On the road again

We’re in Crimea. Drove down last night (all night) with another couple – in their car, not our’s! Exhasuted, but having a great time.

Fun and dictators in Georgia

I spent last week as a volunteer election observer, seconded by the US government to the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It was a busy, exhausting and really great week. (By the way, I was officially on vacation from UNV and my volunteer work with OSCE was completely unconnected to my work with UNV.)

Most of the short-term observers arrived very early Saturday morning – airspace is less expensive in the middle of the night, so many flights arrive and depart in the capital Tbilisi at hours that I would prefer to think don’t exist. We landed about 4:00 am. After passport control, customs, collecting luggage, checking in with OSCE and finding the right chartered bus for my hotel, it was nearly 7 when I finally collapsed in bed. I slept a few hours, just enough to get me through the only full free day of the week.

My roommate in the hotel was an adorable young woman from Slovenia, Patricija. She and two of her colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Monika and Marko) made up the entire Slovenian delegation to the mission. They were all some of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time, and I happily spent much of my free time with them during the week. Patricija is a tiny thing, energetic and peppy – kind of like a perky toy poodle. I enjoyed her enthusiasm and optimisitic attitude as much as anything else in Georgia!

But Georgia itself was also really great. Everyone talks about the hospitality and friendliness of Georgians, and I certainly encountered nothing to challenge that legend. I had heard that not many people speak Russian anymore, so I’d been nervous I wouldn’t be able to communicate much with folks. It’s true not so many young people speak Russian these days, but pretty much everyone over 30 I encountered spoke Russian. Their accents were another story though! I took a short guided tour of one ancient church, conducted in Russian, and frankly couldn’t understand 90% of what the guide said. But she was a nice lady!

Saturday the Slovenians kindly adopted me into their group and we all agreed that the first place to visit was the ancient city of Mtskheta, the capital of the Georgian kingdom from the 3rd century BCE to the 5th century CE. We were so anxious to get on the road and do some sightseeing that we hailed the first taxi we saw, made him an offer for a half day of driving, and hopped in. Only after we settled in for the drive outside of Tbilisi did we start to take notice of what exactly we’d gotten in to. Monika was reading her guidebook and asked me to explain one phrase to her – it read something like this: “There are many private taxis, they are safe. But beware of beat-up cars.” I simply looked around and indicated the car we were in to explain the “beat-up” phrase. A couple times during the day, the driver couldn’t get the car started up and we had to push the car while he tried to pop the clutch to get it going. It became quite a joke for us, which of course was much funnier after we were safely back in Tbilisi, having cut short our plans for touring the nearby countryside after just two sites rather than risk getting stranded somewhere.

But those two sites were some of the most famous one near Tbilisi – the ancient capital with its beautiful Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, dating from the 11 century, and the nearby Jvari monastery, dating from the 6th century. Perched on a hilltop, Jvari offers a breathtaking view of Mtskheta and the surrounding hills and valleys. Just gorgeous.

Saturday evening we investigated the famous sulphur baths in Old Town Tbilisi. We visited three or four of them to compare and get the full scoop, planning to come back later in the week. Patricija and I went to one Tuesday night for a truly fantastic experience. The natural spring pours forth water at 50 degrees Celsius (122F), and in the small pools where you soak it is about 42-43C (107-109F). The tiled room is steamy, and the water feels absolutely great. We opted for the massage, which isn’t so much a muscle massage as it is a good thorough scrub down with a special woven hand mitt. You lay on a marble table, and the massuese rubs off so much dead skin you think you’re going to be just bare bones – but it feels great! My skin was soooo soft and smooth afterwards. We soaked, steamed, got rubbed down, soaked again – all in all, we spent an hour there and it was far from enough. We would have happily stayed several more hours.

Sunday the four of us decided to head out early to visit the town of Gori, about 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi. Why would we go to this sleepy town of under 47,000 people? It’s the birthplace of world-famous dictator Josef Stalin, and they’ve got a museum to him there. Too bizarre to pass up.

There’s not much I can add to Carpetblogger’s amusing post about the place. The museum is Soviet-style humonstrous, with cavernous halls. Among the many things I couldn’t quite get about the place was what the hell is actually in that huge building? The exhibitions we saw could not have accounted for even half of the space that had to be in there, judging from the outside. Did we miss the good stuff? And by that I mean did we miss the stuff that actually mentioned something about the fact that the subject of the museum was responsible for the death of millions of his citizens? I’m not asking for an analysis, even less a critique of him or his life. But I think what was most offensive about the place was the complete and total absence of any mention whatsoever that he might have done something a little bit bad in his life. I suppose I have to acknowledge that at least they didn’t say he was a good guy either. It was a rather mundane museum – facts, figures, photos, newspaper clippings, office furniture, family photos. You could almost forget the guy was a monster. The closest the guide came to mentioning anything approaching critical, and I’m sure it was more on account of a poor English translation someone gave her of the official tour, was when she pointed to a photo of Stalin casting a ballot and she said “And this is the first democractic election when Stalin elected himself.” I wanted to ask if they counted any of the other ballots cast in that election, or if it the one was enough to call it. I’d like to think it wasn’t just a poor translation but rather someone’s subtle way to sneak something more than the mundane facts into the tour.

I did learn a thing or two – Stalin was married twice and had a son. His second wife is actually still alive and lives in the US. They have a photo of his grandchildren visiting the museum.

They have Stalin’s personal railway car next to the museum, which is the length of two normal railway cars. It was relatively modest inside. The guide said Stalin didn’t like to fly and prefered to travel by rail as much as possible.

They also have the two-room house were Stalin was born and lived the first four years of his life. It looks to have been separated from whatever other construction it used to be part of, and the two rooms stand awkwardly in front of the musuem, under a stone and glass canopy. Stalin and his parents lived in just one of the rooms, which they rented from the people who lived in the other one. It was really small; hard to imagine a family living only in that tiny space.

In the end, I wondered if there might be something to the museum’s non-analytical take on Stalin’s life and reign. After all, everybody else only talks about the crappy stuff he did – but who knew he had a son and that his grandkids are still alive and kickin? I asked our driver what Georgians thought about Stalin. He said there are definitely people who hate him, mostly those who were repressed (go figure!). On the other hand, many Georgians see him as the great leader who defeated facsism and united a huge percentage of the world, and those Georgians are proud that Stalin was Georgian. Our driver also stated proudly that Stalin always made his first toast to Georgia – “He never forgot his motherland,” he said. I wonder if he remembered the ones he shipped off to Siberia?

And toasting in Georgia is a topic worthy of an entire blog post in and of itself, but that will have to wait for another day. It’s late, I’m tired, and the Georgian stomach bug that kindly accompanied me home hasn’t quite gotten the hint yet that it’s time to get packing. More later.

Georgia

I’m off to Georgia for a week. My first time in the Caucuses. I’m excited, should be a really interesting week. I don’t expect to have internet access, but I’ll post a full report when I’m back in Kyiv.

Road trip out west

We drove to Ivano-Frankivsk for Igor’s 10 year university class reunion. The education system in Ukraine is organized quite differently from most US schools and universities, and certainly very different from my own experience at Ohio State, one the largest universities in the US. In Ukraine, kids go through most of school with the same small group of classmates. When you enter university, you are also assigned to a group and you study with that small group of people throughout your five years of university. Students choose their department and major from the very beginning, so there isn’t the year or two (or three) for “exploration” that often occurs in US universities. Igor was in the history department, with a group of about 50 other students. So, over the course of five years, you get to know your classmates extremely well.

Igor hadn’t seen most of his classmates since graduation. A couple people he’s kept in touch with, including his roommate Sasha, who’s son is Igor’s godson. Sasha, unfortunately, wasn’t able to make the trip, but Igor was extremely excited to see the 40 or so people who were supposed to attend.

The drive was more of an interesting event for me, since I didn’t know any of the people who were attending the reunion. It rained most of the whole weekend, which made for a few stressful moments along the bumpy roads. Potholes are hard to spot when they are full of water and visibility is awful from the downpour! We had a couple scary moments clunking through some serious potholes, but thankfully the car seems to have suffered no serious damage.

One week after Orthodox Easter is “Memorial Day” or “Easter of the Dead”. In preparation for this day, you clean up the graves of deceased family members and put fresh flowers (usually bright artificial flowers, huge bouquets and grave blankets). On the actual day, you visit the graves of deceased relatives and honor the deceased, sometimes even having basically a picnic in the cemetery, toasting the deceased and leaving them “tokens” of food and drink (bread, colored eggs, special Easter bread “paskha”, candies). We were traveling back to Kyiv on Memorial Day, but we saw the preparations on Friday and many people celebrating the day on Sunday.

An interesting tradition to me is the tendency to put a memorial not only in the cemetery but also in the specific place where a person died, particularly if if was a traffic accident. You can see the bouquets along the side of the road throughout Kyiv and periodically along the road to Korosten. But on the roads we took to Ivano-Frankivsk, I swear there was a memorial every 100 yards for the entire 372 mile trek. And they were bright and very noticeable along the road, as family members had spruced them up with new bright artificial flowers in preparation for Memorial Day. I would think that such regular reminders of human mortality just might encourage one to drive slightly insane – but no! I was horrified by the constant stream of drivers zooming past me on blind curves, up steep hills, and in village residential areas – completely oblivious to who or what might be around that turn, over that hill, or walking along the berm. It was even more frightening to be that unknown car cresting the hill only to find a car coming straight at me in my lane as it tried to pass a car going “only” the speed limit.

I was greatly impressed with Igor’s navigation skills on this trip. Frankly, it’s taken him some time to get into the role. He doesn’t see well at all, even with his glasses, so he often completely misses signs and markers along the side of the road (if they even exist, which they often do not). And I often don’t read fast enough to be able to dictate to him whatever information is conveyed on the signs that do occassionally pop up. But Igor proved himself a better navigator in a cross-country trip when there’s more time to consult the map and make decisions, as opposed to driving in Kyiv, where decisions have to be made quickly. In fact, Igor turned out to be right more often than the actual official route posted on signs. He did a great job Sunday night getting us out of the horrendous traffic jam entering Kyiv. I won’t share the alternate route we ended up taking, as it was a delightfully clear and speedy route into the city and we hope it will stay “our secret” for future Sunday night trips back to Kyiv.

The reunion itself was nice. Igor had a great time, and at one point even said to me how he thought it was so important for me to meet to his classmates so that I could really understand him. Honestly, I wouldn’t say that I learned anything new about him or gained some new incredible insight, but I appreciate that for him it was a very important time in his life and very important people. It helped me put in perspective how it has been so important to me for us to go to Columbus together so he can meet my friends and see where I grew up. I think it will mean much more to me than it does to him, as was the case with his university reunion. I’m so happy he wanted to share it with me, and it means a lot to me that it was important to him. I think he understands as well how important it is for me to share an important part of my life with him.

Oh, one funny thing from the reunion was that I danced with one of Igor’s classmates, Mykola. Everybody speaks Ukrainian there, and I had been excited to get some “immersion” and really practice my Ukrainian. Well, I still can’t really carry a normal conversation, although I can understand about 80-90%, but it takes me too long to say my stuff in Uk so it’s just easier to speak Russian. But I really wanted to try. I was trying hard to keep up, but with the cognac and all, it got challenging. I followed most of the toasts, but sometimes just zoned out ’cause it was too tiring to try to follow everything. So at some point Mykola made his toast and I remember thinking “geez, didn’t understand that AT ALL.” Then later when we were dancing, the guy is trying to make conversation with me and I couldn’t understand a freaking word he was saying. I honestly thought he was speaking some completely random language, like Hungarian or something. My mistake was to reply in Ukrainian, which only encouraged him, I guess. At some point I said something like “Please excuse me, I’m from America and don’t understand very well.” And then I thought he asked how long I had been in the US, to which I responded, “Well, 33 years.” To make a long (and painful) conversation short, I finally admitted that I understood Russian better than Ukrainian, and then he switched to Russian but I still didn’t really catch his point. After two or three songs, we admitted defeat in comprehending each other. I told Igor about it the next day, and he of course thought it was hysterical. Turns out that nobody understands Mykola as he’s from some isolated mountain village with an extreme dialect (like talking to somebody with a deep Creole accent). I was convinced Mykola thought I was a full idiot, which was partially confirmed when he called Igor Sunday afternoon after having the amazing realization that I was American. I was confused whether that was a compliment or not – what’s better? That he thought I was a completely stupid Ukrainian or that he didn’t think I was a foreigner. Well, either way, it was funny that he only understood the next day that I lived 33 years in the US not just on some special program which caused me to forget my native language, but rather because I was actually born there and am a late comer to Ukrainian.

I’m very happy that Igor has reconnected with his university friends. One couple will come visit next weekend from Ivano-Frankivsk, and we hope to have dinner later this week with another couple who also live in Kyiv. We’re also planning some get-togethers with his friends who live not too far from Kyiv. I’m looking forward to getting to know better the people who are important in my husband’s life.

A year in Kyiv

Igor moved to Kyiv one year ago today, which means we are celebrating one year of life together. It has been the best year of my life – new job, cool trips, not to mention marrying the love of my life.

I hope he’ll always feel as happy and content as he looks in this photo

Я люблю тебе, коханий.

Stranger than fiction

My favorite photo from our trip to Ivano-Frankivsk last weekend:

Private Dentist Gynecologist

Interesting combination of services

Road trip

We went to Ivano-Frankivsk for the weekend. Saturday was Igor’s 10 year university reunion. It was our first real, long distance road trip in the car. Friday we drove the 600 kilometers in exactly 8 hours. All was fine. Coming back today the same 600 km took 10.5 hours – an extra 40 minutes due to a couple of wrong turns in 2 cities along the way, but a solid extra 2 hours to go the last 70 kilometers into Kyiv – the entire city seemed to be returning along with us on one freakin’ two-lane road. It was a nightmare. My legs hurt so bad from the start-and-stop traffic, and my shoulders are killing me.

At about the 500-km mark we were seriously discussing making the same trip next week for the three-day weekend. As we pulled up to our apartment building I told Igor I had reconsidered and I don’t want to do any driving for the foreseeable future.

We had a great time in Ivano-Frankivsk, though. I really enjoyed meeting Igor’s university classmates. He got more than a little tipsy and very sentimental, which I thought was really cute. I’ll write more about it later, right now I want a stiff drink and a massage.