MoldovAnn

Ah, how I love the smell of spring rain! I noticed the new hues of green this past Saturday – grass starting to perk up, tulips beginning to sprout, buds appearing on trees. In another week or two I think Kyiv will burst into color! Oh how I love it.

We got the Ukrainian bug of “get the hell out of the city” on Saturday. It was an absolutely beautiful day and just taking a walk wasn’t satisfying enough. We hopped in the car for the first of what I hope will be many weekend car adventures! Igor wanted to go to the forest, and I wanted to go somewhere we’ve never been, so instead of heading in the northwesterly directly we usually travel when going to Korosten (which also happens to be the best direction for lush forests), we went sort of southeast. Just picked a road and followed it for a while, out past the airport and the town of Boryspil.

With no forests in sight, we decided to consult the map. Igor picked the water preserve area along the Dnipro river as our destination. Once you get off the highways, Ukrainian roads often require a strong sense of intuition if you actually want to get somewhere. There are very few road signs or markers. At a crossroads or when a road splits, sometimes an arrow will point you in the direction the “main road” follows, but more often than not, you just have to know. Fortunately, it’s usually easy to figure out relatively quickly if you’ve picked the wrong direction in a village, as I did. After following what looked to me as the continuation of the main road, I realized my mistake when the road rather suddenly disappeared into a field.

But those unexpected detours can lead to some of the most fascinating discoveries! In this little rather typical-looking village about 50 kilometers out of Kyiv, with the usually bumpy streets and run down houses, we passed a fenced-in lot full of bright, shiny modern farm equipment. Igor asked me to slow down so he could get a good look – definitely not “kolkhoz” (collective farm), he remarked. That kind of equipment is generally accessible only for a privately owned company, not by the cash-strapped cooperatives that have replaced many of the Soviet-era collective farms.

A minute or two after we passed the equipment lot was when I almost drove into the field at the end of the road – I was completely distracted by the enormous castle on the very last plot of the street. The mansions that surround Kyiv, and that are popping up like mushrooms throughout Ukraine, are often quite impressive monstrosities – the bigger, the better seems to be the mentality. But this thing was especially impressive – most of all because it wasn’t one of many citadels in a cottage community, but because it was the only one in the whole village. The local lord in his castle, surrounded by his крестьянство? Is Ukraine regressing to its pre-Soviet serfdom?

We followed our tracks back to where the road had divided, I double checked that there was no arrow pointing the route of the main road, and I asked Igor how the heck you are supposed to know which way to go. He looked around briefly. “See the bus stop at the intersection? It’s on the side that splits to the right, so that means the main road goes that direction, not to the left like we went.” Of course!

After another 20 or 30 minutes of driving through the quiet and pleasant countryside, we came upon a concrete wall, metal gate and guardhouse. We had happened upon a “polygon“, or military firing range. This was not indicated on our map at all, and in fact the road to the water preserve seemed to go straight through the area blocked off in front of us. To the right, the asphalt road turned into a dirt road, and to the left didn’t look a whole lot better. A young soldier (who looked about 12 years old to me, but must have been at least 17 or 18) came out of his watchroom and Igor asked how we could get to the water preserve. Much to our surprise, the soldier opened the gate and waved us through.

We drove past a a couple rundown 2-storey buildings with glass broken out of the windows. I was starting to think the place was no longer in service, but then we saw some other buildings that looked in better shape farther off to the side of the road, but we didn’t dare venture off the main road to take a closer look.

After about 500 yards, the asphalt was replaced with a road made of granite stones. It was bumpy, with some rather intense potholes. We took it slow, enjoying the scenery around us and worrying about the car, which is pretty solid but nonetheless not made for off-road adventures. A few kilometers down the road, a sign pointed to the left said “shooting field”. Then we passed a “tankodrom“, or tank training area. “Aha, now I understand why the road is made of granite rocks!” Igor declared. Another road branched off and we could see bunkers built into small hillsides.

We were getting a bit nervous, not really sure if we should be here or not, and not at all sure where we would end up if we continued down this road. We finally reached some reed-lined streams, which Igor thought was the start of the water preserve area. There were signs every couple hundred meters stating it was forbidden to fish. “That’s weird, those signs are in Russian, not Ukrainian,” I said. “Do you have any idea how old those signs are?” Igor replied. Still up from the Soviet era.

We saw a car parked along the waterside, and then another passed us going in the direction we just came from, so we figured it must be OK to be in the area, although we still were not confident that there was a way out ahead of us. After 7 kilometers, we pulled over and spent a couple minutes at the water’s edge. It was so quiet and peaceful – the only sounds were birds singing, frogs croaking, and the water gently flowing through the reeds. So beautiful.

We drove back over the 7 kilometers of bumpy rocky road, with one frighteningly hard bounce that I seriously hope didn’t cause any damage to the car. Then back through the countryside, where a few tractors were out even on a Saturday evening plowing for the spring planting. In the villages, old women were sitting in front of their houses gossiping, teenage boys and girls strolling in groups, little boys and girls riding bicycles and playing tag. Chickens and geese waddled lazily along the side of the road, heading home for dinner.

It was a short trip, but a rejuvenating one. Quiet time with my wonderful husband, fresh air, the smells and sounds of spring. Oh how I love it!