Monday 29th August – Bucharest, Romania

• Arrival in Bucharest at your own leisure and transfer to our centrally located hotel
• Pre-tour meeting will be held at the lobby of our hotel at 6:00pm to discuss tour itinerary and to meet your fellow travellers and YPT guide.
• Go out for dinner and drinks at Caru Cu Bere, one of our favourite places in Bucharest.
• Overnight at our hotel.

Tuesday 30th August – Bucharest – Chisinau, Moldova

Morning

• We’ll check out and store our luggage in the hotel baggage room.
• We’ll meet our local Romanian guide for a day tour of Ceausescu’s Bucharest! No trip to Romania would be worth its salt unless we went and looked at everything and anything Ceausescu related, the don of Eastern Bloc extreme. We will do a local walking tour, seeing all the must-see sites from “revolutionary” times such as the enormous Palace of the Parliament, see where the Communist regime went down in flames on the bullet riddled streets around Revolutionary Square, see the churches that avoided Communist destruction by being placed on wheels and slid across the city and much more.

Afternoon

• We’ll then give you the chance to explore the city at your own pace. You can use this opportunity to wander the streets of the charming old town, visit the ruins of Dracula’s palace in the centre of the city, explore the flea market near the old Russian church, view a severed arm that is said to bring you luck in one of Bucharest’s most charming churches, or you can venture out of downtown to visit the infamous Spring Palace. It was here during the decades of Communist rule, that Nicolae Ceausescu and his family lived in luxury. Preserved by the military during the violent downfall of Communism in Romania, the house looks almost the same as when the dictator and his family were in power. Expect gold plated bathrooms, gifts from Chairman Mao, and opulence like you’ve never seen!
• Board our 7:15pm train to Chisinau, this is an old school Communist era 4-berth sleeper and still has the made in the DDR plates on some of the walls!
• Dinner and drinks on the overnight train
• We’ll pass border control and the train will be lifted off the tracks to change wheel gauge
• Overnight on train

Wednesday 31st August – Chisinau

Morning

• Early morning arrival in Chisinau and transfer to our centrally located Soviet era hotel.
• After breakfast we’ll 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!

Afternoon

• After lunch, we’ll give you the chance to explore the capital city of Europe’s least visited country at your own pace. This is a great chance to visit the national museum of Moldova, walk out of town and see the brutalist architecture masterpiece that is the partially abandoned Chisinau city circus (also the first circus in the entire USSR) or see the impressive Komsomol monument from the Soviet-era.
• Dinner and drinks in the evening at a local Moldovan restaurant.
• Overnight in Chisinau

Thursday 1st September – Chisinau – Tiraspol, Transnistria

Morning

• Breakfast in the 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 the original Soviet Intourist hotel, we’ll kick off our city tour of Tiraspol.
• 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’ll then walk down the main street called October 25th 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 organization and stop at a bookshop to pick up some Russian and Transnistrian nationalist paraphernalia, a mug with Putin or a fridge magnet of ICBMs firing across the atmosphere, why not?
• We’ll then stop at the impressive House of the Soviets, built in Stalinist style with a large bust of Lenin outside.

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 students at nearby Tiraspol university.
• We’ll then transfer to the other end of 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 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 where we will watch the football match between Sherrif FC and Real Madrid with the incredibly enthusiastic locals cheering on their team!
• Afterwards we can head to one of the country’s few nightclubs and try our hand at Russian karaoke!
• Overnight in Tiraspol

Friday 2nd September – Tiraspol

Morning

• We start early and grab coffee and breakfast to go from the nearby Sheriff supermarket before heading to the centre of the city to grab a good spot to see the parade.
• On display will be the might of the Russian and Transnistrian military on parade in true Soviet style. The general of the Transnistrian army will first greet his units and will receive Russian war cries in response. Afterwards, the troops will march past in formation and you will see everybody from the special forces and presidential protection squads to the secret police and eloquently dressed female soldiers.
• There will be no western journalists here, so remember to bring your camera! We will also witness the speeches of the Transnistrian President and Russian Diplomats from Moscow.

Afternoon

• After the parade, we will give you free time and an assigned meeting point so you can enjoy the local festivities at your own pace. There will be live music, dancing, Cossacks holding BBQ’s and local street food markets.
• When we meet up after free time, we will head to the second biggest city in Transnistria, the war torn frontier town of Bender, to catch their independence day celebrations.
• We’ll return to Transnistria and enjoy dinner with free time to see the fireworks or board the party boat that sails up and down the Dniester river, Russian hardbass and bring your own vodka as standard!
• Fireworks display in the evening, there is the option to go to a local bar or disco to continue the party well into the night.
• Overnight in Tiraspol.

Saturday 3rd September – Tiraspol – Comrat, Gagauzia

Morning

• We’ll pack our bags in the van and head to breakfast at a wonderful Ukrainian restaurant in Tiraspol. If you have a hangover from the previous night’s festivities, be prepared, as they’re known for handing out complimentary shots of pepper flavoured vodka!
• 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 1990’s.
• 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.

Afternoon

• We will stop at the abandoned Comrat airport, still littered with a number of abandoned Soviet era planes.
• We’ll explore downtown Comrat, seeing the stunning cathedral, a huge statue of Lenin, the Afghanistan war memorial and the national museum of Gagauzia.
• 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

Sunday 4th September – Comrat – Chisinau

Morning

• Breakfast and free morning to relax or explore the town before we head back to Chisinau via the one and a half hour bus ride.

Afternoon

• After lunch in Chisinau, we board the 4:55pm train back to Bucharest, again with our own cabins, and with pre bought dinner and drinks on board, accompanied by a good amount of quality Moldovan wine!
• Overnight on train.

Monday 5th September – Bucharest

• 6:30am arrival in Bucharest
• Tour concludes – own transport to be arranged from Bucharest. YPT can assist with onward travel and tour extensions.

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