We are starting the second round of holidays – Orthodox Christmas is tomorrow, so we will travel to Korosten today to celebrate the traditional Christmas Eve dinner with Igor’s family. Next week is “Old New Year’s Eve”, a fun unofficial holiday that marks the start of the new year by the old calendar – a calendar, I might add, that was changed about ninety years ago in this part of the world (and in 1752 in the American colonies).
I think I’m ready to get back to a routine, though, to go back to work and a regular schedule. The two weeks of guests and wedding madness were exhausting (albeit a lot of fun, as well), and the last week was more relaxing and restful. Dad took my nephew Kyle to Budapest for a New Year’s, and Igor and I went to Korosten. Actually, we couldn’t decide until the last minute whether or not we were going to go, but the final deciding factor was that neither of us felt like cooking, so we made the trip to get fed. We ended up driving our car, our first trip with the diplomatic plates, and found out a couple days later that we very likely would have been killed if we’d gone as we had planned.
You see, our car has summer tires on it, and crappy summer tires at that. A few weeks ago, before all the guests arrived, we decided to drive to a big warehouse store to stock up on things for the wedding and guests. The car has been parked in the UN parking lot for almost four months now, waiting for the registration to be completed. By the time we could legally drive the car, winter had started, snow had fallen, the streets were icy, and the parking lot was a skating rink. A sloping skating rink, actually, since it’s on a hill. I tried to pull out and ended up only sliding backwards in the parking lot. We managed to get the car back into a parking spot, and gloomily decided we’d get to use her in the spring.
December 31: we decided mid-afternoon to go to Korosten, so we hopped on the metro, headed out to Sviatoshin and the inter-city bus stop. The line was the longest I have ever seen for the Korosten bus – a good two or three busloads of people already waiting. Not encouraging, especially considering it was about -10C (14F) outside. Well, maybe the buses will come quickly today given the demand, we thought. (What naive fools we are!) The next bus arrived about 20 minutes later, and when asked, the driver said the next bus would be there in another 20 or 30 minutes. So, that meant we could reasonably expect to wait in the freezing cold for at least an hour until we got on a bus. “We have four options,” Igor said. “One, go home and spend New Year’s Eve in our apartment. Two, wait for a bus. Three, take the elektrichka [commuter train], a cold miserable trip of 3-3 1/2 hours. Four, get our car.” We flipped a coin a bunch of times to choose between the options, and the coin chose Car each time. We hopped back on the metro and headed to the UN parking lot. Although damn cold outside, the roads were not icy or slick, and much to our surprise and delight, the car which had been parked for nearly four months started up with ease. We cleaned her off, warmed her up, and chugged our way to Korosten. About 45 minutes into the trip we finally figured out how to work the heat properly. It was an uneventful drive there, a fun and appetite-satisfying visit with his family, and another uneventful drive back the next day.
On Thursday, we had some Korosten friends over for dinner, and they told us about a terrible accident on the highway, a bus going to Korosten had a terrible accident with a BMW around 6:00 pm; something like 16 people were killed and seriously injured. If the coin had not picked “car”, if we had waited for the bus, we would very likely have been on that bus. It’s freaky to think about. And I’m so sad for the people who didn’t have a choice that day on how to get home to their families.
I meant to write about holidays and happy things, but this post has a sad ending instead.
Anka in Kyiv 