, and realms may offer something to learn after all, I recall the mild, grassy prairie breeze reaching me from across the river. … Maybe Charles Veley is on to something.
I should have crossed that bridge when I came to it.
