Where I live

And other hilarious maps: http://alphadesigner.com/project-mapping-stereotypes.html

Economic stimulus package

We did our share to boost the Ukrainian economy this week, some of it planned and some it spontaneous, and some of it unexpected but urgent.

Bill and Eilene got a membership to Metro, a warehouse club-type ginormous store. They had a few items on their list to look for, and I tagged along out of curiosity and for company. Tagging along for shopping is rarely an inexpensive endeavor. There was just about everything you can imagine in that place. We both got crock pots, which has been put to good experimental in our house this week (with very satisfying results, I might add!). A stroll through the electronics department brought to our attention some pretty amazing sales on fancy-schmancy wide-screen plasma TVs. Who could resist? We’d been planning to get one eventually, for the new apartment, so I figured if the price was right, right now, I should get it. A quick call to Igor confirmed his agreement.

Wow, is it ever awesome! The full awesomeness took a couple of days to fully appreciate, since I couldn’t figure out how to connect the cable correctly. The instruction manual that came with the TV only had a picture for how to hook up an antenna – who, I ask you, buys a wide-screen plasma TV and connects it to an ancient roof-top antenna? Seriously, no picture of how to hook up the cable, which is how, like 100% of people who own TVs like this are going to use it? Two days later, when the cable guy could come make a house call, we discovered we’d plugged the cable into the wrong slots on the TV. D’oh! That poor cable guy – to spend all that time going around to people’s houses in hope of solving real problems, and I bet most of the time he just has to swallow his laughter as he points out things like plugging the cables into the right place.

Not the real TV, but the designer’s rendition of one wall in the living room of our new apartment.

And here, by the way, is another one of her apartment images. Some changes have been made since this version; hopefully we’ll get the final graphics this week.

Well, the excitement of a successful shopping trip couldn’t be burst even by a hell of a shocker – the rear truck window just shattered into a bazillion pieces when I shut the door. The good news was that the window was down, so 95% of the glass shattered inside the door frame. The bad news was that the window shattered. On a Sunday. In Ukraine. When Igor was out of town. I would barely know what to do with a problem like that in the U.S., much less here. And I was afraid to tell Igor what had happened, since he pretty much can’t say anything about the truck without adding “We just need to sell that heap of junk.”

I happen to love our truck, it’s perfect for the roads here, it’s perfect for the off-road-type places we like to go, and we didn’t pay much for it, so I don’t really worry about it getting banged up (although it’s a monster of a truck and can really handle banging up). We’ve spent close to what we paid for it in parts and service by now, though, so I suppose it’s not so much the bargain that I originally thought. But that’s what you get with an old car, right?

To make a long story short, our friend Andriy helped me on Tuesday to find a place that could replace the window. Luckily, they had the right model in stock, and a couple hours later, two guys came out to our apartment and replaced the glass on the spot! How cool is that?!

I had also mentioned to Andriy that the mechanic told me after a recent tune-up that the reason it stalled a lot was the carburator. That particular garage doesn’t work with carburators (judging by the look of the other cars being serviced there, my old clunker is definitely not their usual clientele), and the mechanic said he’d try to find me a contact in town who could help. Well, he still hasn’t called, so Andriy did some asking around and we went on Tuesday to a carburator expert. We pulled off the road, literally under a bridge, and up onto the berm. A man came around the corner from absolutely nowhere (seriously, no-where) and started poking around under the hood. After a minute or so, his verdict was that eventually the carburater needs to be replaced; it will be crazy expensive to find or import and install a Toyota carburator, but I could put in a Russian or Ukrainian one for a fraction of the price. In the meantime, just push the gas a bit more to keep it from stalling. No charge for the advice. It was a rather strange experience, but fascinating.

Trip to Belarus

I spent 2 days in Minsk, Belarus, last week. It was the only country in my work portfolio that I had not yet visited, at least not while I’ve been in this job. I visited Minsk in 1988, when it was in the Soviet Union and not an independent Belarus. But I don’t remember much from my first trip 22 years ago, and it was certainly a new experience to visit after having been to so many other post-Soviet countries.

The one thing everybody says about Minsk is that it’s clean. It is. It is freakishly clean. It is refreshingly clean.

A squeeky clean underground walkway.

In fact, I dare you to find one speck of trash in any of my photos (and I wasn’t purposefully trying to keep it out of my photos, or anything like that). There’s not an abundance of trash cans, and in fact my colleague said he’s seen Belarusians go out of their way to find a trash bin to throw away cigarette butts! That’s how clean it is. Civic pride? Fear? What’s the secret? According to my American colleague who lived in Belarus for most of the past decade, they are just an orderly people. (Ironically, the first and one of the only pieces of litter I did was an empty bottle of Ukrainian beer.)

There’s a huge children’s park in central Minsk – actually, there are huge parks all over, and wide sidewalks and boulevards, it’s really quite lovely and green everywhere. The really awesome thing about the children’s park is that there is no smoking in the entire place. How cool is that?

From my hotel window.

After I started to get used to the clean, I noticed the lack of stray dogs and cats. Sure, there are a few here and there, and Kevin said there are more in smaller towns and villages, but nothing like the packs of wild dogs living on every single street in Kyiv. Where are they? you may wonder. Do they periodically shoot them, like I regularly heard early in the morning in Chisinau (which, tragically, usually ended up in horribly wounded dogs suffering from slow painful deaths)? Do they have an efficient and effectively humane society or animal rescue program? Neither. People just tend to take decent care of their pets and not turn them loose.

Minsk seemed a bit of a sleepy town to me. It was quiet, no crowds on the street. There aren’t nearly as many cafes and restaurants, and the popular ones tend to get booked up quickly. We actually had a hard time finding a place for dinner and a beer on Friday night.

Saturday was City Day, and on Friday workers were still busy putting on fresh coats of paint, trimming bushes, cutting grass and hanging banners. A taxi driver told me it’s popular to go out of town for picnics and shashliki (no big surprise, that’s popular everywhere in this part of the world!).

“Sometimes they ban alcohol sales on holidays, though,” he said. “I understand on graduation day or something like that, but on Valentine’s Day? You just want to have some champagne with your love and the saleslady says she’s not allowed to sell it to you!”

“Well, you just have to stock up in advance,” I chuckled.

“Sure, if you expect it. But they didn’t announce it, just suddenly there was no alcohol in the store,” he said. “But just in Minsk. You could drive just outside of the city and buy alcohol.”

Whew!

See you next year, honey!

Igor got his travel schedule yesterday. Between now and Christmas, we will both be in Kyiv at the same time only 38 days. Some weeks we will just miss each other, one leaving as the other arrives back in town. In the entire month of October, we will see each other 6 days; in November a whopping 8 days.

Gonna be a tough autumn.

Whiplash, transitions and more miscellany

We’ve gone straight to autumn, practically overnight. It was 40C (104F) and then it was 13C (55F). I packed up summer clothes today and got out the sweaters. Ugh, I’m not ready! It was hot, hot, hot this summer, the kind of hot that made us buy a fan and wish for A/C, but holy falling leaves Batman, I am not ready to start another long, cold, dark winter. No easing into it, no gentle transition. Just one night sweating in the stifling hot air and the next digging out the blankets. Is this what they mean by climate change?

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Igor started working with the FLEX high school exchange program. He’ll be traveling all around Ukraine assisting with recruitment and testing. The training has all been in English, which has kind of been kicking his butt. He’s partnered with a cool American guy, Jason, who did FLEX recruitment last year. I think once it’s just the two of them, on the road together, he’ll do great and won’t be so overwhelmed by language and so many people. They seem to have a lot in common, both are history buffs and both have been to many, many places in Ukraine, so they’ll have plenty of conversation topics to pass the long hours on the train rides.

Having both of us work full-time, and soon to be both traveling frequently, is also kind of kicking our butts. The first week was a rough adjustment – quite a shock when we both come home exhausted and hungry and wonder what to do for dinner! We can’t blow the extra income on eating out (or ordering in) every night, so this weekend was “get back to old routines” time. We cooked, cooked and cooked – the fridge and freezer are both full. I’m working on perfecting pizza dough. I made 3 pizzas this weekend, 2 with a whole wheat crust (well, half whole wheat, half white), and one with basil added to the crust. All three turned out dang good, if I do say so myself. Bill Campsey told me where to find the mozzarella cheese in the local grocery store, so pizza-making is a go! (It was also labeled “sulunguni”, which is a salty Georgian cheese; I’m happy to report it was closer to mozzarella than sulunguni, which I also like but is not what I wanted for my pizza!).

I also made banana bread, corn bread and raspberry muffins – all about the quick-and-easy snacks that we can eat on the go and Igor can take on the train with him. He made enough borscht for the week, so we should be set food-wise until we both head out of town on Thursday.

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Speaking of which, I’m going to Belarus this week. The first time I was in Minsk, it was in the Soviet Union, and, well, everybody pretty much agrees it still is. All visitors talk about how clean the city is. I don’t know if this is as much commentary on the pristine nature of Minsk as it is about the crapped-up nature of rest of the former Soviet Union. Dictatorships can have their pluses!

I don’t usually write (much) about my travels in advance (call me superstitious, I guess), but I’m pretty intrigued about the 48 hours I’ll soon get to spend in one of the craziest countries in this part of the world. I mean, what super-excitement awaits me in a city where the main hotel has 213 rooms that cost under $300/night that are ALL completely booked and can only offer me one of 12 “luxe” rooms for nearly half a month’s rent in Kyiv? How can I miss whatever is going on?!

The Consulate of Belarus, which I had the pleasure of visiting to obtain a visa, was a nice prelude. First, the address doesn’t exist in my GPS. Excellent work, Natasha! They’ll never find us now! Alas, I did find them, the guards and Belarusian flag having tipped me off.

I approached the guards and explained I wanted to apply for a visa. I knew I needed to buy health insurance (since apparently the Belarusian medical facilities only accept their own policy), but couldn’t find the place to buy it. One guard took my passport while the other dug out a business card of the “agency.” The first guard came back and told me I was in luck, there was no line at the moment in the Consulate (Seriously? Were there any doubts about that?), so I could go across the street, buy my insurance, and come back to apply for the visa. Which I did. I entered into a large hall in the Consulate, with 5 or 6 desks for applicants someone must have once fantasized would make this place bustle. It was empty. The one sad and lonely lady at the window read over my visa application as if she had nothing better to do that day. She clucked and muttered to herself about my scribbles, then asked if I was paying in dollars or euros. She gave me an “invoice”, which I took across the lobby to another sad and lonely woman sitting in a closet, aka the cashier. She checked the bills I gave her as if she had nothing else to do that day. Seriously, those bills were scrutinized more than I even thought was possible. She put them through FIVE different tests, more than I’ve ever seen in any bank in forfeit-paranoid Ukraine. And just for good measure, she rejected one of them. Fortunately, I had a spare. I was impressed with the whole procedure.

45 minutes and an obscene amount of money later, a spiffy Belarusian visa had been added to my collection. Looking forward to putting it to use!

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We also spent a chunk of time this weekend on apartment decisions. We hadn’t seen it in a week, so a visit was in order. The shortest man I have ever seen is working there now. He and another guy (who was subsequently fired for spending his entire first paycheck on vodka, at 9 am on a work day) laid the sub-floor and is now working on the walls, along with Andriy, our “foreman” (and one of Igor’s oldest and dearest friends). I thank our lucky stars each and every day for Andriy! He’s more careful with our money than even we are.

Nothing really photo-worthy at the moment, but concrete has been laid throughout, sub-floor installed in the bedroom, insulation in the ceiling of the back room, and a new wall constructed between the hallway and bedroom. New radiators are purchased but not yet installed. We spent an exhausting amount of time at the local version of “Home Depot” picking out tiling, paint and various fixtures for the bathroom. Who knew there were so many different shades of blue? Who knew there were so many different variations on a shower stall? And I don’t even want to think about toilets anymore – good lord!  Enough decisions were made to keep everyone busy for a few more weeks.

Igor has high hopes we’ll spend New Year’s in our new apartment. I’m not quite as optimistic, but I love the idea!

Backlog of travels and photos

It seems like more and more often I decide to wipe the slate clean of what I had been meaning to post to my blog. I somehow never manage to write the short, quick updates that I think should be easy, and the long posts get put for a later that never arrives.

Well, August flew by. We had a fun but exhausting road trip across western Ukraine: our first visit to Kamianets-Podiskyi, an overnight in Yaremche (where we’ve been 2 or 3 other times), and a long weekend in one of my all-time favorite Ukrainian towns, Kosiv. There’s just something about Kosiv that always makes me feel happy. The small town, nestled in between the not-too-tall mountains, is just the right size. Our friend Sveta lives on the edge of town, up high on a hill. It’s quiet and the air is so clean. And on a clear night, the sky is just breathtaking – Milky Way, shooting stars, billions and billions of stars.

Igor’s big accomplishment was to climb to the top of Hoverla, the tallest point in Ukraine, something he’s been wanting to do for several years now. As far as mountains go, it’s not especially tall, but nonetheless the hike up is not the easiest of feats. I’m really proud of him!

Photos are on Flickr.

I also had a quick trip to Armenia, mostly for work but managed to squeeze in a day of pleasure. Dad went, too, and visited old friends from when he and Mom did some consulting with different NGOs. I finally got to see Lake Sevan, which is dang impressive. We had a cookout on the shore, but were wholly unprepared for the cool-bordering on-cold temperatures at that altitude. We shivered around the fire while the meat and veggies cooked!

Our return flight was delayed several hours, so Dad and I managed to squeeze in a tour of the Ararat Brandy distillery, the best part of which was, of course, the degustation at the end. We tried 4 different brandys – 3 year, 5 year, 10 year blend and 20 year blend. Wow, once you’ve tried the good stuff, you’ll understand why Ukrainians drink (cheap) cognac in shots!

The tour guide told us a “legend” of why Russians drink cognac with lemon slices. She said Tsar Nicholas disliked the taste of spirits, but being a good host he didn’t want to offend his honorable cognac supplier. So he chased his cognac shots with a bit of lemon, and if anyone saw him make a yucky face, they would assume it was from the sour lemon. I re-told this story to Igor back in Kyiv, and he just laughed. “The tsar was a drunk,” he said. “He ate lemons to hide the smell of booze on his breath.” I don’t know which legend is true, if either, but they both make for good storytelling.

Armenia pictures are also on Flickr.