I'm back in the (former) USSR. The crossing to Ukraine was a bit surreal. Pushing my bike through the thick snow I began to feel truly out of the EU. As I entered the dimly light immigration building I was greeted by a dark Soviet-Realist mural complete with all the essential symbolism: the crushing of Fascist Germany, the solidarity of the proletariat and the glory of the Red Army. The large hall was nearly empty and I wheeled my bike up to the only open immigration kiosk. Across the counter was an absolutely beautiful girl in a military uniform. Her face was momentarily cold and serious, but as she sat up straight she saw that on my side I was wheeling a fully loaded bicycle. She cracked a very friendly smile and carried out two simultaneous interrogations.
The first was centered on the business at hand of screening me to get into Ukraine. The second was an excited attempt and discovering what the hell I was doing on the bicycle in the dead of Ukrainian winter. At the point I told her that I had biked from Amsterdam, she left the little booth for several moments. I heard some excited giggling and she returned with two other female guards. I caught a small glimpse of their legs as they passed between the kiosks and saw that along with their military uniforms, they had high heels. The three women crowded in the kiosk and as the questions continued (in English) I listened to them commenting in Russian. To my great satisfaction, the word "simpatichno" (cute) was thrown around several times. I finally started answering in Russian to let them know I understood what they were saying and they seemed incredibly surprised and delighted that I could speak it (and use it to flirt a bit). The questions didn't seem all that out of the ordinary at first.
"Birthplace....Family name... Where have you traveled in the last 90 days?" etc, etc.
Then came one that still seemed fairly normal, "Are you married?'
"No," I replied.
With evident playful excitement, my dark haired interrogator leaned forward and with a smile perhaps wider than my own asked, "Do you have a girlfriend?"
"What?! Uh... no."
One the two blondes pointed to her friends and said "They have no boyfriends!"
To my delight the questions continued like this for a while culminating in ,"Will you stay in Chop (the border town) tonight?" "No." "Will you please stay in Chop tonight?" they finished jokingly. Once questioning finished, they excitedly looked over my bags. I was forced to pull out my guitar and to "prove it was mine" they made me play and sing them two songs while one took pictures on her camera phone.
Welcome to Ukraine.
I broke down my bicycle into parts and took a long over-night train to Kiev. I shared my sleeping compartment with a kind woman who worked as police officer in Uzhgorod. We shared food and I practiced Russian. My slight cough became an inter-compartmental affair as people from the next sleeper compartment heard that there was an American with a slight cold. After nearly an hour of arguing over the best method of treatment, the other passengers a series of competing lists of medicines I should by in Kiev to treat myself. My attempts at, "it is only a small cold" fell on deaf ears as they started chattering about the best doctors in Kiev.
Having only paid for one night of accommodation in 7 weeks, I decided to rent a cheap bed for several weeks and catch up on Russian language study. Thankfully Kiev is mostly Russian-speaking (though the damned signed are in Ukrainian). It is quite surprisingly, dare I say it, beautiful here.
A bridge of love locks:
Саша + Юра = Любовь (Sasha + Yura = Love)
With the Dnieper and its forested islands in the background:
I could write a lot about the charms of Kiev, but there is something else that has been bothering me here. I'll write about it later. But here is a hint.
Babi Yar; the ravine where the murders of 100,000 people by the Nazis took place (including 33,000 Jews in a single incident):
