Floristica – pressed flower artwork

I photographed Valentina’s artwork that is for sale. It’s a pity my father isn’t here to take really excellent photos of them! You can get a decent idea of them in these photos, but believe the colors and detail is much more impressive in the originals.

“Солодкий нектар для колібра” (“Sweet Nectar for a Hummingbird”)

Detail, “Солодкий нектар для колібра” (“Sweet Nectar for a Hummingbird”)

“Срібний ранок” (“Silver morning”)

“Літний букет” (“Summer bouquet”)

“Літо-літечко” (“Summer – summery”)

“Сніданок на траві” (“Breakfast in the grass”)

“Грибочкова сімейка” (“Mushroom family”)

“Ніч перед Різдом” (“The Night before Christmas”)

“Кружляє Осінь” (“Twirling Autumn”)

Detail, “Кружляє Осінь” (“Twirling Autumn”)

“Згорить печаль, здійсняться мрії…” (“As sorrow burns down, dreams come true”)

Family, friends, food, fun

We spent the long weekend in Korosten to celebrate Orthodox Easter with Igor’s family. We also celebrated Denis’ 16th birthday (Igor’s nephew) and the 17th wedding anniversary of Oksana and Vova, Igor’s sister and brother-in-law and the proud parents of the handsome birthday boy. We knew it would be 3 days of eating, drinking, laughing, and relaxing, plus some tough moments as it was the first family celebration since the death of Igor’s grandmother.

We took our time heading up there on Saturday, spending the beautiful morning with a new colleague, her husband and their 1.5 year old daughter. They’ve been in Kyiv about 3 weeks, and are still trying to get oriented and settled in. We took them to the farmer’s market and the supermarket, and generally enjoyed getting to know them better. Their daughter is just as cute as can be, and they are a very nice couple- she’s just a year younger than me, and we seem to have a lot in common. I’m looking forward to spending more time with both her and her parents.

We took a roundabout way to Korosten, driving first to Ivankiv for a quick visit with my friend Valentina, whom I was supposed to visit last weekend, when car trouble nixed those plans. Valentina is an amazing artist, poet, and lover of traditional Ukrainian arts and crafts. Her real speciality is “floristica”, making beautiful pictures from dried flowers and leaves. She spends tens, sometimes, hundreds of hours on a creation – each unique, each very delicately and purposefully designed and created. The colors, the designs, the types of flowers and leaves, even the arrangment of the scene – it all is created in a specific way for good fung shui. Sometimes they are so detailed and so intricately crafted that it’s only when you look at a picture up superclose do you realize it’s not a painting but instead made from hundreds of tiny petals. They are really breathtaking. I am the proud owner of 3 of her works of art, my favorite of which is called “Sea Fantasy”, with two beautiful blue goldfish with billowing tails, swimming with a school of tiny fish in a coral reef. Just breathtaking.

I have about ten of Valentina’s pictures that I am trying to help her sell – she’s an extremely talented artist, but not so hot at business. She ends up giving away a lot of her pictures because she’s just so sweet and she loves to give people presents. But with two sons in university, she really needs the money. I’ve sold two of her pictures so far, and I figured her earnings would be especially useful now with Easter and the upcoming May holidays. I was also excited to finally see for myself her flower garden I’ve heard so much about. Did I mention that she grows all the flowers and dries them herself? Her house and yard were even more fantastic than I had imagined. She gave us a tour of her house, which really is more like a greenhouse at a botanical garden. Dozens of different kinds of plants in every room, each with a special trait and purpose. Every room also had stacks of books with bits of newspaper sticking out from between the pages – her drying method. She opened one book and casually flipped through probably twenty pages, each with one or two delicate petals carefully arranged and pressed. I can’t even imagine how many thousands – maybe millions? – of petals and leaves she has pressed and drying in her house! It was really amazing. It’s still too early for much to be blooming in her garden, a few tulips were up, but she pointed to different spots and described what would be coming up. I can’t wait to see that garden again in June or July! Selling Valentina’s pictures not only makes me happy that I can help her with some much needed (and well-earned) income, but I also look forward to seeing her and her garden when I deliver her money. After the short visit with Valentina, we enjoyed the drive through the countryside. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and it was fun to drive with the sunroof open.

We arrived in Korosten in early evening, had a light meal, and then headed to the family banya. Igor’s father built a parnaya banya (steam bath) years ago, but it hadn’t been in working order for a couple of years so I never could try it before. I’ve heard many a banya story, and was always quite curious about them, but have never had the opportunity to try a real Russian banya before. I was also especially curious about the infamous tradition of beating yourself with birch branches. I just couldn’t even imagine what it was like. Igor loves saunas and banyas, with an insane passion even. I don’t enjoy the dry heat of a sauna so much, but I occassionally go to a sauna with him mostly because I enjoy being with Igor and I like seeing the pleasure that he gets from a good long bake. He was excited to introduce me to his beloved banya, and in retrospect admitted that he got kind of carried away and should have introduced me more slowly to the experience. It wasn’t traumatic, it was just surprising and temporarily unpleasant.

The banya house has a two rooms, plus a small corridor lined with windows. The first small room has hooks for hanging up your clothes, a couple stools, and the small metal door of the wood-burning stove. The next room has a shower head hanging from the ceiling and a bath, and the door to their small banya, which is kind of like a closet. It is long enough for two people to lay end to end, and just slightly wider than a person. A small metal door at one end opens to a small wood-burning fireplace, from which a long, wide metal tube extends the length of the banya and which is lined along its sides with fist-sized stones. You open the wooden door and step up high to get onto the a long wooden shelf which is fixed right above the metal tube. I crawled up and in, not really crazy about the smallness of the space. The wooden shelf on which you sit was really hot and I found it very uncomfortable to sit on. Igor gave me a two-by-four board to slip under my bum, but that didn’t help with my legs and other parts touching the shelf. I was trying to handle it gracefully, he had such a huge grin on his face and was so happy to be sharing his beloved banya with me!

He told me to stretch out my legs, and then he started gently whacking them with a fistful of long birch branches covered with leaves, called a venik. The leaves had been soaking in water, and the aroma was really pleasant. But the whacking was a bit weird, I have to say. It’s like an exfoliant, scraping away the layers of dead skin cells as well as dirt and grim. After a short venik session, Igor filled a dipper with water and splashed the stones lining the metal tube. Steam billowed up and it was HOT. I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. That was the part that later Igor admitted he should have warned me about. The steam lasts just 15-20 seconds and then dissipates, but it was so intense it freaked me out. There was no way he was getting me back in that thing, so we took one of the requisite breaks. We sat in the first room with the stools and drank a glass of beer.

After we’d cooled off a bit, Igor was ready to go in again, but I still wasn’t feeling good about it. He explained the whole ritual (it really is a ritualistic process in the banya), how it works, what to expect, etc. You steam, beat yourself with the venik, cool off under the cold shower, sit in the resting room and drink and snack, and start the cycle over again. It can go on for several hours, until “you’re done”. How do you know you’re done? Your skin is good and red, and turns white when you touch it. There’s no set time for everyone, each person is different.

Igor steamed a few more times, and I threw the water on the rocks for him. He closed the door tight and I could hear him whacking away with the venik. Eventually he got me to go in again, but we agreed no more steaming rocks for me. He gave my back a good workover with the venik. I finished up and went back to the house while he stayed another ten minutes or so. “How was it”, his mom asked me. “Interesting.” When Igor came back in the house, I started to say the traditional post-shower phrase “s lyokim parom”. Anya taught me that phrase when I first moved to Tvarditsa. I remembering asking what it meant and she said she didn’t really know, it was just what you said to some after they took a shower or bath. Kind of like a “hope you had a good bath”. Literally it means “with light steam” but expressed in the Russian way of congratulating someone on the occassion of an event – as in “I congratulate you with your birthday” or “I congratulate you with your light steam”. Sounds strange, I know, and I could never understand the phrase – that is until I said it to Igor after his good steam! Nothing like a little cultural context to put some meaning into a language.

Sunday was Easter, which meant the end of the Great Fast (Veliki Post’), or 40 days when strict observers do not eat meat or dairy products. Igor’s father keeps post’ strictly (it is also observed during advent before Christmas), and usually Igor observes it just the last week before Easter. This year he decided to observe it for about a month. I don’t know who was more anxious for it to end- me or him. I swear, all the man could talk about the last week was meat. I think he was even dreaming about meat. Since I’m a vegetarian, he didn’t find much sympathy from me in his suffering, but I sure was suffering from his endless talk about every possible variety of meat.

Ivan went to church in the middle of the night (2 or 3 am?) for the Easter mass, loaded up like everyone else with his basket of food to be blessed by the priest. The rest of us got up around 6:30 to have the first big feast of the day. We start with the hard-boiled eggs dyed red (boiled with onion skins to make the special deep red color). Each person holds one egg in his or her fist, and then you tap one end of your egg onto the end of your neighbor’s egg, to see which egg cracks. Then you flip them and do the other ends. It’s fun to see who has the strongest egg, who’s egg can crack the most other eggs. Then you peel and eat. Then you dive into the overflowing table. There were a couple veg dishes added to the usual meat-laden menu for me, and I was quite content. Of course Nina fussed and worried that I didn’t have “anything” to eat, which was quite far from the truth. I did just fine, and I was happy to not over-indulge as often happens at these celebrations.

We sat around eating and drinking and talking for a couple of hours, then everyone retired back to their beds to sleep off the hard work of the morning. Around noon, Igor and I went with his father to the cemetery to make the traditional offering at the graves of departed relatives. Then we went to their village house to check on and feed the animals. Ivan bought a sheep last winter, which gave birth to a lamb the day before our wedding in December. He’s growing up fast, and both Igor and his father were speculating when he’ll be ready for shashliki (i.e., barbeque). It was a beautiful day, and Igor and I strolled around the field while he dad tended to the sheep and rabbits, enjoying the fresh air and quiet village sounds.

Back home, after another resting period, we headed next door to Oksana’s house for Denis’ birthday celebration. Turning 16 is an important event – you get your own passport, which is akin to becoming a legal adult in many ways. You are no longer just a note in your parents’ passports. Denis is a typical moody teenager, and the celebration was obviously more fun for his parents and grandparents, but he suffered through for a respectable amount of time and then was released to go hang out with his friends. We continued the party without him.

After a couple hours Igor and I were both ready to get as far away from food as possible. We decided to go for a walk in the beautiful park in the center of town. It was a sunny, warm day and it seemed like most of Korosten had the same idea as us. I still sometimes find myself scandalized to see people drinking alcohol openly the street, especially bottles of vodka at 8 in the morning (open containers are legal in Ukraine). Every once in a while though, I get a kind of guilty pleasure out of walking through the park with a beer. This was one of those days when I wanted to indulge, so Igor bought me a bottle and I sipped at it as we strolled.

The evening was quiet at home, everyone was satiated and relaxed. Monday we lounged in bed late reading our books. We started back to Kyiv around 1, driving through a light drizzle most of the way. I had a workout scheduled at 6 with Elena, and boy was it a tough one. I’m glad I planned it that way, though – it kept me motivated throughout Monday to take it easy with the food!

All in all, a very nice weekend. And Nina sent us home with enough leftovers for an army!

Blogging volunteerism

We started a really cool new feature on our UN Volunteers in Ukraine website. Dr. Igor Petrowsky is a Ukrainian serving as a UNV volunteer in Timor. He’s posting about his experience on the UNV Ukraine website at http://ukraine.unv.org/en/blog.html (and here in Ukrainian). I’m really enjoying his posts.

We’re also blogging (Ukr) the first ever Living Library in Ukraine (Eng) (and Ukr), which is co-sponsored by UNV Ukraine. I just heard a BBC report yesterday on the recent Living Library in London – download the podcast April 21, 8am podcast, LL report starts at minute 20:50 (and here’s a print article about it). We’re still seeking volunteers (Eng) (and Ukr) to help with our LL in Kyiv – it’s a great opportunity to be a part of an exciting and growing movement for diversity and tolerance in Europe.

Spring=Potatoes

And summer=potatoes, and fall=potatoes, and winter=potatoes – at least in Ukraine. In spring, the country is obsessed with planting potatoes. (In summer it’s weeding the garden, including the vast potato patch; in Autumn it’s harvesting potatoes, which is much harder work than planting them; and in winter it’s eating potatoes over and over and over). Igor was called home by his parents to help with the spring planting this past weekend. I meekly asked if I should help to, and didn’t ask twice after he told me no. Instead, I planned an outing with my colleague and friend Elena.

After our usual Saturday morning fitness class, we planned to go about 90 minutes north of Kyiv to Ivankiv to visit my friend Valentina and to see a couple of the youth centers in the area. Elena is from Bulgaria, and although she’s been in Ukraine almost 2 years, she has not had much opportunity to travel outside of Kyiv. She’s heard me talk a lot about the youth centers and has expressed interest in seeing one or two of them. Perfect outing for a spring Saturday. Unfortunately, my car didn’t seem to agree. The good thing was that the car decided to stage its rebellion while we were still in Kyiv. I don’t want to even think what a nightmare it would have been to deal with a broken down car 100 kilometers from home!

It was the weirdest thing – suddenly, pressing the gas pedal caused no reaction in the car at all. The engine was running, but I couldn’t accelerate. Fortunately, we were able to coast to the side of the street to a not-too-busy spot. I called my mechanic, who called a tow truck for me. By the way, a tow truck is called “evakuator”, which for some reason I think is kind of funny. Anyway, after about an hour the tow truck arrived, hoisted the car up, and we enjoyed a pleasant chat with the nice driver on the way to the mechanic’s. Elena loves talking to taxi drivers, and I always find it amusing and entertaining to ride with her as she never fails to get a driver chatting. It didn’t take much to get this driver talking. He was particularly interested to know how much gasoline costs in the US. The last I heard, I told him, was that it was about $3/gallon, but I can never remember how many liters are in a gallon. Not to worry – he knew exactly – 3.8. (I just heard today that it’s up to $4/gallon.) It’s up to 6 hrivna/liter in Kyiv, which is about $1.20/liter or $4.50/gallon. When Ukrainians complain to me that they pay higher prices than in the US, I usually tell them they are lucky they’re not paying western European prices (i.e. $2.40/liter or $9/gallon as it was in Netherlands in February). But still, the prices are painful.

After dropping the car off at the mechanic and relieving my wallet of 318 hrivna (about $63), Elena and I were getting went in search of lunch. We ended up at a nice little Armenian cafe where we both got “lavash pizza”. It was fabulous, and along with a beer was a perfect way to chill after the stress of the car adventure. We were nearby the Botanical Gardens, which Elena had never been to, so we walked over in hopes of seeing the magnolia trees in bloom.

The line was ridiculous. In true Ukrainian fashion, on one of the first beautiful spring Saturdays, only one ticket window was working. The line snaked around several times, spilling out into the street. Even more brilliantly, only one gate was open and it was being used both for entering and exiting the gardens. The crowds of people pushing against each other in attempt to get into and out of the place would have been amusing if I wasn’t waiting to participate in the mayhem myself.

Once we finally got inside, we followed the crowds to the magnolia garden. I really regret that I didn’t have my camera with me! The tulip beds were gorgeous – and so many different varieties! We enjoyed strolling under the big pink and white blooms of the magnolias, and then found a quiet spot in the shade of a tall tree covered in delicate white buds. I don’t know what kind of tree it was, but the aroma was just perfect – kind of like honeysuckle. We sat and talked, enjoying the sunshine and tree’s perfume.

Sunday was gray and rainy, but tons of people were out enjoying the warmer weather, despite the drizzle. Dems Abroad got together to watch a recording of the Clinton-Obama Pennsylvania debate. What a load of garbage that was. Most of us left after the first hour when not a single question of substance, like about their policies, was asked. A thoroughly disappointing debate, which provide any information that would actually help one to make an educated decision about a candidate. Hopefully this primary mess will be over in a day, and then we can get onto the mess of the actual presidential election.

And as for the car, I didn’t really understand what the mechanic said happened , but he only charged 30 hrivna ($6) to fix it! We have now spent about the same on the car as we actually paid for the car – a hundred something to register it, and nearly 900 in tune up and repairs. Still, I can’t complain! We certainly couldn’t find another decent car for $2000. We might be taking our first long car trip/vacation over the upcoming holidays – stay tuned!

Oh, and the upcoming holidays are: 27 April, Orthodox Easter; 1-2 May, International Labor Day; 9 May, Victory Day. Most of the country gets all of next week off (28 April – 2 May), although UN only officially takes 28 April (for Easter) and 1 May as holidays. And many people will add on another week of vacation through 9 May, so the country is, for all intents and purposes, closed for 2 weeks in May. Igor and I, of course, couldn’t manage to organize ourselves in time to take advantage of all the free days, but we’re looking to take a few days right after the “May holidays”, which I hope will actually be better for us – everyone else will be back at work and we can enjoy some quiet, relaxing travels together. Let’s hope it works out!

Ukraine “is not a nation”

Russian president Vladimir Putin, during a private meeting with US President George W. Bush at the NATO Summit, is reported as saying “Don’t you understand, George – Ukraine is not even a nation! What is Ukraine? Part of her territory is Eastern Europe, and part, a considerable part, was given by us!”

This was reported first in this Kommersant article (RUS), which is referenced in this Ukrayinska Pravda article (UKR). This UNIAN article (ENG), interestingly, doesn’t quote Putin’s purported inflammatory statement, although it does include his outright threat: “Russia may consider forcefully incorporating the eastern part of Ukraine and the Crimea into its territory.”

A couple hours after this story “broke” (which is quite an overstatement, since it wasn’t even reported on the evening news in Kyiv), Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko voiced her rather lame response.

My husband Igor said of her response: “Які політикі, така й відповідь – ніяка.” (Her response is just like Ukrainian politics – meaningless.)

Let’s hope the media and public pick up on this story soon, and are as outraged as they rightfully should be! For all the NATO nay-sayers out there, you won’t find NATO threatening or denying Ukrainian sovereignty and independence!

Spring!

Ah, how I love the smell of spring rain! I noticed the new hues of green this past Saturday – grass starting to perk up, tulips beginning to sprout, buds appearing on trees. In another week or two I think Kyiv will burst into color! Oh how I love it.

We got the Ukrainian bug of “get the hell out of the city” on Saturday. It was an absolutely beautiful day and just taking a walk wasn’t satisfying enough. We hopped in the car for the first of what I hope will be many weekend car adventures! Igor wanted to go to the forest, and I wanted to go somewhere we’ve never been, so instead of heading in the northwesterly directly we usually travel when going to Korosten (which also happens to be the best direction for lush forests), we went sort of southeast. Just picked a road and followed it for a while, out past the airport and the town of Boryspil.

With no forests in sight, we decided to consult the map. Igor picked the water preserve area along the Dnipro river as our destination. Once you get off the highways, Ukrainian roads often require a strong sense of intuition if you actually want to get somewhere. There are very few road signs or markers. At a crossroads or when a road splits, sometimes an arrow will point you in the direction the “main road” follows, but more often than not, you just have to know. Fortunately, it’s usually easy to figure out relatively quickly if you’ve picked the wrong direction in a village, as I did. After following what looked to me as the continuation of the main road, I realized my mistake when the road rather suddenly disappeared into a field.

But those unexpected detours can lead to some of the most fascinating discoveries! In this little rather typical-looking village about 50 kilometers out of Kyiv, with the usually bumpy streets and run down houses, we passed a fenced-in lot full of bright, shiny modern farm equipment. Igor asked me to slow down so he could get a good look – definitely not “kolkhoz” (collective farm), he remarked. That kind of equipment is generally accessible only for a privately owned company, not by the cash-strapped cooperatives that have replaced many of the Soviet-era collective farms.

A minute or two after we passed the equipment lot was when I almost drove into the field at the end of the road – I was completely distracted by the enormous castle on the very last plot of the street. The mansions that surround Kyiv, and that are popping up like mushrooms throughout Ukraine, are often quite impressive monstrosities – the bigger, the better seems to be the mentality. But this thing was especially impressive – most of all because it wasn’t one of many citadels in a cottage community, but because it was the only one in the whole village. The local lord in his castle, surrounded by his крестьянство? Is Ukraine regressing to its pre-Soviet serfdom?

We followed our tracks back to where the road had divided, I double checked that there was no arrow pointing the route of the main road, and I asked Igor how the heck you are supposed to know which way to go. He looked around briefly. “See the bus stop at the intersection? It’s on the side that splits to the right, so that means the main road goes that direction, not to the left like we went.” Of course!

After another 20 or 30 minutes of driving through the quiet and pleasant countryside, we came upon a concrete wall, metal gate and guardhouse. We had happened upon a “polygon“, or military firing range. This was not indicated on our map at all, and in fact the road to the water preserve seemed to go straight through the area blocked off in front of us. To the right, the asphalt road turned into a dirt road, and to the left didn’t look a whole lot better. A young soldier (who looked about 12 years old to me, but must have been at least 17 or 18) came out of his watchroom and Igor asked how we could get to the water preserve. Much to our surprise, the soldier opened the gate and waved us through.

We drove past a a couple rundown 2-storey buildings with glass broken out of the windows. I was starting to think the place was no longer in service, but then we saw some other buildings that looked in better shape farther off to the side of the road, but we didn’t dare venture off the main road to take a closer look.

After about 500 yards, the asphalt was replaced with a road made of granite stones. It was bumpy, with some rather intense potholes. We took it slow, enjoying the scenery around us and worrying about the car, which is pretty solid but nonetheless not made for off-road adventures. A few kilometers down the road, a sign pointed to the left said “shooting field”. Then we passed a “tankodrom“, or tank training area. “Aha, now I understand why the road is made of granite rocks!” Igor declared. Another road branched off and we could see bunkers built into small hillsides.

We were getting a bit nervous, not really sure if we should be here or not, and not at all sure where we would end up if we continued down this road. We finally reached some reed-lined streams, which Igor thought was the start of the water preserve area. There were signs every couple hundred meters stating it was forbidden to fish. “That’s weird, those signs are in Russian, not Ukrainian,” I said. “Do you have any idea how old those signs are?” Igor replied. Still up from the Soviet era.

We saw a car parked along the waterside, and then another passed us going in the direction we just came from, so we figured it must be OK to be in the area, although we still were not confident that there was a way out ahead of us. After 7 kilometers, we pulled over and spent a couple minutes at the water’s edge. It was so quiet and peaceful – the only sounds were birds singing, frogs croaking, and the water gently flowing through the reeds. So beautiful.

We drove back over the 7 kilometers of bumpy rocky road, with one frighteningly hard bounce that I seriously hope didn’t cause any damage to the car. Then back through the countryside, where a few tractors were out even on a Saturday evening plowing for the spring planting. In the villages, old women were sitting in front of their houses gossiping, teenage boys and girls strolling in groups, little boys and girls riding bicycles and playing tag. Chickens and geese waddled lazily along the side of the road, heading home for dinner.

It was a short trip, but a rejuvenating one. Quiet time with my wonderful husband, fresh air, the smells and sounds of spring. Oh how I love it!