We arrived in Korosten around 5 pm. As we approached, I briefly ran through the plans for the weekend – dinner Friday at Igor’s parents’ house, wedding at 1:00 pm followed by reception on Saturday, brunch on Sunday at a friend’s farmhouse. Return to Kyiv early Sunday evening.
During my work and travels with the Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme, I’ve had plenty of experience with the one hotel in town (the only decent hotel for about a 70-mile radius, I might add). Although a privately-run business, the administration still retains some of that old-world Soviet “charm”. Thus, it was especially delightful after the stress and drama earlier in the day to find that checking-in to the hotel was a breeze. The receptionist had a list of all the rooms reserved for us and handed me keys as I went down my list of guests. It was, by far, the smoothest part of the day.
While I took care of settling in the Americans, Igor went with Anya and Gresha to another very small private hotel nearby, called “Chateau”. It’s actually a restaurant, but there are two luxurious hotel rooms for rent there, decked out with individual saunas and small bathing pools (more like dipping pools, really, for plunging in the cold water when you are good and hot from the sauna). Knowing how hard Anya and Gresha work all the time on their farm, with almost no time at all to relax and enjoy themselves and each other, we had decided to make a small present to them and arranged for one of these special rooms for them for the weekend. I think they liked it.
Back at the main hotel, I was thoroughly impressed by the lovely third floor “lux” rooms. I’ve always stayed in the half-lux (what I would call “regular”) rooms, and once or twice, in a pinch, in a “standard” (aka, full crap) room on the second floor. We had rented the “apartament”, or suite, for ourselves, in anticipation of entertaining guests throughout the weekend. It was AWESOME! We had two gigantic rooms, a full-size refrigerator, dining table with 6 chairs, huge couch, big screen TV, and one and a half baths.
We had about an hour for everyone to settle in before heading over to Igor’s parents’ house for dinner. A fleet of taxis were called to transport us, and I arrived in the first car. I had tried to prep everyone a bit about what to expect – an overflowing table, lots of booze, more food than you’ve ever seen that will keep coming and coming, and toast after toast after toast. A few things about a Ukrainian dinner party that will be unusual for an American: the table should be so full that plates are stacked on top of each other; the host will make sure the guests’ plates and glasses are always full, even if there is no way the guest can eat another bite; it’s unthinkable to have so little food prepared that your guests actually eat it all; it’s a self-serve, family style table, and you use your own silverware to serve yourself and it’s perfectly acceptable to double-dip; there is no way the host would let a guest help clear the table, wash dishes, etc. I also said a word about the “facilities”, since there is no running water in their neighborhood. “The outhouse is a good one,” I said, “it’s just a bit challenging now because it’s so cold outside.” I am pleased to report there were no outhouse disasters.
Anyway, back to dinner. I had been nervous that the food would be too strange and unusual for the Americans. Silly me! I’d forgotten that Julee’s family is Polish, so the golubsti and pierogi were not only very familiar, but some of the kids’ favorite foods. Dick, as well, is of Slovak heritage, and Madeleine traveled in the Soviet Union, so both of them were familiar and happy with the food. Scott, Carina, Tayler and Tyler also seemed to do OK. I had been especially concerned about Kyle, since the food would be completely unfamiliar to him, but I quickly learned that if it’s meat, he likes it. He also absolutely loved Nina’s homemade dill pickles, which are by far the best pickles ever made on this planet. We ate, we drank – well, they ate and drank, while Igor and I tried to translate the 37 different simultaneous conversations. We took turns, almost like a tag team at a pro wrestling match, facilitating the conversations his father wanted to have, most of them with my father. Eventually, my brain more or less shut down, although Ivan was still going strong despite the large amount of vodka in him. I just couldn’t translate anymore, so I just asked everyone to laugh and trust me that his story was very funny. They thought that was funny, and Ivan was none the wiser.
Gifts were exchanged – these had been the topic of much discussion on two continents for several months now, with regular and frequent emails and telephone conversations dedicated to providing consultation to various parties about sizes, styles, etc. Kyle looked fantastic in his traditional Ukrainian shirt; the girls loved their sporty hats; Nina and Ivan were wild over their authentic American farmer overalls; Scott and Carina will be warm and toasty in their Carpathian wool blanket; Dad and Aunt Mary Ellin weren’t quite sure how they were going to get their paintings back to the US.
At one point, Carina, with huge eyes, said to me “I can’t believe this! I can’t believe how much food there is! I can’t eat another thing!” I laughed, and said “And this is just the first day!” Oh my god, I just realized that we are having a 3-day wedding. How the hell did this happen? What happened to our small and simple wedding?!
Another fleet of taxis was called to transport everyone back to the hotel. We stayed another hour or so, finally enjoying the meal ourselves and reviewing the details of the evening with Nina and Oksana – it was a complete and total success.
Anka in Kyiv 