If you want to watch, the password is: Kyiv

Two Years in Ukraine from Jennifer Kobb on Vimeo.

The Student Driver: This may look like a “Y” to the average American, but here it’s a Cyrillic “oo” and it means that the driver is a student. I’m not really sure exactly how long a driver is considered a student, but some days it seems like half the cars I see on the street have one of these stickers in the window.

The Female Driver: Yup. That’s really what it means. When I first saw one of these, I was totally disgusted and offended, but it definitely is a reality of Ukrainian life that it is totally acceptable to stereotype the sexes.

Baby on Board: This craze may have ended years ago in the US, but it’s still going strong in Ukraine. There are many different versions of this one – in English; in Russian; in Ukrainian; some even have Winnie the Pooh on them.

I’m not sure what to call this one, but it’s my personal favorite, as I feel it says a lot about what’s going through the minds of Ukrainian drivers. This (it’s a “sh” in Cyrillic for those of you keeping track) means that the car uses studded tires during the winter months. Which is supposed to let other drivers know that it will actually be able to stop on icy/snowy surfaces. In my thinking, this means that the majority of cars on the road are expected to slip and slide all over the place like a bunch of bumper cars. How inconvenient of some drivers to essentially turn their vehicles into brick walls on the road by equiping themselves to be able to stop on the ice.

Lviv definitely has a different feel from Kyiv. First of all, the people speak Ukrainian rather than Russian. So we challenged ourselves to switch all of our pleasantries (please, thank you, good morning, etc.) to Ukrainian. However, we also found that a lot of people were willing to speak English with us – quite a nice change of pace from the scowls we get from some Kyivites when they hear us speaking English. Because it has been both part of Poland and part of Austria in the past, Lviv also feels more European in some ways. And the city is much smaller than Kyiv, which makes it feel more relaxed. Of course, visiting in February meant that we found ourselves struggling through a foot of snow everywhere. Apparently they don’t feel the need to clear the sidewalks in Lviv any more than they do in Kyiv.

Despite the snow and cold, we managed to do a few “touristy” things.  We took a quick walk through Lychakivskiy Cemetery:

Climbed to the top of the tower at city hall to get a bird’s-eye view of the city:

Saw the Shevchenco statue at dusk (note the reflection of the flash on the falling snow – and the aforementioned tower in the background):

And one of the cutest things we saw was that instead of using strollers in the snow and ice, everyone was pulling their babies on little sleds:

But the big find in Lviv (and perhaps the most adventurous thing – in that “do we trust this or not?” sort of way) was a Thai massage parlor. With real Thai ladies! We had about 7 hours to kill on our last day after we had checked out of our hotel. It was horribly cold and terribly icy and I think we had both had about enough of trying to find something to do in Lviv. Then we saw the sign for Thai massages. It took a while to work up our courage to actually check it out. I mean, the thought of there actually being non-sketchy Thai massages in the middle of Ukraine seems pretty far-fetched. But when we finally approached the entrance, we saw two Thai women sitting inside. So for about $20 each, we let them work us over for an hour. I think it was the best way our vacation could have ended and more than I had hoped for.

And in craziness even closer to home, I woke up the morning after we got back and saw this out the living room window:

Yup. That’s two men on the ridgepost of a five-story building with no safety gear. I can’t tell from this angle, but I would guess they’re wearing slippers with socks (the traditional footwear of Ukrainian workers) as well. And just so you can see exactly how far off the ground they are:

Since I have also visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, I can say with authority that Chornobyl is not the most depressing place on earth. I would actually classify it as creepy rather than depressing. I think the Chornobyl museum in Kyiv is more depressing than the site itself. But I have to say that I was glad to have visited the museum a few times since the “guide” for our day trip to Chornobyl took a rather hands off approach to tour guiding. He held up the Geiger counter at the appropriate times and allowed us to gasp at how high the number reached, but he was not exactly forthcoming with information about the disaster.

After we made it through passport control at the entrance to the exclusion zone (about 30 kilometers away from the power station), we drove through the town of Chornobyl. This was the town that the station was named after and is currently the part-time home of the people who still work at the station doing maintenance and monitoring (Chornobyl is no longer a functioning nuclear power station as of 2000). Then it was off to the station to see the sarcophagus that now covers the exploded reactor.

The next stop was the most interesting (and creepy) part of the day. We went to Pripyat, which was the city where all of the power station workers lived (it was built specifically for that purpose when the power station was constructed). It is, literally, a ghost town. When it was evacuated, people were forced to leave all their belongings behind and no one has lived there since. Buildings are crumbling, trees grow through concrete, and wild boar and wolves roam through the tall grass.

I assumed we would just be driven through town on our minibus, but it turns out that there is one building in town, the Hotel Polisya, that visitors are allowed to enter. Our guide encouraged us to climb to the top (seventh) floor to get some good views of the city. Of course, he also stated that the building could fall down at any time – “hopefully not today.” Right. So we climbed at our own risk, the entire time stating that this would never happen in the US, at least not without signing a dozen release forms first.

Exploring the hotel was kind of like walking through a horror movie. I kept waiting for the zombies to show up. It was hard to tell how much of the building was still “just as it was” on that fateful day in 1986 and how much had been altered by vandals and previous tourists. (We’re guessing the room we found full of gas masks was probably a set up.) We made it up the stairway – covered in broken glass – to the top where we found trees growing out of the linoleum floor. There was a good view that demonstrated just how close these people lived to the power station. Other than our group, it was completely silent and no movement could be seen in any direction.

Our final stop in Pripyat was an area where amusement park rides had been set up for the 1986 May Day celebrations. A rusty ferris wheel covered by vines on one side towered over the area. A tree was growing through another ride. And the bumper cars, while still recognizable, were in pretty sad shape. After we walked around for a while (this was where our guide told us he had spotted wild boars in the past), we got back on the minibus and headed back to the town of Chornobyl. We stopped a couple places in town where the government had moved some vehicles after the disaster. This time our guide told us not to get too close (I guess the metal holds radiation better) and I noticed that he didn’t even venture out of the bus for a smoke as he had on every other stop.

Then it was lunch (yes, I can now say I’ve eaten lunch in Chornobyl!) and back to Kyiv. But first, another stop at the entrance to the exclusion zone where we were all “tested” to ensure that our radiation levels were low enough to reenter society. We individually climbed into a contraption that looked like it was the best of 1972 technology and were deemed “cheesty” (clean) or “grazny” (dirty). Luckily, we all made it through with clean marks. I’m not really sure what would have happened otherwise. Condemned to a life in Chornobyl? Maybe that’s where they got the workers that are still employed by the power station.

All in all, it was definitely worth the trip and humbling to see a place where such a major disaster occurred.

The weather changed dramatically here over the weekend, as a reminder that summer is officially over. Which means we’ve made it through summer number two here! Unfortunately, it only reminds me that we still have to make it through winter number two…

We took Laika out to the parking lot behind our building yesterday to play frisbee. Apparently she finds the crisp autumn air rejuvenating.

And I’m a little behind in discussing it, but August 24th was Ukrainian Independence Day. The President decided to stage a huge military parade in downtown Kyiv in part to display Ukrainian military might to Russia. A little warning, if you will, in case they decide to move in here next. So after a week of traffic jams in downtown Kyiv while 90 or so tanks practiced driving in formation and hearing military jets practicing fly-bys above our apartment, we decided that we needed to see this parade for ourselves. Unfortunately, most of Ukraine also showed up, so we didn’t have a very good view of the Ukrainian military prowess. Here are a few photos, though. Most of them are hazy because as soon as the first tanks started rolling through, the air was immediately filled with diesel fumes. Lovely.

First of all, when Laika and I went for our walk today, we entered a park near home at the same time as a group of children who appeared to be from a local daycare. A dozen kids around preschool age with one teacher. Not weird so far. On our first lap around the park, we saw that the teacher had gathered the kids in a grassy area where they were all running around and being generally kid-like. Not weird yet. As we approached the grassy area on our second lap around the park, I saw that the children had all stripped down to their underwear and were playing some sort of Follow The Leader-type game, led by the teacher (who was, thankfully, still fully clothed). There it is! The weirdness. My first thought was: how embarrassing for those children to be forced to walk around mostly naked in a public park. My second thought was: how many pedophiles are in the park right now? I didn’t have my camera with me, so I have no photographic evidence of this sighting, but I think a photo of that type would probably bring an unsavory new audience to my blog anyway.

Then, this afternoon, I was working at the computer, when a weed whacker started up behind our building. This part was not weird, as I have seen very few lawn mowers in Kyiv – most mowing here is actually done with weed whackers. Then the weed whacking got really loud. Like raise-the-dead loud. So of course I had to go out on our balcony to see what was going on. This is what I found:

Yes, the guy was swinging his weed whacker around at head level to cut down some vines. I don’t know a whole lot about lawn maintenance, but this is not normal, right? And kind of dangerous as well? And notice that he’s right next to our neighbor’s car. Awesome.

And just so you don’t think that all the strange sightings are in Kyiv, here are a couple things from our trip to Crimea:

On a horribly long, un-air conditioned bus ride from Yalta to Sudak, our bus stopped for the 50th time due to “traffic congestion” (a.k.a. Ukrainian driver stupidity) and I looked out the window to see this:

Random. And weird. And then people started posing for photographs with it.

And finally, I put this more in the category of culturally interesting rather than strange, but it is indeed a sighting in Ukraine. (See, I am culturally sensitive.) Shawn and I were out on the boardwalk in Sevastopol in the early evening when it was starting to fill with different gatherings of people. We passed the hip-hop/breakdancing youth group. Then the karaoke group. Then we came upon this group. I could put in all kinds of social commentary here, but I think sometimes it’s just important to enjoy your surroundings and the fact that they’re different than what you’re used to. So according to those rules, this was pretty cool.

Last weekend we all took a trip to the Crimean Peninsula. We flew the unfortunately named Wizz Air, which allowed the four of us to fly for the price of one on the competitor’s airline, but being a budget airline it meant we did not have assigned seats. So the parents got to see just how pushy and obnoxious Ukrainians can be. Shawn and I impressed them by pushing our way far enough up to be in the second group allowed on the plane. (When in Rome, right?) That was only the beginning of our weekend experiences with Ukrainian transportation. We had several white-knuckle taxi experiences, including when our driver decided to pass a car while it was passing another car – on a two lane country road. And we checked out the bus stations in Sevastopol, Yalta, and Sudak – including their squat-toilet restrooms. (I thought they weren’t so bad, but my mother, having never been to China, did not agree.) Shawn did a good job describing the various locations we visited over the weekend, so I won’t describe it all here. But here are some photos:

The Khan’s Palace and Holy Assumption Monastery in Bahkchisarai

The “beach” in Yalta

The ruins of a Genoese fortress and the Black Sea in Sudak

Back in Kyiv, we did a tour of Pirogovo, which I had visited before, but it was nice to have an English guide this time. And we also took a walking tour of “Old Kyiv,” which happens to be the neighborhood we live in. Once again, our guide was great and pointed out a lot of things that I either had never before noticed or had no idea what it was. So I felt like I learned just as much as my parents. Our final adventure was souvenir shopping along “The Spusk.” Until my mother said, “Whoa, I need to catch my breath,” I had forgotten that my parents would not be used to the art of bargaining for souvenirs. But besides the first booth where she paid full price for everything, she did really well. It helped that we went at the end of a really hot day and the booth owners were desperate for sales at that point. I even managed to get myself a little something.

So now I would really like to know exactly what my parents have to say about Ukraine. Besides the fact that we’re crazy for living here. It will be interesting to see what stories they tell and what really left an impression on them. Maybe it will be that the police wear big hats. (Dad, I honestly don’t know why — maybe they have big heads?)

This was only the second excursion we’ve taken outside of Kyiv since we moved here. I know, it’s sad. We hopped on our minibus promptly at 9:30am on Saturday morning and headed west. The tour guide sat at the front of the bus and gave a tour of everything we passed on the way out of town. It’s at times like these that I realize I know pretty much nothing about Kyiv. But it’s interesting to learn – particularly about the history and architecture of the part of the city that sprawls from the center. And I feel like you can get a sense of what things are culturally important based on what the tour guide chooses to emphasize.

After about 40 minutes, we pulled off the main highway and started travelling through small villages on bumpy roads. It’s interesting to see how people really live here – I know enough about Kyiv to know that life in the city is definitely not the norm for the Ukrainian people as a whole. Our tour guide explained how in many of these villages, even though the farmers have been given their own individual plots of land, collective farming is still practiced because of high costs. Of course, every small house had a garden (instead of a yard, in most cases) and I was surprised to see that most of them had the really old-style wells, with a bucket and a crank to lower and raise it.

So after a total driving time of an hour, we finally reached the ostrich farm. And there were indeed a lot of ostriches. I find ostriches to be pretty creepy in general (although not as creepy as emus), so I was a little hesitant to get close at first. But they were not shy. And they knew there was a tour going on, so they turned on the performance. First we went past three different enclosures with adult ostriches living harem-style (yes, this is actually what our tour guide said) – two females with each male.

Then we got to the enclosures with the adolescent ostriches and that’s where things got a little crazy. These birds were clearly not as calm as the adults. In fact, they seemed pretty fired up and charged to the fence as we approached. People from our group started posing for photos in front of the ostriches. The ostriches seized this opportunity to start pecking the people. But no one really seemed to mind, so I assumed they weren’t pecking all that hard. At this point, one of the tour guides (we had two and an interpreter) grabbed my camera from me and motioned for Shawn and I to stand in front of the ostriches for a photo op. We slowly backed as close as we thought was safe to the fence and smiled at the camera. Apparently we got a little too close because an ostrich suddenly nipped at my shoulder, managed to get my bra strap, and snapped it hard. Hard enough that I screamed. Not cool.

It was time to move on. The babies (4 days old and 1 month old) were much easier to handle. They were actually really cute and it’s hard to believe that they grow up to be the huge birds that we saw at the beginning of the tour.

Then things got a little weird (Ukrainian-weird as Shawn and I have started calling it) when our tour guide announced that the next part of the tour would be through their “zoo.” Why would an ostrich farm have a zoo? Because it’s Ukraine. So we saw the pigs, goats, sheep, donkeys, camel, and assorted fowl next. My favorite statement of the entire tour came during this part. I kid you not, as we were looking at the goats, our interpreter said, “They used to have a goat that could smoke, but they gave it to the film studio in Kyiv.” Awesome. And so Ukrainian.

We finished up our tour by eating various dishes made of ostrich meat and eggs. We were told at the beginning of the tour that the ostriches on this farm were not used for meat, so in theory we weren’t eating any of the birds we had just seen. (Although if it was that one that snapped me, I might not have cared.) Then we were back on the bus and back to Kyiv. Just another Ukrainian adventure.

So last Sunday, we ventured out to the new Auchan hypermarket in the northern part of town. We assumed that since it was Easter, it would be quieter than normal at the store, and we were right. It was still busy, but I didn’t feel suicidal after the first aisle like I usually do at the grocery stores here. We didn’t really look much at the non-food departments, but they had an amazing meat and fish selection. And 90 check-out counters, most of which were open when we were there. With the aforementioned lack of customers, it seemed a little like overkill.

The first thing we noticed when we walked in was that the first two aisles of the grocery part of the store were filled with paska, a bread that is traditionally eaten on Easter. So I thought it was kind of weird that there were hundreds of loaves still in the store on Easter. Shouldn’t good Ukrainians have stocked up on their paska already? I mean, you’re supposed to get it blessed before you eat it anyway, so anyone that didn’t have theirs yet was seriously running out of time. But it was amazing to see the people buying loaves and loaves. I finally figured out that the big sign at the front of the store said they were Buy 2, Get 1 Free, and at a little over a dollar each, they were a pretty good bargain, but I still couldn’t believe how people were filling their carts with the stuff. And the staff kept bringing more boxes out!

Finally, as we were getting ready to leave, I looked at Shawn and said, “I know were not going to like it, but it’s our last Easter here.” (Yes, I am going to spend the next year referring to our “last” everything.) So we bought a loaf of paska. And when we decided it was time to eat it, we also decided that it would taste better with a shot of vodka (for all we know, that’s the traditional way to eat it anyway). However, not even the vodka could help this stuff. It was like eating dense, stale Hawaiian bread. So it pretty much lived up to our expectations.

However, our paska experience was not entirely bad as our housekeeper brought us some that she had made herself. Much, much better tasting than the cardboard purchased loaf. Of course, she told me that it took her 12 hours to make it, and I really have to question the worth of anything that requires that much of one’s time. I guess this is why they only have it once a year.