Я нарушил мое обещание

OK, I'v been really lazy since I got back to SImferopol, but I'm finally ready to write some about my week or so in Kiev. So, last Wednesday afternoon I got on a train and settled in for the 15 hour train ride. The ride was pretty uneventful. I rode platzkart (the lowest class) like I prefer, and I had the bed along the aisle, which I don't really mind as long as I get the lower bunk, cause I can't really get up into those cramped upper bunks. Thankfully nobody ever claimed the bed above me, but whenever we pulled into a town and let more people on I was always on the edge of my seat waiting to see if someone had purchased that spot, meaning I would be obliged to share a seat with them on the bottom. There was a what appeared to be a band going to Kyiv for a show or something, cause they had a ton of instruments and gear they kept loading on. I don't even know how they stored it all, but it seemed like such a crazy and cool idea to tour by passenger train. The guy one bed up from me had the worst smelling feet I had ever smelled, so I had to put my head at the other end to sleep.
We got into Kiev early Thursday morning, and I walked the 5 or so blocks (mostly uphill) to the hotel that Fulbright had booked for us (the email we had received that said the hotel was just "steps from the train station" was pretty misleading). After waiting around for our rooms to become available, I got cleaned up and ready for our first round of orientation stuff. We all met in a conference room in the hotel and had a couple different sessions talking about general things-to-do-now-that-we've-arrived stuff, and us students had a session with two Fulbrighters from last year who are still bumming around Kiev. They talked a lot about practical things for living in this part of the world, adjusting to the culture, blah blah blah, stuff I've already one through a number of times, so it wasn't really enlightening for me personally. Once our orientation was over I had a little time to kill before our reception later, so I walked down the street to find some quick food since I hadn't eaten all day. I had to walk surprisingly far before I found a little stand that sold these tasty hand-held pizza-type snacks (I later found out it's a chain of little stands found everywhere all over the city). I got slightly lost on my way back to the hotel because I took a different street back that ended up veering away from it, but I found it soon enough.
That night we had a fancy reception at the apartment of the Deputy Chief of Mission from the US Embassy, which included many other Embassy employees, Ukrainian Fulbrighters, and other important people. I think it was the first event I've ever been to where servers walk around with plates of hors d'oeuvres (it just took me forever to figure out how to spell that) and come around to refill your wine glass. Oh, I finally tried caviar for the first! They had deviled eggs topped with red caviar and a few other caviar snacks at the main food table as well. My verdict: actually pretty good, or at least way better than I expected. I got to talk to some of the Fulbrighters I hadn't met or really gotten to know yet, and met some other interesting people as well. I met a Ukrainian guy named Dennis who just got back from his Fulbright project as an aide to a US congressman (some freshman congressman from Minnesota), and we had a good conversation. I also met some employees from the Embassy who are about my age, and after the reception was over a small group of us went over to one employee's apartment to have some drinks and get ready to go out to a bar. This group included fellow Fulbrighter and Pacific Northwesterner Tye, Darrin who I mentioned before, a guy named Alex (Sasha), who's American and a current Russia Fulbrighter hanging around Kiev waiting for a Russian visa, two girls who work at the Embassy (the girl whose apartment we went to was named Anaida, but I forget the other's name), and one Fulbright scholar named Johanen, who's a professor at Northwestern and is in Kiev teaching Jewish studies (he was kind of the odd one out in this group). Apparently the Embassy takes good care if it's employees, because Anaida was given this huge amazing apartment with a big screen TV. We sat around a drank some fancy whiskey while Johanen went off on a number of different academic topics which were very interesting, but somehow distracting for the tone of the evening. A couple more Americans showed up later and I began to comprehend the vast network of Americans and Westerners in Kiev (at least certainly vast compared to Simferopol) as many began to talk about all their mutual friends and connections within the city.I had a nice time, but when everyone got ready to head to some bar I decided to head back to the hotel, since I was tired and hadn't gotten a good night's sleep on the train the night before, plus the hotel was right around the corner.
The next day we all met in the hotel lobby (by the way, in the lobby there were a bunch of signed pictures of local "celebrities" who had visited the hotel, almost all of whom I'd never heard of, but among all the B-Listers was Ukrainian President Yushchenko, standing right there in the same lobby!) and headed to a branch of the US Embassy for more orientation. We had a security briefing, a run down of the poilitical and economic situation in Ukraine, and some other talks about various resources available to us. At this session I finally met the Fulbright Scholar who is also in SImferopol, named Steven. He seemed like a really nice guy, and is here with his entire family including three small kids! He said he'd have me over for dinner sometime, and apparently he's got some apartment. The most interesting part of this session was a discussion on the recent Georgian conflict with two Ukrainian Political Science professors. They had a lot of interesting things to say about it and the impact on Ukraine, a lot of which I knew already and agreed with, but they did give me some new ideas about how to guide my research. I got both of their cards in case I need to get in touch with them to get some information of resources or research materials or something like that.
That was the final part of our orientation, and afterwards we were invited back to the Fulbright office where there was photography show opening for an American and a Ukrainian photographer. Oh, on the way out of the Embassy branch some of us got on an elevator with one more person than the posted maximum number, and got stuck in the elevator for about five minutes! I actually saved us by (eventually) just trying to push the door open, and it worked. We were actually already on the first floor, but the door just wouldn't open on it's own. The security guy bitched at us for exceeding the limit, but we just walked away. We took the metro to the office and when we got there it was already full of what appeared to be a bunch of teenagers, so I wasn't really sure what kind of event it was supposed to be. I had a bit to drink, looked at some of the cool photographs, and then decided to leave pretty quickly because it was kind of a weird scene, plus it was super hot and uncomfortable in that room. I headed back to the hotel and waited to hear from Tye, who was talking to people about getting together that night, but when he called he said everyone was pretty tired and were just going to stay in, so I had a nice quite evening at the hotel watching CNN international as the House voted on the bailout bill.
With the orientation over, the next day was essentially free, but our coordinator Myron was leading whoever was interested to the weekly antiques fair on the other side of the river, and I decided to check it out. A small group of us took the metro, and along the way I got to talk to fellow Fulbrighter Sarah, who's in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where i really need to get to sometime soon. The fair was pretty cool, with people selling old books, art, weapons, pins, knick knacks, and everything in between. It did seem more like a place for serious collectors more than casual souvenir shoppers, but I did end up getting a couple of things. I bought a little ceramic figurine of a women holding a drum and wearing a komsomol hat for my mom, because she always asks me to get kitschy figurines from this part of the world. It was a little expensive, but way cheaper than some of the other figurines they had for sale. I also bought a little pin with the Skoda logo that I'll probably end up giving to Lily because of our mutual obsession with that logo. On of the scholars bought a really cool painting, and dropped some pretty big bucks on it, but if I had a lot of disposable income I probably would have bought it too.
After the fair most of us headed to a pub called the Golden Gate where Democrats Abroad was sponsoring a showing of the previous night's vice presidential debate. A lot of Americans had turned out, certainly most of them Democrats. Myron (our coordinator) was sitting next to me and kept saying angry things under his breathe after everything Palin said. I knew I liked him when I met him. I had a tasty sandwich and a beer, and even though they took forever to arrive, I had a nice time watching and getting angry with everyone else. Inside the pub, I noticed two guys wearing Oregon Ducks T-shirts, so I had to o say hello after the debate. They were super excited to meet a fellow Duck / Oregonian, though seemed a bit disappointed when they learned I don't follow the football team. In fact, they were going to be watching the UO - USC game on a computer at 3 AM that night, and invited me to come, but of course I wasn't into that. I did talk to them a while, and learned that they had graduated quite a while ago (2000), and that they are both former Ukraine Peace Corp volunteers. One of them now works for a German law firm in Kiev, while the other just returned to start teaching English. They seemed like nice guys, but they and their friends seemed like a bunch of crazy party animals, so I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy hanging out with them. I did et one of their numbers, so maybe I'll meet up with them sometime when I'm in Kiev.
I had to get out of the hotel that day, but luckily Tye had just been allowed to move into his new apartment on the same day, eliminating the need for me to stay at the supposedly terrible hostel that he had been staying at for a little while. I got my stuff from the hotel and met him at the metro station down the street from his new place. His apartment is huge and quite nice, and my entire apartment could have fit into his living room, but he's paying over twice as much as I am for mine. All things considered, though, for a place that big with such a good location in Kiev (really close to the center), he's actually getting a pretty sweet deal, I think. So, after settling in at his place, his friend / last year Fulbrighter Rachel came over to take us to her friend's apartment / her temporary apartment to hang out with a group of her local friends. There were three Ukrainian girls (Julia, Julia, and Olga), and a guy (Kostya), but he left pretty early and was later replaced by Olga's brother. The apartment was really nice and felt almost exactly like a newer American apartment (except of course for the outlets). We spoke mainly in Russian for a while, but when it became apparent that us Americans were having a little difficulty keeping up in the conversations, everyone switched to English and it remained the default language of the evening. All the girls spoke pretty impeccable English, actually, so I don't know why we didn't just start with it. Olga chain smoked the whole time, and we all sipped wine and talked about all kinds of different things around the kitchen table while listening mostly to Amy Winehouse on repeat. This girl Rachel seemed so familiar to me the whole time, like I know I had met her somewhere, but I'm sure I haven't since she went to Yale. I figured out eventually that she really reminded me of my friend Autumn back in Eugene, but it still felt like I had met her personally as well. It was the weirdest thing. By the time Tye and I had to head back it was too late to take the metro, so we shared a cab with one of the Julias and then stayed up a bit watching Flight of the Concords on Tye's computer.
The next day (Sunday, I think) Tye and I decided to do a little sight seeing around the city. First off, we wanted to get some breakfast at what the Lonely Planet Ukraine Guide says is the best blini stand in the Kiev, but when we got there it was closed and being worked on or something. Disappointed, we checked the book for another restaurant in the area, and settled on one that is supposed to be the city's best Ukrainian restaurant. It was pretty much lunch time by then, so we were open to thins besides breakfast food, The restaurant was called Pervak, and it was quite tasty indeed. We both had amazing sausage and vareniki (like mini pirogies). After lunch we headed to the central part of town to see some of the main tourist attractions. We started at the Zoloti Vorota ("Golden Gate," what the pub is named after), which was the original gate to medieval Kiev way back when it was a walled city. It's been fixed up a bunch, but it is pretty cool still. We went to the top and had a pretty nice view of some of the surrounding area. Afterwards we headed down the street to two of Kiev's main cathedrals: St. Sophia's and St. Michael's. They both face each other separated by two squares and a short stretch of road. St. Sophia's was the bigger of the two, and had a huge bell tower next to it as well. At St. Sophia's you have to pay both to get onto the grounds and to go inside the cathedral, and to avoid paying the much higher standard adult fare, Tye lent me his old Willamette student ID to get the student price, while he used an ID from the Monterey Institute. They didn't know what the hell any of it was, so it worked just fine. I didn't bring my old UO ID with me to Ukraine, but I do have my old student ID from St. Petersburg that is much more identifiable here, so maybe it will work for such things in the future. Inside was pretty spectacular, as these cathedrals usually are. You should go see some sometime. We finished up at St. Sophia's and headed for St. Michael's, which had an awesome purplish-blue color (I think you call it periwinkle, but I'm not sure). This was actually an operating cathedral, so there were people inside lighting candles and saying prayers.One candle had drooped over and was dripping onto the floor, but somehow the drops were still lit for a second as the fell, so it looked like it was dripping fire and was really mesmerizing. Tye and I stared at it until the wick shriveled up and it stopped dripping. Outside we saw an Orthodox priest performing a blessing ritual on a car as it's owners watched. Tye and I got a kick of watching and taking pictures of it.
From St. Michael's we headed down to Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the heart of Kiev. People were out everywhere enjoying their weekend, and we just hung out there for a while watching people skateboard, pose for pictures, etc. This is where the huge protests were during the Orange Revolution a few years back. From there we headed back to Tye's place (which is only about 3 blocks away!) and decided where we'd like to get some dinner. I suggested Georgian food, so we found a place in the book and headed out. The restaurant was quite expensive (most Georgian places are, I find), but it was quite delicious, as expected. This is probably a good point to mention that Tye and I, along with Sasha the Russian-bound Fulbrighter, have decided to take a quick trip to Georgia over Halloween weekend! We already bought our tickets, and it looks like we'll be spending about 4 days in and around Tbilisi. I really wanted to do a bigger Caucasus trip that would include Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as the rest of Georgia, but Tye was really serious about going and I thought it would be a good idea to go this time with some friends. I'm still planning on taking that bigger trip before I get back to the states, though. I'm really excited about this trip, especially after that delicious Georgian meal. I think the plan is to just gorge ourselves on food and wine for four days while seeing as much of the city as we can. Of course, you'll get to hear all about that trip in about a month. After dinner we headed back to the apartment and watched 30 Rock on Tye's computer for a bit before hitting the hay.
On Monday, Tye had to get back to work (he's been teaching English), so I spent most of the day exploring on my own. I had breakfast at a pastry shop up the street from the apartment, and headed out the the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra (a monastery with caves), which is Kiev's biggest tourist attraction. This was Monday of course, so it really wasn't too crowded. I hear it gets crazy on the weekend. The upper part of the monastery had a few really nice cathedrals, one of which was only recently rebuilt after it had been destroyed in WWII. A big chunk of the original is displayed in front of it. There are also apparently some great museums there, but I somehow missed out on them (Tye seemed really disappointed when he heard that), so I'll have to see them next time. A path from the upper part leads to the lower Lavra, where all the Monks live and practice their faith. The big attraction here is the underground caves where mummified monks are on display for worshippers to visit (you can't really see them, they're wrapped in holy robes and encased in glass). You enter the caves through one church and come out the other. It was pretty cool but I was really expecting something more like the catacombs I saw at the monastery in Pechory in Russia, near the Estonian border. This place hardly felt like a cave, since all the walls were plastered over. It was pretty small down there, since most of it is supposedly off limits to those who aren't there to pray (though Tye got back there when he went, so I'm not sure). It was still interesting to see all the people kissing the mummy cases and saying prayers. On my way to the lower exit of the Lavra, I stopped at a tiny chapel where people where drinking washing themselves with the hold water coming from its spigot. Some guy in a track suite came up to me and started speaking to me quite quickly about it, and though I didn't comprehend everything he must have said, I did get that he was telling me to try drinking the water. So I tried it, and it was fine, but he kept looking at me like he expected something else from me, like I was supposed to give him some money for him having suggested I try the water. I told him I couldn't help him, and then he proceeded to tell me what I now believe was supposed to be some kind of curse. He said in an hour I would get sick, and after a year... I didn't really catch what he said would happen, but I assumed it was death. I missed a lot of what he said, but seeing as though he was just some guy in a track suite, I figured it was just some stupid ploy to pray on people at this holy site and try to get some money out of them, so I just walked off. An hour later I felt fine, I'm happy to say.
From the Lavra I walked to the nearest metro station, and considered riding out to the Hydropark (an island in the middle of the Dnipro River in Kiev that serves as the city's big park), but I decided instead to head down to the Maidan again, get some lunch, and explore in that area some more. I ended up eating at McDonald's near the square, just because it was so convenient and McDonald's in other countries are always kind of fun and don't make me feel too guilty. Afterwards I walked around the area, found the creepy "Chimera House" with weird gargoyles all over it, and walked around the area of the Bessarabian Bazaar. I found a bookstore and bought a Russian-Ukrainian dictionary, along with a couple maps cause that's what I'm into. I was waiting around to hear from Tye once he finished all of his stuff for the day, and eventually we met up back at his apartment. He bought some pelmeni and tomato sauce, so we ate that night, and then spent a while exchanging music and TV show files (I've since been watching a ton of 30 Rock). We were both pretty tired and called it an early night.
The next morning was my final morning in Kiev, as my train left around 6:00 that evening. Tye had to work again, and I had vague plans to go to this street with lots of vendors, but I was feeling pretty lazy, and instead just went down to the Fulbright office to get reimbursed for my train ticket back to SImferopol. I had to meet Tye around 2:00 back at his apartment to give him his key back, then just headed to the train station with all my stuff I had to wait around for a couple hours, so I just sat and stared in one of the sitting halls. When I had bought my ticket back to SImferopol, all the platzkart tickets were already gone. so I had to go with the next class up, kupe. This is where there are four beds to a single, closed off compartment, and usually I prefer platzkart when I travel alone just because you aren't stuck in a small room with 3 strangers for the whole ride, plus it's quite a bit cheaper (at least Fulbright was paying for this ride). This ride in kupe actually turned out to be a pretty positive experience, though. Just before the train took off, three young guys showed up in my heretofore empty compartment. They all had shaved heads, and my first though was one of dread as I thought I would be sharing the ride with a bunch of skinheads, but then one of them soon told me that they were soldiers. I found out a bit later that they had in fact all just gotten out of the army that day, and were each heading home. There was Sasha from Dnipropetrovsk, Igor from Zaporizhzhya. and Dima from Sevastopol (in Crimea). Dima spoke a little bit of English, and seemed to enjoy practicing it with me. They were all pretty friendly, and just mostly seemed really relieved and a bit free-spirited, as I imagine I would feel after just getting out of the army. Sasha hooked his cell phone up to some portable speakers, and they all started singing along to his collection of pop, folk, and rock songs. When I asked them who the singer of one of the songs was, they said they didn't know. I pictured them having only these songs to listen to for the last year while they were in the army, and sharing a bond over them without knowing anything about the singer. They started getting beers and snacks from the providnist (head of the train car), and soon started bringing some back for me. I had a great time drinking with them, asking them questions about army life and their opinions about Ukraine and Crimea, and grooving on their music. I even to to sing along with them on one song, cause they had some Kino on the phone. I was beginning to worry that they were going to stay up drinking and laughing all night and that I wouldn't be able to get to sleep, but they tuckered out right around when I was beginning to, so we all got some decent rest. I didn't sleep a whole lot though, unfortunately, just because I wasn't all that comfortable on my little bed. The stops in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya happened in the middle of the night, so before each stop one of the guys got up to get all dressed up in their full military regalia so they could make their family proud when they got of of the train. Something about that touched me. Dima got off with me in Simferopol and then caught a bus the rest of the way to Sevastopol. I took a taxi back to my apartment just so I wouldn't have to deal with taking my bags on a marshrutka.
So, the last few days since I got back have been really lazy. I used up the rest of my initial internet traffic allotment, and went down to the office to start my limitless monthly plan. It's nice to be able to use the internet now without worrying about the traffic limit, though the speed is a bit slower than I would like. I checked out this supposedly Armenian restaurant in Gagarin Park yesterday, and found it to be pretty darn expensive and not all that terrific, though they did have surprisingly decent lagman.I walked around a bit too, and finally wandered through the children's park. I really need to go back there with a camera, because there are all kinds of weird ride and attractions for kids there. The coolest part, though, is the big cement letters that spell out "children's park" in Russian at the park's entrance. I'll put a picture of it up sometime, you'll see how cool it is. There was also a small zoo, but I thought it would be too depressing to go in, but also weird for a guy like me alone in a zoo in a children's park. Today I had lunch at a little cafe up the street, where I tried Chicken Kiev for the first time, then did some grocery shopping in the adjacent market. I'm back on the potato/onion/pepper/cheese scramble diet for the next few days, though I'm spicing it up with some garlic this time. Mainly I've just been cruising the internet and watching 30 Rock for most of the time these past few days, but next week I'm going to meet with some people at the university and start getting back on track with the research stuff. I've decided tomorrow I'm finally going to head down to the beach (probably Yalta, just because it's the easiest part to get to). I think we're all caught up now. I know I broke my promise about huge posts like this, but I guess I'm just that type of blogger. See you next time!


-Austin

p.s. Check out my flickr page. I uploaded some pictures from Simferopol and Kiev.