I got home really late Thursday night from Russia, it was already practically Friday. At the stroke of midnight Igor produced a lovely bouquet of roses for me. So sweet! At the office my colleagues also surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, bright violet, but I don’t know what they are called. Really pretty.

The tradition here is that the birthday girl or boy prepares the party for colleagues and friends. Igor helped me out, ever the wonderful husband that he is, and brought a cake and 2 bottles of champagne to the office for me. We enjoyed relaxing and laughing for a bit, a nice break at the end of the week and worth doing no matter what the occasion! Several people had just returned from vacations and other trips, so there were plenty of hilarious travel stories to go around.

After work, Igor and I went to look at a couple of apartments. The real estate market has dropped so much that even apartments in Pechersk, where we desperately want to live again, have come into a more-or-less reasonable range. The first place had plenty of pluses, a few minuses, but the owners were pretty determined to stick to the inflated price they had in mind. It never fails to amaze me how many property owners here prefer to receive nothing instead of accepting a lower offer – as I understood it, the place had been empty for several months with no one willing to pay the price they wanted, but I guess they don’t need the money.

The second place we saw was a second visit for Igor. He had told me the day he first saw it “I found our apartment.” It just resonated with him, he felt at home there right away. I can’t say I had the same immediate feeling, but I definitely understood why he liked it. And he’s been so unhappy in the place that I picked last year, I want to make sure this time that we choose an apartment that he feels good about. Three big rooms, a nice size kitchen with gas stove, water heater, tall ceilings, brick building, in a courtyard so low street noise, enclosed balcony, well-insulated windows, second floor, in Pechersk, and a short walk from the metro – basically all we were hoping for! The previous tenants had kids who clearly put some wear on the place, though – spots from markers and stickers on the walls, furniture is “well used”, I would say. But that’s stuff we can fix or work around and generally deal with.

After a little bargaining, we closed the deal and will move in next week! The best part is that it is $450/month LESS than we are paying now, and our quality of life will be so much improved.

The great birthday wrapped up with a quiet dinner on the balcony with my wonderful husband, a delicious bottle of Georgian wine we bought in Tbilisi, and fireworks in three parts of the city that we could see. What else could you ask for?

Most of the country celebrated Victory Day. Igor and I celebrated two years of life together in Kyiv. Although the wedding anniversary is in December, we made our commitments to each other when he moved to Kyiv in May.

Two weeks until our great Wild West adventure. Oh man, do we ever need a vacation! The plans are coming together really nicely. We bought some guide books in Russian last week, as well as Bill Bryson book which is titled in Russian “Uncle Sam’s Country”. I thought he must have published a new book and I was a bit jealous that Igor would get to read it first (a whole book in Russian is still more than I am up to). Turns out it’s Notes from a Big Country, just titled differently in Russian. I’m excited for Igor to read it, I hope the humor translates well. He was chuckling a bit last night, so something got through OK.

We weren’t very happy with the guide books, though. They are mostly hotel and restaurant listings, with just a page or two of history, facts, etc. Anyone know where we can get good guide books in Russian or Ukrainian? I tried to search on line, found a couple bookstores in Russia, but we need something in Kyiv.

Igor and I are having some folks over for a Christmas dinner on Friday, and we started cooking last night. I’m excited to have our first party in the new apartment! It will be a bit tight, even in this big place, as the landlords still haven’t removed some of the ugly old furniture we told them we didn’t want. We’ll have to pile a bunch of it up in one of the rooms and close the door!

I think it snowed a bit overnight – it’s very white (and cold-looking) outside. But yeah, a white Christmas! I think I’ll watch my all-time favorite movie tonight, It’s a Wonderful Life. What a great flick.

Igor gave me a stunning blue topaz ring for our anniversary/Christmas/New Year’s. He says my set is complete now – earrings, necklace, bracelet, and now ring. I told him I still could get a nosering, an anklet… or maybe start on a new set with a different stone?

Happy Holidays!

We were thinking of going to the Carpathians for a few days sometime during the upcoming holiday season, but it occurred to us both last night that we really want to go someplace warm. If we can a great deal, we might take off for a bit to sunnier shores. If not, we’ve got a room booked in a spa-hotel outside Kyiv for a little luxury.

We’ve spent much of the past week reminiscing – which guests arrived on which days, the evening it all caught up with me and I had a breakdown , the 21st when we all went to Korosten, the fabulous dinner at Igor’s parents’ house. The Big Day, the best wedding I could have hoped for.

We’ve also been reflecting on other events of the past year. We’ve both changed jobs. Lots of trips together: Egypt, U.S., Crimea (twice), Moldova, Carpathians (twice), plus countless trips to Korosten. We moved to a new apartment. We had great car trips, and then sold our car (I forgot to write about that – we sold it a couple weeks ago). We settled into a routine together, and mixed it up a bit. We discovered new things about each other, enjoyed the familiar, and grew together. The buds of our life as a family are slowly blooming more and more, our roots growing stronger.

It’s freakin’ cold in Kyiv. I realized yesterday as I froze to and from work that it’s time to dig out the down coat. Yikes.

We found a sauna a 5-minute walk from us. We’ve gone two weekends in a row. Igor is much more of a hot, dry sauna fan than I am, but I enjoy going with him and love seeing him have such a good time there. He can be so predictable, too. Without fail, he complains for the first 90 minutes about how it isn’t hot enough, somethings not right, etc etc, and inevitably he turns the proper shade of red that he wants to be in the last 10 minutes and he gets a big grin and says he’s happy. He’s so funny sometimes.

The cat is finally settled in to the new apartment. She sleeps with us most of the night again. The one annoying thing is she doesn’t like to open the bathroom door to get to her box, even though we propped it open a bit for her. She prefers to sit outside the door until someone comes along and holds it open for her. She is so freakin’ spoiled. This also makes me worry about how we can leave her alone overnight, as we do on occasion. Gotta figure this one out.

The realities of my new job are starting to sink in a bit more. It’s great, I love it, but the travel will be quite an adjustment for us. Igor wasn’t too happy to hear my travel schedule for the coming year, especially some of the longer trips. But we will adapt. And I reminded to be more attentive during our time together, and not to bring work home with me.

I finally assembled all the pieces together and today I will have a toasted bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. Well, the Ukrainian version of cream cheese, which is pretty darn good too. Dad gave us a toaster as a housewarming present, and also a microwave as an early Christmas present. I haven’t used a microwave oven in over four years, and Igor has never used one, so we’re (re-)discovering it together. This micro is really cool – it also has a grill function and a steamer. Igor grilled pork over the weekend, which turned out really good. Last night we made baked potatoes – so quick and easy! I’ve got some cauliflower waiting to be steamed tonight. Yeah!

We’ll be in Korosten for the weekend, celebrating Friday night with friends, Saturday with family. Sunday Igor is taking Michael to the forest for mushroom hunting. I, happily, can finally be excused from this activity. I just don’t get any thrill out of it, but Igor, his parents, and millions of Ukrainians anxiously await mushroom season and gleefully spend hours skulking through the forests in search of mushrooms. Me? I think it’s hot, uncomfortable, boring, and an endless battle against mosquitoes. Of course I’m more than happy to help with the eating of the delicious mushrooms! That’s more my kind of sport.

I didn’t manage to get his birthday present here in time to give him today (a digital camera ordered from the US), so today he got a new camera bag with a lovely picture of his soon-to-be camera. When I left for work this morning, he was already scouring websites to learn all about his new toy. It should be here in a couple of weeks, when a friend comes back to Kyiv. Nothing like a bit of anticipation!

So, my darling – З днем народження!

I hardly know where to start. Our departure from Kyiv eleven days ago seems like ages ago. All the driving took WAY longer than we’d anticipated. The roads are poor and inadequate, and the traffic was heavy. Much of the nearly 2800 kilometers (1740 miles) was traversed at a speed of no more than 60-80 kph (~ 35-50 mph). It was quite maddening at many times, especially since much of Ukraine looks like Kansas – flat fields with occasional clusters of trees. After the first hour, it’s rather bland and monotonous scenery. The one interesting site on the long drive to Crimea was the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, which you pass surprisingly close to. If Dad ever posts his photos to Flickr, I’ll link from here. Unfortunately, our camera is useless since we seem to have left the battery charger cord in the US (or lost it somewhere in transit). Thus, no photos from us on this trip.

I had hoped to drive to Mykolaiv Friday night, a little under 400 km from Kyiv. Instead, we made it to Pervomaisk, about 250 kilometers, in about four hours, where we met up with some Korosten friends coming from a trip in western Ukraine. We found a strange little hotel for the night, with big plans to start early Saturday morning on the remaining 500 km. We figured we would have lunch in Bakhchisarai – hah! After a late start (which followed a late evening with the aforementioned Korosten friends, a bottle of vodka and several bottles of beer), coupled with the slow, tedious and HOT drive over bumpy, busy roads, we made it in time for a very late dinner. We were all exhausted and filthy from the dusty drive – did I mention the car doesn’t have air conditioning? Our options were to melt if we closed the windows, or sneeze endlessly from the dust if we left them open.

The first order of business on Sunday was to get to the beach. We spent the entire day at Uglovoye, the beach were Igor and I have vacationed the past couple of years. It was different to be there with a group of people – Dad, Sasha, Lesya and their two kids. Fun, but not quite as relaxing as it is when we vacation alone. We enjoyed the sun, sea and fresh fruit throughout the day, and dragged ourselves back to the hotel in Bakhchisarai for dinner. Everybody was beat.

Monday we went to the mountain lake we had visited in May. This had been the big plan of this trip – to revisit the lake to spend time hiking, swimming and even camping there. Igor, Dad and I got there before Sasha and Co., and we were horribly disappointed. First, the water level had dropped so low the lake was maybe not even half the size it had been in May. But even worse was that the whole area was full of campers, and it was completely filthy. We found a more-or-less unoccupied spot on the far side of the lake and got out of the car only to be overwhelmed by the smell – that must have been the designated toilet area. It was disgusting. We were so disappointed, and disgusted. We left after just a few minutes, met up with Sasha and family and decided to try to find another lake area he’d heard about. After an hour or so of fruitless searching, I’d lost all patience and turned the car around to head back to town. Dad, Igor and I were all irritable (to put it mildly), tired and hungry. We went to the new hotel we’d moved to in the morning, and sat in our corners quietly ignoring each for awhile.

This hotel was actually a private house a few hundred meters from the famous Khan’s Palace. I had first seen it last year, before it had opened for business, when I met up with a Peace Corps volunteer who knew the owners. She had shown me the place, but I didn’t have any contact info to make a reservation. So we stayed the first two nights in the dumpy Soviet hotel, until I finally found the place and lo and behold they had some rooms available! It’s built on the side of a hill (like most of the town of Bakhchisarai), and the first floor is still under construction. We stayed on the second floor, where there are five rooms of varying size, each with own toilet and shower, a small communal kitchen, and a small communal room where we often found the owner and her adorable pug Bur-bon. She was kind enough to let us check email on her laptop, and one evening Igor and I sat on the veranda with her, drinking Crimean balsam, eating fresh-picked grapes, enjoying the cool evening air and beautiful bright night sky, chatting late into the night. They don’t have a website, and so far are operating by word-of-mouth. We liked the place a lot, and it inspired me to start a page of places that are worth knowing about – so here are my travel recommendations. I’ll continue to add to the site, so keep checking back.

Tuesday we wanted to see Marble Cave, a site deceptively close on the map that proved a lot harder to get to than we’d expected. We tried several roads that looked like shortcuts on our map, only to be repeatedly told by locals that it wasn’t possible to get where we were going by the roads we were trying. About 4 hours after starting out for what we thought we would be a one hour drive, max, we finally reached the Marble Cave – to find a mass of people and an hour and a half wait to get in. Tired of the car, we decided to walk over to another cave, supposedly a short 800 meters away. About an hour later, after struggling through forest, down one hillside and up another along a rocky path, we finally found the other freaking cave. It may be 800 meters as the crow flies, but it was definitely longer as the person walks! We were hot, tired, and ready to go home. But after all that effort, how could we leave without seeing a cave? We paid for the short tour, which turned out to go barely beyond the first cavern. The longer tour was over 90 minutes long, though, and we just weren’t up for it. The cool cavern air felt great (a steady +7 Celsius year-round). We hiked back to the car, and started the slow drive back to Bakhchisarai. One more attempt at the supposed short-cut also didn’t pan out, but the drive back was a bit quicker. We later bought a map of just Crimea, with better scale, and realized that indeed none of the roads that appeared to connect the two highways actually did so- the scale was just too poor on our first map.

Dad had decided to head back to Kyiv Tuesday night, so we put him on the train in the evening and went out for a fabulous dinner at a family-owned Tatar restaurant. Igor finally got a dose of shashliki to his liking (he is extremely picking about his shashliki, and although he orders it frequently, he almost never likes they way other people prepare it). We went back to the hotel, and spent the aforementioned night on the veranda with the owner. I managed to catch a cold somewhere along the way, so I went to bed early while Igor and the owner stayed up late (I wish I could remember her name! She was fabulous).

Wednesday we couldn’t decide what to do – beach, touring, start the drive to Moldova, nothing? We let the coin decide in the end, and it chose Moldova. So we packed up the car and started another leg of the trip. You’d think by now we would have figured out that everything took twice as long as we’d expected, but no, we were still young and naive. We left Bakhchisarai about noon, once again managing to miss the better early morning hours for driving across the hot, dusty steppe. It took us almost nine hours to drive nearly 300 kilometers (190 miles), and we finally stopped a bit north of Odesa at the town of Koblevo, famous for its wine. We didn’t expect much, as it’s a small town, but were pleasantly surprised to find a very nice hotel in what looked more or less like a trucker stop. The hotel was overpriced, which may have explained the trucks lining the highway – unlikely they were actually staying at the hotel, but instead sleeping in their cabs. We checked in and set out to find something to eat. Since we were in Koblevo, famous for its wine, we first sought out some of the local specialty – and we weren’t disappointed. One bottle of delicious house white wine under arm, we headed to the market across the street, where we found amazing smoked salmon – absolutely perfect, tender and not too salty. We headed back to the hotel, and savored our little feast.

Thursday was the only day when we actually managed to get an early start – we were on the road by 8:30, not even stopping for my usually caffeine dose! Once again, we had naive expectations for the day’s drive, anticipating we would be on the Moldovan border by lunchtime. We had opted to try crossing at a small border point in southern Moldova, near the town of Besarabca, instead of the usual northern crossing point. We thought we’d save time and mileage, since Besarabca is much closer to Tvarditsa. Well, what we failed to notice at first is that the road we expected to travel actually crosses through Moldova at one point, which would mean two more border crossings and god-knows-how much time getting through them. Fortunately we noticed before we actually got on that road, and we veered south of Odesa, adding about 200 kilometers to the trip to travel around the Dniester Liman. But man, was it worth it!

First, the drive around the Dniester Liman was quite interesting. At one point, you drive along a narrow land bridge – the Black Sea on one side, the Dniester Liman on the other (which is so big it looks like a sea too). I had no idea this was a popular vacation spot, and was really surprised by the mass of vacationers and “House for Rent” signs trying to attract said vacationers. Lots and lots of Russian license plates.

The second and much more awesome site was the fortress in the town of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. Ah-maz-ing. I can’t believe we almost didn’t stop. We were hot, tired, dusty (which I realize now was the theme of our entire trip), and when we stopped in town to get gasoline, Igor casually mentioned that there was a fortress there. “Is it worth seeing,” I asked. “Yeah, probably,” he said. He’d been there when he was about 12 or 13 and remember being impressed. So we followed the signs and found the fortress, and were utterly stunned. It was fantastic. In remarkably good condition, although clearly neglected and in need of renovation. Entrance was a mere 5 hrivna. We wandered around for an hour or so, climbed in one of the towers, walked along one of the stone walls. We recalled Fort Niagara and thought how amazing it would be if this fortress had the kind of attention, maintenance and tours that were available at Fort Niagara – also an isolated location but really interesting place. I had wanted to visited the fortress at Kamenets-Podolsky on this trip, seeing as how it’s one of the “Seven Wonders of Ukraine” and all, but now I can’t believe that Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi isn’t on the list. Granted, it’s a pain in the ass to get there, not especially far from Odesa but the roads just plain suck. And the folks around here don’t seem to be much into site seeing when they are on their summer seaside vacations – it’s all about sunning and swimming. But I highly, highly recommend visiting the site. And leave them a nice donation – they need to get the place cleaned up, not to mention the archaeological and historical research that needs to be done! There were a couple of active digs going on, which we were glad to see. One area had been excavated quite well already, revealing the outlines of what was probably the original Greek settlement in the area. At another excavation area a mountain of dirt had been piled up, presumably for the archaeologists to sort through at a later time. Igor scratched around in it for a few minutes, and stood up with a handful of items, which he announced as a couple pieces of ancient pottery (from different periods that he named but I don’t remember), a piece of modern pottery, and a fragment of human clavicle bone. I was impressed. They will join the piece of ancient Greek amphora he picked out of the ground at Khersonesos for me a couple years ago.

That area is also apparently well-known for its wine, and just outside the fortress Igor found a guy selling local wine. He asked me if we had an empty bottle in the car (since the wine was being sold by the glass from small barrels), and I started walking towards the car to bring back an empty water bottle. A minute later I heard Igor calling after me, and I turned to see him drinking out of a Fanta bottle. I was a bit perturbed, thinking he’d bought a bottle of Fanta and was gulping it down to empty it so he could refill it with the wine rather than waiting the 90 seconds for me to come back with the empty water bottle. It was a strange color of Fanta, but there have been some new flavors on the market recently. I took the bottle from him, thinking to help him finish it up so he could refill it with wine, and took a big gulp. “Eechh!”, I chocked it down. “What, you don’t like it?” Igor asked. I looked at the label, wondering what kind of crap someone had thought up this time. “What the hell kind of Fanta is that?” I asked. Igor started laughing – “It’s not Fanta, it’s wine!” Turns out the vendor had an empty bottle, rinsed it out and filled it up with a half-liter of wine to go. For wine, not bad at all, but for Fanta, it was really gross.

We hit the road again, and after Igor downed his “Fanta”, he announced that he realized now what had been missing throughout the trip – not enough wine! He was good and happy for the next couple of hours, until we finally got to the Moldovan border.

The border crossing was indeed small, and although designated for “international” traffic, I highly suspect they’ve never had anyone other than Moldovans and Ukrainians crossing there. It was slow, but we eventually got through with no troubles. We amusingly watched the horses and wagons being allowed to go to the front of the line – I didn’t begrudge them as it was unbearably hot and I felt really sorry the poor animals in that heat. The Ukrainian side of things went very smoothly, the Moldovan side left something to be desired. I chalked it up to two things: (1) it’s almost always easier to leave a country than to get in, and (2) it was Moldova. They still have a long way to go.

Once through, we were left to our devices to figure out how to get to Tvarditsa. Igor was freaking out that we didn’t have a map of Moldova, but I kept telling him a map wouldn’t help since there aren’t any road signs. We traveled the Moldovan way, stopping frequently to ask people if we were going the right way. We had a good laugh when we finally did see a road sign – it said “Drivers! Pay attention to the road signs!” I don’t know if that was someone’s idea of a joke, or if it was a leftover from once upon a time when there actually were signs in Moldova. Either way, it was amusing.

Anya had warned me that the road from Besarabca to Tvarditsa was even worse than it had been when I lived in Moldova, so I opted to take a longer route on better roads. I had told Igor he was unlikely to ever complain about Ukrainian roads again after he saw the roads in Moldova, and by the time we got back to Ukraine a few days later, he fully agreed. I’m sorry to say that most of them fully met up to my low expectations. But aside from the route having slightly better road conditions, I was happy to approach Tvarditsa from Ceadir-Lunga because I love the road lined with fruit-trees, and my favorite “Welcome to Tvarditsa” sign. As we drove along this scenic road, I started to reminisce aloud to Igor – the time Petya and I walked from Ceadir-Lunga to Tvarditsa, the spot where I took the photo that hangs on our fridge of the fruit trees covered in ice,

and other happy memories. As we pulled into the village, I pointed out the Culture Palace, the library, the school, the church, the mayor’s office – with its bright new paint job! As we drove up the street I suddenly worried that I wouldn’t remember which house was Anya and Gresha’s – but that was silly of me to worry. Of course I remembered. We pulled up in front, walked through the gate, and Babushka was there to greet us – big smile on a tiny little lady! Wow, was I glad to see her.

It just felt so wonderful to be there again, to be in that familiar, friendly place in what still seems like the middle of nowhere. I see it a bit differently now, I realize how close it is to Ukraine, the power lines that reach across the invisible border somehow have more meaning to me now that I think of Ukraine as my home. There is another Peace Corps volunteer living there now, in fact she’s almost done with her two years of service. I was excited to meet her, but also secretly happy to hear that although they love her too, Anya and Gresha still think of me as their “favorite daughter”.

It was fun to be there with Igor – I finally brought them a guest who can discuss and debate with Gresha and Sasha easily, who understands their humor and can add new jokes, who can appreciate the cooking and fawn over the wine- man, do they ever have awesome wine! Igor had tried it before when they brought several bottles to our wedding, but after a day of travel, even in winter, it’s just not the same as fresh out of the barrel. After a day, Igor was declining wine that had been in the fridge for a bit, insisting only on freshly-poured wine from the barrel.

It was fun to hear from Igor on the way back to Kyiv about the “other” life in Tvarditsa – the men’s realm. Gresha is a wonderful man, and was always kind and sweet to me, but as a female, I never had complete access to his world. Igor is an observant person by nature (and being a psychologist doesn’t hurt, either), and he picked up on several things that were quite interesting. For one, he recognized the age hierarchy prevalent in this Bulgarian corner of Moldova. Gresha always pores a glass of wine for the oldest man in the group first, followed by the next younger, then the next younger, etc. When it was just the two of them, Gresha would pore for himself first, then Igor. If another man joined them, older than Igor but still younger than Gresha, Igor’s glass was filled third instead of second. Subtle, and really fascinating for Igor. The two of them got along famously – both philosophers in their souls – they spent hours talking about everything.

More to come in the next post. I’ve been working on this off and on all day, and it’s now after 10 pm and I’m getting sleepy.

More food fantasies were indulged.
Igor: steak, yam (first one in his life), more Guinness beer, bacon.
Ann: Ceasar salads (2), pomegranate martini, tiny little burrito-like things that were fried (brilliant!), salt water taffy (bought it, haven’t eaten it yet), Morningstar soy-sausage breakfast patties, English muffins (about 8), more chips and salsa.

After looking at me in my cute new Eddie Bauer clothes for 3 days, Igor admitted he’s ready to go back to the warehouse store and actually look for himself now. I’ve converted him!