Get Out Your Kopeks Because This is Ukraine
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Friday, September 26, 2008
K Largo Bar, vul Yaroslaviv Val 22, Kiev, Ukraine
“My chief would like for me to tell you that you are drinking three-hundred year old beer and that in Ukraine we are proud of architecture,” said the heavily accented voice through the static of the cell phone. The wrinkled and grinning boxer turned oilman and his wife that we shared our sleeper car with nodded with anticipation. The urgency of this message was not clear to me but the couple appeared satisfied when I said “Dat” and handed the phone back. I had told the mystery voice that I liked beer and architecture too, very much even. My vigorous head bobbing and stupid grin apparently communicated that I understood their message and they leaned back, happy. That cross-cultural abyss bridged we got back to eating sausage and bread and exchanging those reassuring expressions unique to people who have know idea what the other is saying.
It would be a serious understatement to say that Collin and I have been an anomaly throughout this trip. When we have finally managed to communicate to the people we have come across that we are Americans on vacation the reactions have been universal puzzlement. Not shock or confusion. We are more often greeted as an unusual surprise, something you don’t see everyday, like a top hat falling out of the sky. You can imagine how it happened; you just are not sure why it did.
On the overnight train from Gdansk to Krakow I squeezed into my sleeping compartment, throwing my bags into an alcove above the heads of two young Poles who clearly were unsure what had just stumbled into their lives. Later they would tell me how relieved they had been to pull a young American in the great lottery of traveling companions. “We were worried we would get a drunk old man… and instead we got you!” I felt like a prize from the state fair.
The further east we have gone, out of Poland and into Ukraine, the more our reception has bordered on fascination. All down the hall of our night train from Lviv to Kiev you could hear melodic, Slavic voices talking about the “Americanski” as though someone had boarded the car with a pair of unicorns. A woman brought her toddler down to see us, he laughed and pointed and seemed to be waiting for us to perform some distinctively American trick. If only we had a football to throw or a hapless country to invade then we really could have put on a show. The oilman and his wife gamely displayed their two new prizes to all who tromped by. And I can’t be sure but they seemed to be showing something like pride at these newfound curiosities.
The Poles and Ukrainians we have met have been kind and helpful and displayed a saintly patience that may be born from lives coping with a socialist bureaucracy but doubles nicely when having to deal with two hapless idiots who can barely say thank you in the native tongue. In the long list of my questionable skills (skin a rabbit, jump a pool ball, break into a 1978 Mercedes 240D, e.g.) is the ability to count to three in many languages. This skill is of limited usefulness unless you are called upon to pose a family picture, threaten a child or help with the launching of a rocket (I can count backwards too!) and usually ends up causing more problems than it solves.
As a case in point, after crossing the Ukraine/Polish frontier, which is a whole other story, several cars from the Ukrainian national rail service were added to our train and the Polish restaurant car was left behind. This presented a problem as the steward on our car had run out of beer. We probably had something to do with this, but I digress. Hoping for a few more beers to pass the time until we arrived in Lviv, Collin went down into these newly added cars in search of more beer and came back rattled and imploring me to go back there and see what we were getting ourselves into. As he told it, the steward in the Ukrainian car, who had his girlfriend with him and might have been drunk, had handled Collin pretty coarsely and only given up the beers after some pulling and exchanging of profanity.
“It’s like a whole different world back there, you have to go see it. Oh, and get a few beers while your at it. You are better with these people than I am” Collin requested after he had calmed down a bit. As mentioned in a previous email, I had spent sometime looking over the language section in the back of our guidebook and felt fairly confident that I could count to two and thus return with the appropriate number of beers. I say that the ability to count to three is a questionable skill because you invariably give the impression that you understand some of the language when you start rattling off numbers.
My exchange with the Ukrainian train steward was no exception. As I stood in front of the drunken Ukrainian, his tie at an odd angle, enormous hat cocked back and sauced girlfriend tumbling around their couchette, I pointed at my empty beer bottle, said “dva” and fired off one of those stupid grins that reveals my general confusion. This, of course, prompted a torrent of bubbling Ukrainian of which I understood none. More pointing and more repeating of the word “dva” and my message was eventually understood. He was happy enough to oblige and even gave me a good pat on the shoulder as I bumped away between lace curtains and gilt icons of the Virgin Mary taped to the wall, warm beer pressed under each arm. I will never know what all was said in that dark train passage, he could have been holding forth on European art or giving me directions to his mothers house, but I think he appreciated the effort at speaking his language.
We continue on, strangers in a strange land, specimens in a zoo where the animals come to look at the people as well. Lviv was the prettiest city we have seen so far. I am including pictures from our day wandering around its narrow streets. The wealth of exquisite, tumble down Baroque buildings was a little overwhelming. The city was not seriously damaged in World War II so block after block of fanciful houses and shops go out in all directions. And now we are in Kiev and the sun has come out for the first time in the two weeks we have been here. The light glints off of the golden-domed churches. Orthodox monks wander courtyards under autumn turning trees and the people are out in cafes drinking coffee and seemingly as happy as I am with the improvement in the weather. Take care, sorry for running a little long in this rambling message and see you all soon.
Original post here: http://www.lemonsandbeans.com/?p=257
