Day 268 - Crossing the Border 46 Times in 23 Months

Image of guard tower at the border
 by tutam, via Flickr.com

Alex is an avid traveler who was already used to traveling frequently when we arrived in Moldova. For the year before our departure from Barbados, he flew from Barbados to St. Lucia and back every week. Crossing the borders in most of the Caribbean could only be done by plane or boat. But Alex's travels once we arrived in Moldova were much more varied.

We arrived in September, 1992, and left in August, 1994, and Alex left Moldova for some other country 23 times in those 23 months.

The first three weeks were tough to get through. As we took morning walks to wake ourselves up, Alex's comments to me about the situation started out with "What have we done to land us in this place?" to "You sure made a mistake bringing me here" to "I made a big mistake coming here with you." The pronoun shifts were accompanied with louder volume for emphasis. Since there was really nothing he could do in Moldova except work for the embassy, we had to structure a contract position for him that would allow him to do the work he did best without working for me. Anti-nepotism rules made it impossible for a husband to work for a wife. Those same rules made it nearly impossible for any husband-wife team to work at a small embassy, but since GSO David and his wife Susan were already in place, there was a precedent of sorts. Alex's official title was "Assistant to the Ambassador for Special Projects." But even then, it took some time. One cause for the delays was that he didn't yet have a Social Security number. He had arrived in the U.S. just over six weeks before we landed in Moldova and one of our first stops was at the post office in Fargo, N.D., to apply for his Social Security card, but the application was lost and he had to submit a second one.

In the weeks between our arrival and getting approval for us to hire him, Alex volunteered to do anything that needed to be done around the embassy. He made hand rails for stairs. He fixed - or tried - the doorbell at the front of the embassy. He went shopping for toilet seats and bought bent nails in the market for the staff to pound into shape. And while he took on these tasks just to keep himself busy, he was disappointed that no one seemed to think it was necessary to thank him. Some even thought it was appropriate to tell him what to do instead of ask him for his help.

These niggling experiences led him to look for opportunities to leave Moldova.

When we finally received permission for Alex to begin working, traveling to Germany for training was his first trip out of Moldova. He flew to Frankfurt and took the train to Bonn. He expected to travel to Brussels at the end of the training to pick up the ambassador's official vehicle and drive it to Moldova.  He made the trip to Brussels, but when they turned the vehicle over to him to drive it, they provided no documentation to indicate the vehicle was owned by the U.S. government.  Alex decided not to drive the vehicle across the half-dozen borders between Brussels and Moldova without having license plates on the car and ownership papers in his pocket. He drove the car to Frankfurt where he left it and flew back to Chişinău.

Image of Corfu by "Hooch," via Flickr.com

Several of Alex's trips out of Moldova were to Bucharest to pick up whatever supplies the embassy there could spare, as well as our personal trips to Iaşi for shopping. One trip was to the Ukraine to bring two of the embassy vehicles to a dealer for servicing. One trip was back to the U.S. for us to attend our son's high school graduation. One trip, to Corfu, was a result of his having reached the end of his patience with the attitude of many of our colleagues at the embassy. The ambassador said something Alex felt was unfairly critical of him so he made plans to get away for a few days to cool down. I told Alex he should be pleased that the ambassador was comfortable enough around him to say something directly.  There were so many others no one was comfortable confronting. We all walked around them on tip toes.

One trip was notable for all the different means of travel it included. The regional medical officer from Moscow had been to Moldova for a regular visit and he made arrangements for Alex to have carpal tunnel surgery in London on a Monday in December. With only one flight per week out of Chişinău to Europe, Alex had to be on the plane the Saturday before that Monday or find another way to travel to England. We learned on the Thursday before that there were no seats available on the Air Moldova flight that Saturday because many of the Moldovan government officials were traveling.

The regional nurse practitioner was also in town that week from Bucharest so she suggested that the embassy provide a car and driver to take both Alex and her to Iaşi by car. The two of them then took the train from Iaşi to Chişinău and Alex flew on Swiss Air to London, all in time for his surgery. Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon told Alex he would be out of the country for the next three weeks, so Alex should come back in the new year.

The carpal tunnel surgery was the reason for the trip, but the regional medical officer suggested that Alex have some bone spurs on one of his feet removed at the same time. At that point, he faced one of two scenarios for the following three weeks: either he would remain in London in a hotel for three weeks over both the Christmas and New Year holidays until the surgeon returned, or he could travel with his brother, who was in London on business, to Newcastle where he could stay with his parents for the three weeks. He chose the latter.

At the end of the three weeks, Alex had to get back to London and chose to go by train where he wouldn't have to try to squeeze his still healing foot under the seat of the row ahead of him. The surgeon cleared him to return to Moldova which in Alex's case meant flying back first to Bucharest where his round trip ticket was purchased.

Image of the region around the embassy's villa
by cod_gabriel, via Flickr.com

The regional security officer, Pat, in Bucharest offered to drive Alex to Chişinău from Bucharest as he was planning to make a quarterly visit in January. Pat suggested that I fly to Bucharest to meet Alex when he arrived on the Friday and then the two of us could travel to Chişinău with Pat. But what I didn't know was that Pat planned to leave Bucharest on the Friday after work to meet his wife and their kids, along with another couple, at the villa in the mountains that the embassy had been renting from the Romanian government since before I was a Fulbrighter in Iaşi more than 15 years earlier. Pat's wife had driven up earlier with the kids, but she expected Pat to spend at least Saturday with the family.

I flew into Bucharest Friday morning and stayed around until Alex arrived, limping and on crutches. Pat had sent a car and driver from the embassy to take us to the embassy where I met the management officer and many of his staff. After work, Pat drove Alex and me to the villa where we stayed until Sunday afternoon. We arrived in Chişinău late Sunday evening.

To an outsider - and by that I mean the voucher examiner who processed Alex's travel voucher for this trip - it looked like we set up this European tour including a stop with his parents for the Christmas holiday for Alex's convenience rather than the round-about travel being all that was possible under the circumstances and very much at everyone's inconvenience. It took six months, and two amendments, to get the voucher processed.