Well, now that the summer is over and signing up for summer camps to hang out with Conor is a thing of the past, I figured I had to go for the gusto and try the haul to Hartsitsk for just the weekend. It’s an overnight 5 hour train ride and then roughly another hour of travel via bus to Conor’s city. Unfortunately, we don’t have a straight shot between my town and his city. In the grand scheme of Ukraine though, it really ain’t bad. I would leave my town at 12:30 am, and get to Markeevka at 5:30 am, take a cab across town to the bus station, and then take a marshrutka to Hartsitsk, arriving at Conor’s around 6:30/7am depending on whether the train arrived on time.
The funny thing is that technically speaking we are only 130 miles apart. But due to poor infrastructure travelling takes a lot longer than it would do in the states. I think I heard somewhere that the train speed maxes out at 40 miles per hour, so slow travel it is. Actually, we are really lucky we are only 5-6 hour apart. I’m a good 8-10 hours from John and Kim and around 15 hours from Cassie. I live relatively far East, so it is more than feasible in Ukraine that it could take me 30 some odd hours to cross a country the rough size of Texas. It really puts things into perspective. As much as travel in the states can be a hassle, our roads are in good enough condition for me to travel at 90 miles per hour if I want to take that risk. My train ride from Penn Station in NYC to Windsor, Connecticut is two and a half hours to travel roughly 120 miles. Faster if you take the Acela to Hartford. It’s faster for me to train to Kiev and fly home to NYC than it is to travel to see some of my friends in the outskirts of Western Ukraine. It’s mindboggling.
The Friday before I left, was actually chock full of activity. At some point over the summer I had showed my office mates my photos from Lugansk. We were cooking with Caroline and I was chopping up cilantro (kinza in Russian) to add to fresh made salsa. My boss saw that picture and demanded that I make that for the office. Knowing that fresh tomatoes will likely be a thing of the past soon, I figured I had that I had to jump on making the salsa soon. So last Monday, I pointed to the picture again and asked when he wanted me to make the salsa. He said, how about Friday. And then the discussion turned to something where everyone would contribute something to a feast. I heard the words shashliki (shish kebobs) and kartoshka (potatoes) so I had an idea that we were going to have a big lunch.
Turns out we were having a picnic. I’m glad I wore jeans that day. Our office is in the forest, so we didn’t have to go far for a picturesque place to picnic. We chose a place across the street by the river. There was a little shack set up expressly for the purpose of barbequing. So we took over the shack. Tony cut potatoes in half, inserted a piece of salo (raw bacon) between the two halves and wrapped the potatoes up foil. Then we just threw the potatoes in with the coals. They were delicious. The pork that we marinated for the shashlik was amazing. We had watermelon and we used bread to eat my salsa (corn chips and tortilla chips are a rarity here). And of course there was plenty of beer and vodka to go around. It was a great day bonding with my workmates. It was extremely difficult, because it turned out to be a 4 hour affair in only Russian, so I had a lot of trouble understanding most of what was going on. I’m still at a point where I understand a lot of words, but not the context. It’s exhausting.
My train trip to Hartsitsk was relatively uneventful, however, it was freezing. I was wearing jeans, socks, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pretty warm hoody. I wore the hood on my head all night. After I made my bed, I went and asked the train attendant for an O-day-ya-lo (a blanket) which I totally botched the pronunciation while holding my dictionary. Thankfully, there was a pile of blankets that I could point at, but the jig was up, I gave it away that I was a foreigner. The train attendants either love this or hate this. This guy loved it. I think the male train attendants feel protective of solo female travelers, especially if they are foreign. He woke me up about a half an hour before arrival with Pra-see-pie-yoos (wake up), and then we will arrive in Markeevka in half an hour. He said it really slow, so I understood every word. I got into the station, took a cab to the bus station, took a marshrutka to Hartsitsk, and the walked into Conor’s building, gave him a call and told him to let me in.
When I bought the tickets to Hartsitsk, I envisioned a relaxing weekend just hanging out. It turned out not to be the case. Conor’s town was apparently having a weekend chock full of festivals and being Peace Corps volunteers with part of our job description being cultural exchange, he was required to attend. So after about an hour long nap and breakfast we had to hit the road. The first festival we attended had something to do with chickens. It’s still not clear what it was we were celebrating, but there was a lot of ‘chicken specific’ artwork up and many signs that said something about chickens. That one was a bit of a mystery, but after we met up with the deputy mayor and he took us in a car to the Kazak festival that was being held in a large field.
The Kazak festival was great. People wore traditional costumes, served traditional food from a war canteen, there was a ring for traditional wrestling, sword-fighting, and horses. There were army tents set up and tables filled with defunct army gear. I got a couple of great pictures with Conor’s camera of a little girl wearing an army helmet and playing with a dead landmine. From there we headed to another festival in the park celebrating all the couples that got married in the past year. And after that, we seemingly were free. We stopped on the way home for a bowl of the Okroshka that Conor has been raving about. Then a much needed NAP. With very little sleep after a freezing train ride and a day full of activity, I was seriously pooped. Post-nap, we shared a bottle of wine then went to grab some pretty decent pizza for dinner. Overall a good day.
The next day we had more festivals to prepare for. We had to be somewhere so that Conor could take pictures, but then it turned out that we either weren’t needed or had missed something. So we took a long walk instead and found a sushi resto that Conor had been to at some point in time with the deputy mayor. It was alright, but over-priced. The beauty of sushi is that it is pretty much the same wherever you have it in the world. A salmon roll is a salmon roll, a tuna roll is a tuna roll, as long as they don’t sneak mayonnaise in, it tastes alright.
In the end, Conor had to be in the town center for a big concert that was supposed to celebrate his town. Apparently, a famous Ukrainian singer was coming to perform, and he was supposed to meet with the Deputy Mayor and meet the singer. I had packed my backpack to be ready to catch a cab to the train station. It was pretty hectic with tons of people. Not exactly cool to be weeding through tons of people carrying a backpack with your laptop in it. In the end, I decided that maybe it would be better to leave for the train station a bit earlier since I was dragging around all my stuff. So we said goodbye and I jumped in a cab. It was a good, but busy weekend.
