Transnistria. Even the name feels like a rumor whispered across a border crossing. Officially it calls itself the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, a breakaway slice of Eastern Europe wedged between the Dniester River and Ukraine. A place that declared independence in 1990, built its own government, currency, army — and still lives in that strange geopolitical purgatory where almost no one else agrees you exist.

Maps don’t know what to do with it. Politicians pretend they can solve it. Travelers? We just want to understand it.

When I rolled through in 2021, chasing the ghosts of old Soviet architecture and trying to wrap my head around the stories people tell themselves about who they are, I found myself in Tiraspol — a de-facto capital that looks like the USSR got frozen in amber, yet somehow kept serving coffee.

First day. Small café. No frills. The kind of menu that looks like it survived a war because it probably did. But there they were — these tight little eggplant rolls, lined up next to mashed potatoes and a fried mystery cutlet that could have been pork, chicken, or the dreams of an underfunded butcher. Didn’t matter. I ordered it anyway.

And here’s the thing no one ever tells you: for all the controversy, all the headlines, all the geopolitical arm-wrestling that’s turned this narrow strip of land into a permanent question mark — the people were impossibly welcoming. Shopkeepers, bartenders, strangers on sidewalks. Everyone wanting to share. Their stories. Their pride. Their exhaustion. Their jokes. Their food.

You sit with them long enough, you realize something important: most people aren’t fighting for ideology. They’re fighting for a life they can recognize. A place that feels like home. And they’re hoping — desperately — that you’ll hear them without judging, without carrying someone else’s narrative into the room.

As a traveler, I don’t get to pick sides. I don’t want to. My job — our job, really — is to listen. To be the quiet witness. To try to understand before we decide what anything means. That’s all.

Transnistria gave me that. Stories I’m still processing. Faces I still remember. And a plate of eggplant rolls I absolutely wasn’t expecting to fall in love with.

The good news? I didn’t leave empty-handed. I brought the recipe back — a small piece of this complicated, beautiful, stubborn little place — and it’s yours now too.