Wednesday 10/28

On Wednesday morning, Mika gave us directions to the "Palace of Hot Cabbage" for the dancers' final performance. The directions basically consisted of "Just walk down Jksjhknzdfls Street for a while, and ask somebody for this theater." Great. It's difficult to ask for directions when you don't speak the language.

But, like always, our International Language of Charades came through and we hesitantly walked into a crowded theater packed with dancers and their teachers/coaches. We weren't sure if we had to pay admission, so we just wandered through the halls until one of our dancers spotted us and dragged us over to sit with their chaperons. I think that they didn't actually expect us to deliver on our promise of attending, because they were ecstatic to see us.

Most of the people in the audience were the dancers themselves, waiting for their turn to compete, and their families. We were definitely the only non-Ukrainians there. Sitting through three hours of dancing is survivable. What almost killed us was the hour-long awards ceremony immediately afterward.

In Ukrainian.

When everybody finally started to leave, our group of dancers excitedly dragged us onto the stage so we could take pictures with them.

After we said goodbye and promised to see them at the hostel before they caught the night train home, the three of us went off to Puzata Hata to recuperate. We stopped by a mini-market on the way home to pick up strawberry ice-cream. In Ukraine, ice-cream does not come in a cardboard box, but in a big plastic tube, like frozen ground beef.

We spent the evening packed into the living room with all the dancers, teaching each other card games and watching Ukraine's soccer team, Dynamo, on tv. They LOVED the game "Spoons," and Mika had to keep hushing us so the neighbors wouldn't complain of the noise. They tried to teach us a game that roughly translated to "Stupid Boy," but they had a really hard time explaining it. They wanted to show us their costumes that they hadn't worn at the recital, so they put them on, just for us. Their chaperons, who speak no English, were just beaming.

On the front row is the hostel owner Mika, me, Camille, and Jessica.

They took photos with us on their camera phones, and as they said goodbye, Olga and Jenya presented us each with a souvenir Lviv magnet. They invited us to visit them in their little town, and we made them promise to let us know if they were ever in Kiev or America. We hugged all the girls on their way out, and then hugged a very squirrely Vlad. The two boys in their group, Vladimir and Ivan, had stayed in the same dorm-room as us, and despite a total lack of language on either side, we had managed to tease them plenty. There is a certain thrill in giving 13-year-old boys a hard time. When he managed to get away from us, Vlad swaggered out the door and without turning around, shouted over his shoulder the only English we ever heard from him: "Goodbye America!"

Miguel and the three of us were the only guests left in the hostel, so Mika gave us a key to the hostel and went home. It was strange, but not uncomfortable, being alone in the hostel. Miguel stayed in the living room until late at night, so the three of us went into the dorm room and shut the door.

Jessica and Camille taught me the art of Deaf Karaoke: You put in earbuds, turn your iPod up until it's so loud that you can't hear your own voice, and then sing along at the top of your lungs. It's called Deaf Karaoke  for two reasons:
1) You can't hear anything but the song
2) To the rest of the people in the room who can only hear your singing, not the song itself, you sound like a howling deaf person.
The three of us sat on the top bunk and took turns rupturing each others' ear drums. My deaf rendition of "Come On, Eileen" was so loud and awful that Miguel came in to check on us and give us a hard time for sounding so bad while fully sober:
"I am thinking somebody kill you. You have one glass of vodka and the building fall down! I am thinking you are hiding bottles. Or maybe you take drugs or something?"

Please imagine that in a very thick Spanish accent, with Miguel fully decked out in his Jewish outfit, except with a wife-beater on instead of a shirt.

Tuesday 10/27

The first day went by in a tired blur, so on the second day we had more of a chance to take in our surroundings. The "Lemberg Hostel" is located on the top floor of a 100+ years old apartment building. Mika, a young Ukrainian woman in her twenties, runs the hostel simply because "she likes meeting people." Her father owns the space but let her turn it into a hostel, basically as a huge hobby-project. She speaks English well, but far from perfectly, and although her business skills are lacking, she is very kind. When we arrived in Lviv, the hostel was full of people: an older Canadian couple, the three of us, a troop of about 15 teenage Ukrainian dancers with their chaperons, and a Jewish man named Miguel, from Spain. The view from our dormitory window looked out across the city and over buildings as old as ours.

Miguel is easily one of the most interesting people I have ever met. He is 33 years old with a doctorate in Philosophy, and has spent the last seven years traveling and living in India, the Middle East, and Europe. When we met him in Lviv, he was on his way home to Spain. Although he dressed head to toe in traditional Jewish clothes, including the hat and full beard, he told me that he is not very religious, and that he doesn't even know if there is a god. He told me all about Pakistan and Germany, his favorite countries, and showed me pictures of his sister and 79-year-old mother in Spain. We discussed "cooltoorah" and "arkitektoorah" (culture and architecture), and he told me that the best way to make your hair soft is to put almond, avocado, and onion in your shampoo. Things with Miguel got more interesting as the week went on. Miguel's hat box had a postcard warning "Please!!! Don't touch the hat!!!!" written in several languages:

Jessica, Camille, and I decided to follow our guidebook's recommendation and check out the local cemetery. We were a little (ok, a lot) skeptical about it, but on Mika's insistence, decided to give it a try: "But don't get lost!" she warned. Nine tram stops later we said goodbye to some young Ukrainian girls we'd just met, and walked into Lviv's cemetery.

The word "cemetery" brings to mind neat rows of headstones, carefully mowed lawns, and little bundles of tired flowers with a uniformed man playing "Taps" somewhere in the background. This was not one of those cemeteries. This cemetery was a jungle of trees and vines consuming graves that barely peeked through. The most modest headstones were once-flat slabs of rock, now almost completely eaten away by time, hidden by ivy and overshadowed by the surrounding graves. The most elaborate were monuments with life sized portrait-carvings of the dead, marble angels lounging across the caskets, and huge ornate mausoleums. The graves were not laid out by rows, but simply stuffed wherever they could fit. Huge trees popped up everywhere, protecting everything with a muffling canopy. The cemetery went up and down hills, with paths twisting in and out and around and back. When Mika told us not to get lost, we realized that she wasn't talking about the tram trip, but the cemetery itself. The whole scene was blanketed by a thick bed of yellow leaves. We were left alone to explore the quiet, labyrinthine tangle of graves and overgrowth.

We took the tram partway back, but hopped off as soon as we saw something of interest. The first point of interest was warmth, the second was food, both of which we found at an Indian-themed (as in Native American) restaurant. Ironic, I know. With the English-translation menu, we ordered almond hot chocolate and sat down at a table in front of a giant mosaic of Che Guevara. Our almond hot chocolate arrived, and to our surprise, it was literally almond hot chocolate, that is, heated chocolate pudding with a single almond on top, to be eaten with a spoon. We just had to laugh.

We wandered through town, stopping in markets, churches, and art galleries. As it got dark, we stumbled across a loosely-organized outdoor market selling only used books and a few vinyl records. At the center of the book-sellers' stands was a statue of a man holding out a book. I walked slowly through the stands, picking up decaying books whose words I could not read, looking at photos of poets and dancers whose names I could barely sound out, and just holding the musky, brittle pages in my hands.

On the way back to the hostel, we decided it was about time to "Walk the Block," so we got out our paper compass. We ended up with "LLLRL," so we turned through the city blocks until, lo and behold, we ended up at a beauty salon! Since the compass led us directly to its doorstep, we knew it must be fate, and since we knew it was dangerous to mess with fate, Camille and I got manicures while Jessica got a haircut. Only one person in the place spoke English, but looking hot is a pretty universal concept so we had no problem communicating.

On the way back to the hostel Camille thought she saw a man "exposing" himself. Jessica and I didn't believe her, until we walked by and witnessed it for ourselves. We shrieked with laughter, and staggered home doubled over trying to hold our ribs together, but I don't think the guy noticed us as much as we noticed him.

At the hostel, the three of us played cards in the living room and listened to Miguel's flamenco music while he made himself dinner. We noticed three of the young dancers asking him questions in English until he got so annoyed with them that he gruffly told them "Practice your English on the Americans, it's not even my first language!" The three girls shyly turned their eyes toward us, but didn't dare say anything until we said hello and invited them over. Their initial shyness immediately disappeared after they asked us if they could practice speaking English with us. They sat next to us on the couch and we talked. Their English was far from great, but with their enthusiasm and our guesswork, we could almost always understand each other. Their group came from a small town in far eastern Ukraine, and we were not only the first Americans they had every met, but also the first native English speakers. I felt weirdly honored. The three girls were soon joined by the other dancers, all girls except two boys. Pretty soon the living room was so packed that we were all basically sitting on top of each other. The ice was broken. We taught them slang (which we wrote down on note paper for them), and they showed us videos from their dance competition. They had an impromptu flexibility contest to show off their best moves. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers. When I told them I was from California, their eyes widened, "Have you met celebrities!?" We all played cards together until Mika enforced quiet-time. The dancers, who had traveled across the country to Lviv for a competition, invited us to their final performance the next day. When we accepted, they were so excited, and their chaperons were excited and shocked. We couldn't imagine passing up an invitation from a dozen Ukrainian dancers, and they were delighted to have American guests as souvenirs.

Sunday 10/25-Monday 10/26

By the time I finished writing about my Poland/Slovakia trip, it was time for Vacation Number Two. At first we wanted to go to Romania, but after thinking about it, we decided on a Ukrainian "staycation" instead. This was my thinking: I'm spending four months in Ukraine, but I never get a chance to see anything outside the Kiev bubble. So on Sunday night, Jessica, Camille, and I (same group as Poland, minus one Jessica) hopped on a night train to Lviv.

Tania, our native coordinator, helped me purchase tickets in advance for the three of us, and I had to memorize the layout of the information on the ticket (departure time, seat number, etc.) since I couldn't actually read it. The evening of our departure, the three of us met at the train station with plenty of extra time. The first great thing about traveling by train is that it is vastly different than dealing with airport messes. There are no lines to wait in, no baggage restrictions, and absolutely no security. The train station is just a semi-open building where anybody can walk in or out. We simply arrived half an hour before departure, checked to see what platform we needed to be on, and walked right up to the train. The only official we had to deal with was the ticket-checker at the door of our wagon. Incredibly easy.

The train itself was quite an experience. We traveled third class, which basically translates to "no doors." Each wagon on the train was split into six or seven compartments, with four bunks in each (Basically. There were two more bunks in each compartment, but they were on the other side of the aisle.) Second class cost significantly more, but had doors between each compartment. Totally unnecessary. We were warned with a bunch of horror-stories about traveling by train and having stuff stolen, but there was nothing to worry about. The beds fold down from the walls, and the bottom bunks rest on a luggage compartment, so the bed folds down and acts as a lid, making it impossible for anyone to steal your stuff while you sleep. (Unless you are a heavy enough sleeper that you wouldn't notice if somebody rolled your body toward the wall and lifted up your bed...) Since this was a sleeper train, there were no seats. Before the lights turn off, the people in each compartment just sit on the bottom bunks. The three of us played cards on the tiny table between the bunks, and the fourth guy in our compartment, a quiet Ukrainian guy, just ate his dinner and pretended he/we didn't exist.

The train left the station at 9:30pm, and around 11 the lights turned off. I followed the Ukrainian guy's example, grabbed a mattress/pillow roll, and covered them with sheets. I was so grateful that the sheets were fresh and came sealed in plastic bags: one sheet to cover the mattress, one sheet to use as a blanket, a pillow case, and a piece of cloth that we couldn't figure out. Sleep was hard to come by, though. My bunk was so close to the ceiling that I could barely turn over. It was also way too short, and I couldn't let my feet dangle into the aisle without knocking everybody's heads. While the train was moving, it was really cold, but we stopped at three stations during the night for half an hour each, and it got burning hot. So, all in all, night trains in Ukraine are definitely not the Hogwarts Express.

  

When we arrived in Lviv, a worker came by to make sure that everybody was awake. We stumbled off the train around five in the morning, just wilted with exhaustion. As I rolled up my bedding, I noticed that the mattress pad was covered in rodent poops. Wonderful. The morning was gray and foggy, and our breath smelled bad from having no where to brush our teeth. We hauled our bags to the tram stop and found our way to the hostel. Our bags felt incredibly heavy, and the tired fog of the morning made us irritable and frustrated.

 
The day was rough. The hostel owner, Mika, greeted our sorry corpses and led us straight to bed. We woke up and tried to follow a walking tour from the guidebook, but the map showed streets that didn't exist and directions that took us in circles. We tried to get excited about exploring Lviv, but we were so exhausted that we just ended up bickering. That afternoon was possibly the lowest point I had in Ukraine. The map was wrong, we were walking in circles, and I was irritated by everything that Camille and Jessica said. Even so, the city was beautiful.
Lviv Opera House

Architectural differences, above and below.

There is a certain joy in finding "I love you" written in English, when all the language around you is a blur to your ears.

We finally gave up and headed to Puzata Hata for dinner, our favorite cafeteria-style Ukrainian chain restaurant. Ten reasons why we love Puzata Hata:
1. It's warm.
2. It's dry.
3. It's cheap.
4. It's delicious.
5. You can point to what you want--no language required.
6. They don't care how long you stay.
7. Clean, free toilets.
8. The toilets are throne-style, not squatters.
9. Borsch.
10. It's loud enough to that we can talk at normal American-volume without sticking out.

We ate borsch and played M.A.S.H. (a tell-your-future game that predicts your entire life: who you'll marry, where you'll live, how many kids you'll have, your superpowers, etc.) at our table, staying long after we finished our food. In the booth next to us, a Ukrainian man leaned over and asked us where we were from, because his friend could hear us speaking a different language. We talked to them both and found out that this guy was one of those horse-riding gymnast-acrobats for the Ringling Brothers circus.


We folded a piece of binder paper into a fortune-teller, the kind that kids usually use to answer yes-or-no questions. Instead of writing in answers like "Yes," "No," or "Maybe," we made it into a direction-giving compass of sorts. The idea was this: Whenever we are bored/indecisive exploring the city and can't figure out what to do next, we will consult the compass. Possible answers included:

Follow fabulous: We would choose an outrageously-dressed Ukrainian and follow them (secretly) wherever they went. For a while.

LLLRL: Turn left, left, left, right, left.

Ice-cream: Whoever got this one had to find and also buy the other two ice-cream.

There were a few other ones, but the main point was that the compass gave us some instruction for the direction of our exploration. We called it "Walk the Block," and used it whenever we wanted some help getting lost or finding a new adventure. The day ended much better than it began.

Start Wearing Purple

A weird, wild dream come true: Gogol Bordello playing live in Ukraine. The band is based out of New York, but the lead singer is from a town outside of Kiev. His family, descendants of gypsies, fled after Chernobyl and endured refugee camps for seven years. Quite a history. He also plays Alex, the translator, in the movie 'Everything is Illuminated.' Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Eugene Hutz:

As you can probably imagine, he puts on a wild show. We bumbled our way through buying tickets in advance, apparently making the lady in the box office pretty irritated, because I ended up with literally the worst seat in the stadium. We had to get our native coordinator from ILP on our cell phone to explain to the ticket-seller what we wanted. Not our finest moment.

The show was in Kiev's huge indoor stadium, Palats Sportu. All sorts of cool Ukrainian kids milled around with wild hair and grungy t-shirts, a respite from the polished boots and Prada shoes seen everywhere else. A band with an accordion greeted concert-goers outside, and people paused to dance before entering the enormous stadium.

The cheapest tickets we could find entitled us to both a chair and standing room in the back of the floor space. I figured out that the ticket-seller must not have liked us very much, because I counted chairs to my assigned seat and found myself all the way in front of the stadium, up against the front wall, behind a huge pillar. The stage was not even visible. The only seat as bad as mine was the one mirrored on the opposite side. Except mine had a big nail sticking out of the seat, so I win. We also noticed that the stadium was only half-full. Thank you, ticket-vendor!

The opening bands were crummy, so another teacher and I went to find the bathrooms. They weren't squatter toilets, but there were such dirty footprints on the seats anyway, that they were impossible to sit on without fearing disease. We ended up talking to three Ukrainian girls who were smoking in the already-disgusting bathroom (I love stereotypes), until we heard Gogol Bordello's most-loved song come on. We politely ran out of the bathroom, bolted down the halls, and back into the stadium. The place was completely transformed. Everybody was out of their seats, dancing on the floor, dancing on the stairs, dancing in the aisles, dancing with friends, dancing with strangers. Jessica and I tried to run through to find our friends, but the crowd had become impossibly thick and tangled. We gave up and made eye-contact friends with the strangers around us, dancing a sort of wild dance to the beat that surged through the people. For that one song, I swear we all understood each other.