I saw a couple of funny ads this weekend around town that I thought I’d share.
“Make it Longer” - Yup, that’s their slogan…
The “Stalker” Computer Club? Not sure if that’s really how you want to advertise… [edited 12 Sept 2007] - Okay, I was wrong, I guess it is: Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers, and Robbers = S.T.A.L.K.E.R. View the comments for details.
Watching the groups of young people pass by on the ride home was relaxing. The techno music blaring on the radio added to the ambiance. I had just watched train pull away from the central train station after saying goodbye to Terah. I said out loud, “well the vacation is over,” before realizing that I was once again enveloped by a world with nobody to talk to.
It’s been awhile. This is actually the first time in almost three weeks that I’ve had time to write anything. It’s been a good three weeks, filled with travel and friends. As I sit here in my apartment I keep expecting to hear the footsteps of someone else in my apartment. It’s weird to only hear the hum of the refrigerator again. I turn up the volume on iTunes so the lyrics of U2 fill the silence. “…All that you can’t leave behind…” The loneliest time here is the day after saying goodbye.
Two and a half weeks ago Megan and I boarded a train at the very same train station. We arrived at the train station early, real early - 4am early. I had successfully called and ordered a taxi to take us from my apartment to the train station, completely in Russian and it all worked. It’s great when things work like that, they usually don’t here. We managed to survive the 23 hours in 3rd class and arrived in Ivano-Frankisvk at an equally God-awful time of the morning. We were greeted by our friend Jonathon. Over the next couple of days we had to the opportunity to realize just how different life is for the PCVs of the west. In addition to having a more western town with close access to mountains and nature, Jonathon has an amazing apartment. Hardwood floors, a modern bathroom with a working toilet, and even a washing machine. Not that I’m living in a hut in the African plains, but my Soviet style apartment reminds me where I am on a daily basis. I do get a good laugh each day when I wake up to the hideously wallpapered ceiling. Who wallpapers the ceiling? Ukrainians, apparently.
After a couple days of hanging out in Ivano, eating together and laughing a ton, we hopped on a bus down to the town of Chernitsi near the border with Romania. From there we were whisked into the rolling hills of the Capathians and “American Camp” where we were scheduled to work for the week. After spending a month or so in vast concrete of the industrial east, the rolling hills and green forests were a sight for sore eyes. I could finally breath deeply. I was in Ukrainian heaven! The camp food was… well, camp food, but I didn’t mind it. I spent the days playing sports with kids and counselors… basketball and soccer mainly. I felt healthy for the first time in over a month. We helped the Ukrainian counselors with the English lessons and allowed the kids to hear native English speakers in normal conversation.
After finishing our work at the camp we spent a day in Chernitsi and attended a presentation of US Embassy personnel at the local “Window on America” center. These centers are sponsored by US Embassy and located in most of the olblast centers in the country. There is one in DP but its working hours are few and far between. The presentation was about American culture and played up many of the common stereotypes of America. After the presentation there was a brief Q&A session where we had the opportunity to hear some quite entertaining questions by an odd fellow decked out in dark sunglasses. We were pretty certain he was drunk.
A couple days later I said goodbye to my friends and hopped on a train bound for Kiev. I was excited to meet a friend who had just finished up her Peace Corps service in Azerbaijan. It was strange to think that my friends from Azerbaijan group 3 were finally COSing (Close of Service) and heading home. Terah and two other members of our AZ3 group arrived at Boryspill Airport and we spent the day touring Kiev. Kiev was much prettier than I remembered. The main park is incredibly green and a really enjoyable place to walk. It was fun to hear the stories from Azerbaijan. It was also a good reminder of how nice Ukraine is when compared to Azerbaijan. I once read somewhere that once you leave a place you immediately begin to forgive it. I had forgotten what life in Azerbaijan was like during the two years since I left.
After a couple days in Kiev, Terah and I took a train to DP and she become my first overseas visitor. I now realize that DP is a much nicer place to visit if you have a friend to explore with. I gave her the official Mike tour of DP, showed off all of the casinos, and we had lunch at the Mexican restaurant near the river Dniper. I have to say that the Mexican food was probably the worst example of Mexican food I’ve ever experienced. But, now I know. We also took a day trip to a city further down river. The visit to this particular city had one benefit, I know it’s not worth visiting again. Now I have a whole new category of pollution and blight. I was surprised to be glad to return to DP. This place must be growing on me or something.
Looking back on her visit, I’m quite thankful to have had Terah as a guest. She is an incredibly positive and encouraging person, just what was needed in my life at this point. She forced me to go out and interact with the town, something I had previously been avoiding. I even discovered a few places where I can go when the negative thoughts hit. One of these places is a shopping center I had passed often but never ventured into. This shopping center has a nice food court with a tasty restaurant called Pazata Hata, which translates to something like “house of being full” or something close. This restaurant is a cafeteria style chain restaurant which has a variety of traditional Ukrainian dishes like borsht, vereniki, and okrowshka. Terah’s visit was also encouraging that it reminded me of the finish line, whenever that time may be. She has definitely earned that ticket home after two years in Azerbaijan. Now she is a RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) and can look back at her time in Azerbaijan with pride knowing that she accomplished something unique and noble.
This is definitely not the experience I was expecting when I initially applied for Peace Corps. The usual advertisements and brochures show dramatic scenes of PCVS serving in exotic places like Africa, where they experience physical hardships such as no electricity or running water. Those hardships are not part of my daily experience here in Ukraine. Instead they are replaced by more subtle difficulties. Subtle things that creep up on you slowly and with stealth, like getting used to the cold concrete blandness and the general feeling of oppression that seventy plus years of communism leaves on a place. You don’t even realize it until you are removed from the landscape and find yourself immensely impressed with a few green hills or with a kind smile from a stranger.
After a full five days at site I decided it was time to get out of the big city and explore Ukraine. Luckily there was another holiday coming up which means plenty of vodka and fireworks for Ukrainians. For Peace Corps volunteers national holidays mean extra days of travel leave. Not wanting to pass up a golden opportunity, I bought train tickets to Odesa to visit another PCV, Emily, who lives south of Odesa in the town of Smallville (not that actual name of her village). I was eager to spend a couple days hanging out in the village and swimming in the nearby Black Sea.
In order to save some money I decided to go ‘platzkart’ class instead of ‘coupe’ class. The difference in price is about 30 UAH (about 6 USD) but the experience is what truly sets these two classes apart. Traveling coupe class means you get a sleeping berth in a four-berth closed coupe. Traveling platzkart means you get a slightly smaller berth in an open six-berth cubby. If you want to save money you go platzkart, if you want to sleep, you go coupe. I went for the financial savings and in return got little sleep the entire 11 hour voyage. All throughout the night people were coming and going, moving about the area, and talking quite loudly. One interesting thing I’ve noticed here is that Ukrainians in general don’t seem to have much politeness for strangers. It doesn’t matter if you are a foreigner or a Ukrainian, if you get bumped in the head or pushed out of line, you should never expect any sort of polite “excuse me” here. One time I held the door open for a lady and her children. I didn’t even get a smile, let alone a ‘thank you’. Next time, I’ll let the door slam on her face, the true Ukrainian way.
After a sleepless night, the train pulled into the central train station in Odesa. I was tired but glad that I had survived the night with all of my belongings still in my possession. While I waited for Emily, who would arrive by bus an hour later, I went in search of breakfast and a bathroom to wash up. The great American icon of McDonalds provided both. No matter where in the world you go, you can always count on McDonalds for the same menu choices and available restrooms. I washed up and went to a nearby park to wait for Emily and watch the bums search through the piles of trash collected by the army of babuskhas who keep the cities in a state of semi-clean.
According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, Odesa was initially started by general Grygory Potemkin in 1789 for his lover Catherine the Great. It later became an important port city for the Russian Empire. Today it is one of the more touristy of Ukrainian cities and is a nice city to visit. Emily and I spend the day visiting some of the typical tourist attractions such as the Potemkin Steps, where a couple of famous scenes from The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and The Untouchables (1987) took place.
We arrived at the bus station about a half an hour before the supposed 3pm bus to Smallville left. Having only been at her site for about a week, this would also be the first time Emily returned to her village using public transportation. This is when the adventure really started. We waited for the bus until well after 3pm and then decided the 3pm to Smallville didn’t exist. We used our best Russian skills to inquire into a bus to Smallville. One interesting thing to note here is that there is also a larger city in southern Ukraine with a vary similar name to Smallville. We were well area of this fact and made sure that our inquires were directed to Smallville and not this larger city. I even wrote the name down on a piece of paper to make absolutely sure we would get tickets to the correct place. After an hour of waiting, searching, and inquiring, I finally was about to buy two tickets on a bus heading to Smallville at 4:30pm.
“Alright! I’m the hero of the day,” I thought to myself as we got on the bus heading to Smallville. Soon we would be in the village, eating and drinking with Emily’s host family as we watched the farm animals make their evening return to their respective homes. As a sidenote, I’m always amazed at how every cow, goat, and goose knows to return to the same home each evening in these small villages.
As we departed from the train station a heavy rain began and the roads quickly filled with puddles which soon turned into street lakes. With the sun hidden behind thick rain clouds we did not have even the sun to navigate with. I closed my eyes and dozed for about an hour. When I awoke from my nap, Emily and I both noticed a sign on the side of the road announcing that the larger city version of Smallville was only a couple hundred kilometers away. The thing about this sighting was that we knew that the Smallville we were looking for was in the complete opposite direction. We looked at each other and knew that our earlier gut feelings were correct. We weren’t going to Smallville.
To confirm our dreads, I leaned over and asked the man sitting in the seat across the aisle in Russian,
“Excuse me, what direction are we going?”
“I don’t know, ” he replied.
So I asked a couple of women sitting in the seats in front of us.
“Excuse me, what direction are we going?” I asked again in Russian.
They didn’t know either. In fact, no one on the bus could even tell us what direction we were going. Apparently it wasn’t an important fact to know.
“Okay… can you tell me which the Black Sea is from here? On the right or the left?” I tried another approach.
“On the right,” they answered.
Damn. This was not the answer I was hoping for. The Black Sea on the right-hand side of the road meant we were heading north instead of south. Emily sent a text message to a friend in Odesa asking for ideas. I searched my mind, trying to think of how I bought tickets going in the complete opposite direction.
At this point we were truly in the middle of nowhere and didn’t have a choice but to continue on the bus until it’s first stop two hours north of Odesa. When we arrived at this first stop, we hopped off the bus and started asking questions to figure out where we were. We finally figured out we were in Berezivka. We asked when the next bus back to Odeas would leave. “Tomorrow morning,” we were told.
“Tomorrow?!” we exclaimed.
“Tomorrow,” we were told, “at 5am. You can take a taxi but it will cost over 200 UAH (40 USD).”
There was no way we wanted to pay 200 UAH to get back to Odesa and then still have to find a way to Smallville tomorrow. We asked some more questions and finally found out there was an electric train (electrichka) that went to Odesa and the last one left at 8:30pm. We looked at our watches, it was almost 8pm. We would have to rush, but we could make it. I asked for directions to the electrichka stop and we started running the two kilometers to the stop. The stop ended up being uphill from the town. We joked that at least would were getting a good workout for the day.
We arrived at the electichka stop just as a train was stopping. But, the train seems to be going in the opposite direction so was asked and wisely avoided going further in the wrong direction. After that train pulled away, we approached the train crossing attendant.
“When is the next train to Odesa?” we asked.
“Tomorrow morning at 5am,” she replied.
“Are you sure?” I asked, thinking that maybe she was mistaken since the people in the town below assured us that there was one more train to Odesa this evening.
“The next electrichka to Odesa is tomorrow morning,” she replied.
Shit! We now found ourselves stuck in Berezivka with no place to stay and no way to leave. We walked down the hill back to the town. We returned to the bus station and sat down. I tried calling the taxi driver whose number we had from earlier. He didn’t answer. We didn’t have anything else to do but laugh. So we sat there and laughed. It was pretty funny, even at the time. Our first trip away from our sites, one week after swearing-in as Peace Corps volunteers, and we were lost in Ukraine.
Our presence sitting in front of the bus station was noticed by the townspeople and a couple of them came up to us to ask what we were doing.
“We are trying to go to Smallville,” Emily explained.
“Oh, it’s not far from here, just up the road,” an older lady offered.
“No, not that Smallville,” I responded.
“I know, not the big city Smallville, but there is a small town of Smallville just up this road,” the woman answered.
After a few minutes of discussion we finally came to the realization that there was not just a bigger city version of Smallville with a slightly different name, but there were actually many Smallvilles in this area of Ukraine. In fact, we later learned there are between 4-7 Smallvilles, depending on who you ask. So, I had actually correctly purchased tickets to Smallville, it was just the wrong one. Three cheers for Russian/Ukrainian creativity.
Luckily the town had one small hotel and a helpful man who introduced himself as Pete led us to it. As we walked with Pete, who had been riding around town on an old rusty bicycle, we inquired about the local food offerings. There were still a couple of small stores open he assured us as we arrived at the hotel. Good, at least we had food and shelter, we would be okay after all, I thought to myself.
The hotel was a broken down sort of place, but had plenty of open rooms. I’m pretty sure we would be the only patrons this evening, perhaps even this month. We were given a room by an old lady with blue eyes clouded by cataracts who raised the price after learning we were foreigners. We didn’t have much choice but to accept this form of Ukrainian highway robbery. I filed a note in my mind that if I’m ever an owner of a small broken down hotel somewhere and a couple of lost Ukrainians need a room I will also increase the price to recoup our losses on this occasion.
The room was adequate, but the beds were awful. One of the beds was actually propped up by small pieces of 2×4s and the other had a bar across the middle where one’s back would be. But, at least we wouldn’t be sleeping on the street. We went to a small store right before it closed up and purchased supplies: a loaf of bread, cheese, two bananas, and a couple of beers. A meal fit for the King of Berezivka. We returned to the hotel and ate our meal, reflecting on the moments of this evening’s adventure. While eating, the taxi driver finally called me back. He was available to take us to Odesa now. I told him that his services were no longer needed. With full bellies and a slight beer buzz we drifted off to sleep talking about the next two years in Ukraine and the potential for even more exciting adventures like this one.
The next morning we awoke early to attempt to catch the 7am bus out of town. We had more cheese and bread for breakfast along with the bananas saved from the night before. We arrived at the bus station to see an old battered bus waiting. After missing trains and overpriced taxis, we would finally be leaving Berezivka.
…
It’s official. Yesterday I swore-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Now it’s off to eastern Ukraine for the ‘real’ work.
