Saturday 30th December – Chisinau, Moldova

• Arrival at your convenience into into Chisinau – the largest and the capital city of Moldova which has well connected flights within Europe and the Middle East.
• Pre-tour meeting and get-together with YPT guide and other travellers at the lobby of our hotel at 2:00pm to go over the tour itinerary and plans for the coming days.
• Meet our local Chisinau guide and start our city walking tour of Chisinau. We’ll visit the abandoned National Hotel, see one of the most stunning monasteries in the city which was thankfully spared destruction under Communism, see the infamous city prison which has been declared a breach of human rights amongst other things.
• We’ll see the enormous World War II Memorial and climb some tanks and surface to air missiles at the Military Museum!
• Visit the local flea market, great for antiques and Soviet kitsch!
• We’ll later head up the abandoned National Hotel, which was a former InTourist Hotel during the Soviet times to catch the sunset over Chisinau.
• Dinner and drinks in the evening at the best steakhouse in town, and cheapest in Europe!
• Overnight in Chisinau

Sunday 31st December – Chisinau – Tiraspol, Transnistria – New Year’s Eve

Morning

• Breakfast at our hotel
• We’ll meet our Transnistria fixers for the 2 hour ride to the breakaway republic of Transnistria. YPT will deal with all permits, border formalities and conversations with the Transnistrian KGB/MGB.
• After checking into our Tiraspol hotel, we’ll kick off our city tour.
• We’ll stop at the flea market in Tiraspol, here it’s possible to buy all kinds of Soviet antiques for rock bottom prices. You never know what you will find!
• We enter one of the largest outdoor markets in all of Transnistria. Guests will be able to shop and buy anything they want at very, very low prices. Also, many opportunities for old world type photos. This is a true old school, Russian market. Expect pigs heads, spices and everything imaginable for sale.
• We’ll walk down main street called October 25th street to see the North Korean style statue of Russian General Suvorov. Surrounding it are the flags of Russia, Transnistria and the breakaway brotherhood states of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia.
• Have your picture taken in front of a giant crest of Transnistria featuring the hammer and sickle!
• Visit Parliament, housing one of the biggest statues of Lenin outside Russia.
• Visit the Eternal Flame Memorial complex dedicated to the Soviet-Afghan war, WW2 and the Transnistrian civil war. Check out the battle damaged T-34 monument to WW2, it’s permitted to climb on it and get an awesome photo.
• We’ll then walk down the other end of main street which has a billboard of former President Smirnoff: The warlord who turned president for almost twenty years. We’ll see the embassies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the foreboding HQ of the infamous Sheriff organisation and stop at a bookshop to pick up some Russian and Transnistrian nationalist paraphernalia, a mug of Stalin or a fridge magnet of ICBMs firing across the atmosphere, why not?

Afternoon

• We’ll have lunch in the town at a local café called CCCP. This is designed to create a sense of nostalgia for locals and is packed with original Soviet memorabilia and great food.
• We’ll then switch it up and board an old Soviet ferry without an engine and cross the Dniester river to see how the village people live across from Tiraspol. This is an area truly lost in the USSR!
• Visit a still functioning palace of culture with an enormous head of Lenin outside, pockmarked with Kalashnikov bullet holes after Moldovan troops symbolically executed him during the civil war.
• You’ll then visit a stunning and completely self sufficient monastery complex that has to be seen to be believed. We know many of the priests there and sometimes they allow us to sample their incredible homemade wine, however, this is subject to whether the one priest with the key is available on the day.
• Pay a visit to a local store which hasn’t changed since the USSR and still uses an abacus to calculate the total. Here we’ll stock up on $3 Kvint Cognac (One of the best Cognacs in the Soviet era), $1 vodka and local smoked cheese.
• We then head to a stunning viewpoint and Soviet obelisk that was one of the most brutal battlefields during WW2. In the Russian speaking world, it’s respect to the dead to raise a shot of Cognac or Vodka in their honour and we’ll do just that!
• Return to Tiraspol and head for dinner at 7Fridays
• Return to our Soviet Hotel, we’ll have some time to freshen up before heading out for the New Year celebrations. Russians take New Year seriously and the party is incredible!
• Overnight in Tiraspol

Monday 1st January – Tiraspol – Bender – Comrat, Gagauzia

Morning

• After breakfast we’ll check out of our Soviet hotel and head to Bender, one of Transnistria’s biggest cities and a site of fierce fighting during the 90s civil war.
• Continue walking down the main street until we arrive at Lenin Park. We view the main fountain, the bust of Lenin before going into the local cinema which is largely unchanged since Soviet times except Mission Impossible is playing instead of Soviet propaganda.
• We continue to walk down the main street until we reach the train station, renovated and well maintained. It seems like a ghost town because only a few trains stop here, and there are almost no passengers. Besides the train station is an old Soviet train from WWII with the hammer and sickle on the front.
• Check out the city hall which has been left exactly as it was during the civil war and is still filled with bullet holes.

Afternoon

• We’ll mix with students at the Dolce Vita cafe, an inexpensive place with great buffet style food and the eatery of choice for locals
• We then leave Transnistria, stopping at the final Sheriff store on the border to exchange our Transnistrian rubles and buy some souvenir Kvint cognac before we re enter Moldova and head South to Comrat, the capital city of the Gagauzian Republic, who as opposed to Transnistria, made peace with the central authorities after a brief civil war in the 1990s.
• Gagauzia is populated by the Gagauz people; they’re Turkic Christians who have remained here since the conquests of the Ottoman empire. They speak their own distinct language and have a very unique culture. This is the only place in the world to see a Lenin statue opposite a statue of Ataturk!
• After the 3 hour journey on dirt roads, we will stop for photos at the welcome to Gagauzia sign before we arrive in Comrat and transfer to our Hotel for the night.
• We’ll then head to a trip highlight as we drive through the Gagauzian countryside to an isolated village where we will meet Stopan and his family. Formerly a director of a collective farm during the Soviet era, Stopan has been a friend of YPT for a number of years and organises a formidable Gagauzian feast on his family farm for our groups. Gagauzia is the most famous wine region in Moldova and Stopan has a lot of it!
• End the evening in a farmhouse partying Gagauzia style! Expect the locals to join in as YPT groups are the only foreigners to ever visit this isolated village.
• For those who wish to return to the hotel early, we will have a team of local drivers waiting at the farm to transfer people.
• Overnight in Comrat hotel

Tuesday 2nd January – Comrat – Chisinau

Morning

• Breakfast and head to the abandoned Comrat airport, still littered with a number of abandoned Soviet era planes. This is subject to availability as recently security forces have moved in to protect the airport being used.
• We’ll explore downtown Comrat, seeing the stunning cathedral, a huge statue of Lenin, the Afghanistan war memorial and the national museum of Gagauzia.
• Begin making our way back to Chisinau via the one and a half hour private bus ride.

Afternoon

• Once arriving in Chisinau we’ll have lunch
• Tour concludes – YPT can assist with onward travel advice or accommodation

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