The house at 19 Swerdlow Street can be heard from afar: the pianos on the ground floor, the violins on the fourth floor and, of course, the saxophones on the fifth floor.

A shy oboe joins in today, followed shortly by two rebellious pianos, and a little later a still somewhat sleepy trumpet before a self-confident accordion pushes into the foreground.

Michael Martens

Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.

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Wassiliy Wassiliewitsch will say more about the accordion later.

"Simply ask for Wassiliy Wassilievich at reception, then send them to me," Wassiliy Wassilievich said, and in fact the question about Wassiliy Wassilievich at reception led to the correct answer in both cases, that Wassiliy Wassilievich's office on the fourth floor and Wassiliy Vasilyevich was probably there.

Wassiliy Wassiliewitsch is actually there, has just made tea and is now talking about his work, which is really worth listening to.

A state that isn't one

Wassiliy Wassiliewitsch teaches at the Tiraspol State Conservatory, although this sentence, which sounds simple, strictly speaking, already contains the first factual error in this story.

The sentence should be politically correct: Wassiliy Wassiliewitsch teaches at the quasi-state conservatory in Tiraspol.

After all, Tiraspol is the capital of Transnistria, and while Transnistria poses as a state, it is not.

At least none that would be internationally recognized.

The only states that recognize Transnistria for what it claims to be, at considerable expense, as a state, are Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

But their states are similar to those of Transnistria: almost nobody recognizes them – except from each other, Russia and a few smaller rogue states, as well as Transnistria.

This, in turn, is not even recognized by Russia.

But Vasily Vasilyevich doesn't talk about that, he doesn't seem to be a political person, at least not at first meeting, and that's no wonder, because Vasily Vasilyevich has other tasks and interests.

At the “Transnistrian State Art Institute Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein”, as the conservatory calls itself, he trains young talents whose aim in life is not only to be able to live from music, but also one day to be able to do so.

On a tour of his institute, the lecturer leads through the different floors, and each floor sounds better than the previous one.

Complete silence on the floor of the conductors

It's only quiet in the second and third, because the second is the library and the third is where future conductors are being trained, who apparently don't make any noise, at least not today.

If a baton were to fall on the parquet floor, you could probably hear it, it would probably sound similar to what it would sound like in a tiled or laminated sushi restaurant on a dull afternoon when the only customer dropped a stick.

But as I said: on the third floor of the Rubinstein Institute in Tiraspol, you can't hear anything.