Traveling Ukraine Second Essay

Lviv is perhaps the most "European" city in Ukraine. Its population of about 750,000, with only one or two major public gathering places, gives Lviv a cozy or intimate feel. The spirituality I perceived also seems to permeate the place; a kind of gentleness and cleanness prevailed, almost as if the glue for the society was not in the strength of public institutions but in the private centers of faith and family. Hotels dot the Svobody--or the large independence square--and they are a bit more expensive than you might imagine, but still you can get a good hotel for under $100 a night. My friends managed to secure a place at a university-owned hotel for me for $45 a night--I had a bed, shower, a few chairs, a TV and a seemingly endless supply of desk people who would eagerly teach me a little Ukrainian (I had taken some Russian for about 3 weeks before departure).

Lviv's structures were not damaged in WWII, even though almost every Ukrainian family suffered horrendous losses, beginning in the 1930s. The Vienna-esque types of buildings, anchored by the stunningly attractive opera house, fill the downtown. A walk up to the "High Castle" filled one of my mornings. From this castle, about 300 meters above the city, you have a panoramic view of a city, with buildings from the 16th century to the present. Our most frequent watering hole was Veronika's, on Shevchenko Blvd., which not only has pastries to die for, but has a most impressive menu, also in English, of Ukranian and other dishes.

One of the striking practices of Lviv, which gives it both an intimate and a "nationalist" feel, is that each weekend during the warmer months in the evening, the older people will gather in one of the downtown squares to sing--Ukrainian folk songs. The voices mingle in multi-part harmony; I will have Ira translate some of the songs for me or, better, teach me some in Ukranian.

On To Kiev

Gil and I (his wife had to teach) took an all-day train from Lviv to Kiev on Monday, Sept. 19. It cost only about $14 and gave us an opportunity to meet one or two people as we wached the mostly non-descript countryside fly past. The rich soil, among the richest in the world, is called chernozem, a word that is now an English word. We stopped along the way, and our four-person cabin added an English-speaking man, Ukrainian by birth, who was working for an Australian company in Kyrgyzstan. Not only was he generous with his local brew--Orillia, if I am not mistaken (he brought many pints along, since he was planning to take the train another 24 hours to Moscow, before flying to Perth), but he had many observations about Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. By the way, we picked him up in Ternobyl, which reminded me that the town of Chernobyl, the site of the disastrous 1986 nuclear meltdown, was located a few hundred kilometers north of Kiev. I never made it to the Chernobyl museum in Kiev--maybe another trip!

In any case, our new friend told us quite openly one of the realities of life in Ukraine or other countries of the former Soviet Union--the tendency towards large-scale corruption. What he meant by that is that in order for any company to hope to do business in Ukraine, they had to factor large payments to public officials into the calculus as a "cost of doing business." Hence, his company had decided to locate in Kyrgyzstan, where this kind of public corruption, he said, is not as rife as in Ukraine.

In Kiev

Though he was talking of widespread (what scholars call "grand") corruption, the kind of corruption we encountered in Kiev (I don't remember facing it at all in Lviv) was on a much smaller level. For example, when we arrived in our hotel in Kiev (the Hotel Express), about 1/2 mile walk from the train station, the two young women at the desk professed not to have copies of our reservation (we believed they were playing a "game" with us and they would eventually let us get a room, if we wanted, but only after they jacked up the rate--which we had secured through an online reservation. We got a good rate of $50 a day per person, with a full breakfast included). My friend showed the copy of the reservation--they said it mattered not. I pulled out my Iphone (they were a bit awed by the technology) and showed them the copy of the reservation; they still were unmoved. They solemnly said, "You have a problem." We then played hard-ball--treating them like our errant daughters, telling them we did have a reservation, asking for the manager, saying that they had to give us the room and they knew they did--etc. Our bravado eventually worked. They caved, quickly gave us two keys and the room at the $50 per person rate, and then ignored us.

We weren't so fortunate at the restaurants. The menus were seemingly written to be confusing, indicating one price for an entree, but then listing various different weights of the meat. For example it might read: 100g/50/25...and then "180 hrv" (about $23). My friend just ordered a nice piece of beef, expecting it to be 100g and costing 180 hrv, but when the beef came it seemed a little bigger, and then the bill came and the piece of meat was about 350 hrv--almost $40. We had a similar experience in Himalaya, a classy restaurant on Khreschatyk, the cool street in Kiev. They ended up bringing us food we didn't order, mingled it on the same plate with food we did order, and then charged us for it. At another restaurant the waiter "instructed" us that he required at least a 10% tip, even though the general custom of the country is that tip is included in the meal.

What we learned through these examples is that we had to be constantly on our guard; we would clarify prices and expectations. The biggest problem, however, was when they told us that the meal could be charged and then, when we submitted our credit card, they brought the machine back saying "Card rejected." Of course, our cards were good, but they simply wanted us to pay cash--perhaps not wanting to pay the credit card fee to the company. When our card was "rejected," which it was on several occasions, we swung into action--going after them, and finally, in one occasion, locating a second credit card machine which was the one that "worked." In other words, they said they would take credit cards, then, mysteriously, our card would be denied, they would demand cash. Normally, people then pay cash. Not us. We pressed the matter and eventually we "discovered" the machine that allowed our card.

The point is, however, that this kind of treatment is endemic in Kiev. Perhaps it was because we were Americans--they figured we were easy targets, but it didn't really work that way. On more than one occasion we lectured them, though in English that they said they didn't understand, that it was activities like this which would cast considerable doubt on Ukrainian efforts to become accepted by the Western nations. We don't allow "offically-sanctioned" corruption in our restaurants, government etc. Maybe I am missing something here or am blind, but these kind of events took some of the fun away from Kiev.

The Positive in Kiev

Once you begin to explore Kiev, however, you discover a richly layered society, with significant churches going back nearly 1000 years and modern (read "Western") shops along Khreschatyk Blvd. We walked from our hotel along Taras Shevchenko Blvd, lined by stately chestnut trees, passed along by the bright red university buildings at Kiev University and then decided to explore the interior of St. Volodomyr's Church. After a while, almost all of the churches seem to have lots in common, but I will never forget the earnestness of worshippers, many of them women, on their lunch break as they donned a veil to kiss or otherwise show homage before the icons.

In a nutshell, our Kiev activities included dining in a series of "Lonely Plant"-recommended restaurants, visiting historic churches (among the the most impressive were the St. Sophia Cathedral complex and the Pechersk Lavra--the latter being a monastery+ series of caves where the siants of old holed up to evade the reach of foes as well as to struggle against the world, flesh and the devil). We also visited the old Soviet military museum on the banks of the Dniepro River which, through its photos and text, bears witness to a series of Soviet committments from the end of WWII until the 1980s. One evening we decided to stop in at the Caribbean Club, a venue that, since the 1990s, has celebrated the salsa sound in Kiev. I became aware, once again, of my practical deficiencies in the world--

Well, the stories might be interesting but I don't want it to take away from some truly wonderful things in Kiev. The next essay moves me to the Crimea.

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