Shades of Gray

31.Oct.08

We said farewell to Andrea’s little town Bubnivska Slovidka and boarded a Marshutka (for the new readers; a bus type thing) back to Kiev (thankfully without a smelly Babushka this time). There simply isn’t much to write about today because we just killed time in the city. Met with some friends of Andrea, sat at some bars, ate pizza, planned for our next few days, walked around a lot, and that is about it, nothing special. There was little evidence that today millions of people would roam the streets covered in blood & faerie wings searching for candy. An occasional pair of anorexic looking girls would walk by in tight mini-skirt, halter top, high heels, with far too much make-up and crowned in devils horns. This however, is something completely usual for Ukraine, aside from the devil horns (which many Ukrainians probably mistake for Jew horns; oh silly Ukraine). One bar we went to had a joke-telling Dracula, but the jokes were only funny if you spoke Russian I suppose because we weren’t laughing.

Ukrainian trains are quite a few steps up from our experiences with Indian trains, yet much more reasonably priced than other European train systems. The Kiev train station is a behemoth structure more similar to an airport, more like its own city. This is the one truly great legacy leftover from communist times; train stations, awesome train stations. So we lugged our bags passed the endless line of terminals and found our comfy niche where we whipped out a few beers to enjoy over chat, then slept, practically forgetting that for so many years on this day we would be surrounded by a pile of candy about now.

01.Nov.08

Babushkas stand outside train stations offering their apartments for cash. Occasionally this method might force old people to bear the freezing cold on the streets for your money, but hey, it isn’t winter yet and this is one of the cheaper forms of accommodation and Andrea’s plan for Dnipropetrovsk. What happens when there are none there however, and we have nowhere to stay? That was something we left our Ukraine professional Andrea to figure out. Luckily we bumped into a Peace Corps volunteer for this region, Justin. We all headed to the US “embassy” to game plan ( our “embassy” is actually a really delicious diner with WiFi and cheap, hearty buffet food; Puzata Kchata). Justin became a fast friend, and amused us with hysterical stories of his time in Ukraine. He helped us secure a place to stay with another PCV and we went out to wander the city.

The East is always described as industrial and depressing. More so in dead winter I suppose because the streets are littered with passed out drunk (sometimes dead) Dadushkas and shivering Babushkas struggling to stay alive. It is not winter however and aside from the occasional woman doing crack out of a broken light bulb in front of uncaring police outside the train station, and the massive industrial facilities outside the city, it isn’t a bad place to hang out. Our boogers certainly weren’t near as black as they were in India.  Dnipropetrovsk has parks, ponds, a river, cute shops, and tons of statues (mostly of communist “heroes” and Shevchenko, who was a peasant author important enough to have statues all over every city, even though his image always looks like he want to rape you with huge handlebar mustache). There is a big golden ball made of glass, mostly broken and covered in graffiti with a church in the background along the river. And that is about all in the city.

After some Hare Krishna lunch (I know, we were surprised they are here too) Justin left to hop on a train somewhere and we met with our PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) host Seth. Seth took us and his friends to another park with a crumbling circus building and a lake with sad looking swan boats, then got really excited about the prospect of drinking Guinness at an Irish pub. So that’s what we did (he doesn’t come to the city often, and spends his time isolated in his nearby village, Guinness was perhaps a little too exciting to him).

Soon we were on a Marshutka heading to Seth’s village for the night. Walking from the bus stop to his house felt much more like Halloween night than the last, but apparently was just a normal weekend night.  Teenage “ghouls” dressed in tight black clothes wandered the streets, a crowd of them hung outside the villages “club,” if you call a community center with scratchy speakers set up blasting techno a club. To the left, a 13 year old boy with a bottle of vodka in hand, to the right, a couple kids in the bushes doing who knows what, and every single eye turned to us three strangers carrying large backpacks and looking about as out of place as a diabetic in a chocolate factory. Making our way clear of the gauntlet of youths we came to Seth’s mansion of a house. Every PCV has to figure out their own housing if they choose not to live with their hosts & most don’t want to live with them anymore after their first month or so of forced drinking and eating to excess every day by their hosts who mean well. Seth got lucky, and a family who have a summer home in his town let him use it for free in the off seasons, all he has to do is pay for utilities. Parts of the house reminded me of Fight Club, with rusting, stained, and smelly bathroom, but it was cozy enough and we had a nice night eating pears off the trees and a light pasta dinner.

02.Nov.08

In the morning we headed back through the now less intimidating city, past the big bright blue orthodox church, on a Marshutka back to DP then a bus to Zaporizhzhya, another industrial, gray city.

Why do we keep torturing ourselves by going to these dreary places? The answer is simple, in 2½ years in Ukraine Andrea has been to all but two Oblasts (states), about to end her service, we are accompanying her for the final two. It isn’t so bad, we meet some cool people along the way, and get to experience how many humans in the world truly live (the “real” Ukraine if you will), as opposed to all the fairy tale places we have visited in the last 11 months of travel. While waiting to meet our new PCV host Elizabeth for the night I sit at our American embassy (Puzata Kchata again) with the bags, while Jess & Andrea get some food for cooking tonight.

Elizabeth greets us with a huge smile, happy to have guests to break her usual isolation. We get to know her stories and some info about the area (not much to tell) while Marshutka hopping to her tiny piece of the world. At first glance it is dark (probably because it is night time) and bland town with one big road and massive, gray blocks pooped out like dominoes by communist dictators as “The People’s Habitats.” I wouldn’t force criminals to live in some of these places, but surprisingly once up the crumbling tenement stairs, Elizabeth’s apartment is actually quite nice and cozy made all the better with a super cute, neurotic cat with a worse sense of agility than a slug. Open a door, you hit the cat in the face, step backwards, you step on it’s tail, walk through the tiny hallway, it just stands in your way like a deer in headlights.

We hung out in the living room over plates of a pasta, chicken, veggie thing we whipped up. Andrea gave advice on how Elizabeth is to keep her sanity through her first horrific winter, and Elizabeth, with Chicago accent, and I talked about super nerdy books, games, and shared theatre stories. Then we slept on couch, bed, and floor.

03.Nov.08

The town seemed equally as dark & dreary as in the night as in the morning. We said goodbye to Elizabeth and two more Marshutka rides later we were in a still depressing city Zaporizhzhya again. Taking a tram from the bus station we passed more tenement blocks and big factories to have it all open up for another fantastic looking train station; Communists had their priorities. After some time fighting with the attendant for service (difficult to come by here) Andrea got two very old CCCP coins to use on the once modern, now decrepit lockers. We stored our bags, bought tickets for another night train to Kiev and got back on the tram through more gray buildings.

We walked all day and the highlights were some very muddy looking fountains surrounded by the largest gray tenement blocks we have ever seen, a man dressed in a horse costume, a massive statue of Lenin, and this lady:

Honestly, that is about it, plus Andrea and I worked on our communication skills, both coming from vastly different experiences the last two years, we have had trouble getting along all the time. Like all the PCV’s we have met, the isolation and strange, often backwards Ukraine culture soak into the brain and turn the person a little socially awkward and sensitive at times. Coming from so many pixie and lollipop lands, I see the world through rose colored glasses, while Andrea’s glasses have become tinted gray. I can see from her perspective how I can be annoying; yet Jess manages to be neutral and pleasant as always. We quickly reconciled our differences over pizza as I promised not to speak in English so loudly in public for Andrea’s fear of us getting stabbed for being foreigners, and that I wouldn’t whistle indoors because they believe you’ll whistle your money away, and that I won’t look people in the eyes, or smile too often…bummer.

Soon it was night and we were in a position where I didn’t want to do any of those things. We walked through a park right out of some post-apocalypse Stanley Kubrik film. Metal trash cans licked flames in the air, surrounded by rough looking men wearing black leather and drinking straight Vodka, their shadows flickering through the blackness only from the fires light. An ever burning flame set in concrete to some communist “hero” had been covered with dead, gray branches and dry leaves to make a warm bonfire in the frosty night. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the origination of the word Bonfire; bone fire, a fire hot enough to turn human flesh, muscle, and bone to ash within three hours (depending on how fat you are). We put on our best soviet faces and walked very briskly through the anarchy to a supermarket on the other side where we got food for another Ukrainian tradition; train picnic! We went to the station and got our bags where we met a dog that some cruel individual had drawn eyeliner on, weird.

Waiting in the train station we sat next to a Babushka reading the bible and doing the catholic ‘Hail Mary’ thing really fast & multiple times every page, we got a kick out of it. Then we were on our night train to Kiev digging into a whole chicken enjoyed with some local brew. Spots of chicken grease still on hands and face we slept soundly in our bunk beds.

E. Ukraine Flickr Photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/flufflebuns/sets/72157608768478419/