News from Kiev

This has been a challenging and busy few weeks. My landlord has always been resistant to buying me a decent faucet for the shower.  I finally decided that I would buy one myself.  Roma eagerly replaced it but in the process we saw that the hot water pipe was rusted through. Roma bought the parts for me and we waited for the repairman to come. He did come and told us what we actually needed to buy.  Then I realized how much it would cost and decided at that point I needed to go through my landlords.  It was their water pipe and responsibility. They came the next day. (All this time we were without hot water and shower.) The repairman was emphatic about the quality of the pipe and my landlord looked and said that he couldn’t find it.  So yet another day went by. The landlord gave the repairman the money to buy the pipe and supplies but another day went by without repairs.  Then I heard that the repairman and my landlord were arguing over the cost of the pipes.  The repairman said that he needed 60 more greven to finish buying the supplies and my landlord said that was too much. (Actually for the quality of pipes it was normal.) So another day went by.  Finally the next day the landlord bought his cheap pipes and came and fixed it himself.  The way that he fixed it, it is difficult to put the tiles back up so I just have plastic taped over the exposed areas.  So far, so good.

Also during this escapade, I was trying to connect to the university to show an English film in the English classes.  We did finally connect and now we have an open door to continue with them.

Also during this time my cell phone recharger died.  I went and bought another one and 3 days later that one died.  I need a new cell phone so I decided that it was ridiculous to keep patching up the old one so I am waiting for the opportunity to get another one.  I was a little resistant to start buying a cell phone in the first place, feeling like I didn’t need it.  But Roma had one and I decided to get one to keep in touch with him.  Now I am thinking how inconvenient it is to be without a cell phone.

Also in all this time, an opportunity came for me to have someone to leave the country with to get our visa registration validated so we made a quick trip to
Hungary.

Also in the last few weeks I started a bible study with a lady from church. It is going well.  We meet in a corner booth in McDonald’s because it is a more central location for both of us.  Actually it is working out fine.  I come early and buy lunch and work my way around to the most private tables. So far it has worked out.

A friend and I just got back from
Hungary.  In Ukraine, foreigners have to register their visa every year, but in order to do it legally, the landlord has to write a letter stating that you live at your address.  Since most of the landlords secretly rent their apartments to avoid paying taxes, there is no letter.  The only other option is to pay someone a large amount of money to say that you live with them or leave the country every 6 months and re-enter.  I have opted to leave the country every 6 months and get validated legally.  It is about the same money and I would rather not pay someone a lot of money to lie.

So we decided to go to Hungary because it is rather easy to get there and if we traveled as Ukrainians travel, it was rather inexpensive.  To take a train direct costs about $175-$200.  Ukrainians take the train to the last town in Ukraine by the Hungarian border, then take a train across the border to the next Hungarian town and then take a fast train to Budapest.  That costs about $80-$90.  So off we went…Ukrainian style.  The only possible problem was that we didn’t have the train schedule so we didn’t really know how long it would take us to get there.

But God was so good to us.  Our first lag was uneventful.  We had two interesting roommates.  It turned out that the train was full of steel workers returning to their village for their days off from work.  I think the 2 Americans were quite intriguing to them because they walked by our cabin all evening.  One of our roommates was a steel worker and another was a preschool teacher. 

I decided that it would be better to take a taxi across the border instead of waiting for 2 hours for a train.  So when I asked the taxi how much it would cost, he just said $2.  I thought that was strange.  I expected a lot more.  So off we went.  As we traveled, I thought about how cheap his price was, trying to figure out if he was going to charge us more when we got there or what.  Suddenly we were at the border and he stopped.  He flagged down a car and told us to change cars.  He only charged me to go to the border.  I thought we were going to CROSS the border.  Very puzzled we got into the other car.  It was a black car with blackened windows which is usually used by the mafia so I was apprehensive.  But we got in and it turned out that the man was a fireman.  Since his salary is so minimal, he travels across the border every day into Hungary to buy meat and supplies and returns to Ukraine to sell them.  So he was on his way to Hungary and was willing to drive us across the border. 

But we stopped behind a long, long, long, long line of cars.  I realized that we had made a huge mistake to drive across the border.  He said that it probably would be about 3-4 hour wait.  So we started thinking about getting out and flagging a car down going back into Ukraine and take a train instead.  We asked if we would be able to flag a car down going back and then he told us that if we were willing to pay a bribe we could drive through faster.  I normally don’t pay any bribes but at that moment, it seemed worth it.  So we paid 2 people $5 and got to the train station in an hour and 45 minutes. We were able to get a train to Budapest without any problem. 

The minute you get into Hungary you can see how it is more progressive than Ukraine.  It is more groomed and cleaner.  Also they have new products that Ukraine doesn’t have yet.  It was fun being in Hungary.  We both had 2 objectives…to go shopping in the grocery stores looking for items that we don’t have in Ukraine and to hit the American fast food places that we don’t have in Ukraine, i.e. Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mc Donald’s breakfast menu.  We even ate at a great Hungarian restaurant.

Our plan was to arrive in Budapest in the late afternoon, spend the night and return to Kiev the next night.  Nice plans.  Everything was going great. We found a fairly nice place to stay that was near the train station.  All our fast food restaurants were right there.  Ukraine doesn’t have pepperoni pizza so it was such a treat to get one there.  The hostel had internet for free so I could get my emails. 

Then the next day things were going great.  We did everything that we wanted to do.  Had our fried chicken and ran off to catch the train.  As we boarded the train, I saw that people were in our seats.  I showed them our tickets and they informed us that our train left 2 hours earlier…it was in military time and for some reason in my mind I thought that our train left at 7:00, but instead it left at 17:00 (5:00).  So we went to change the tickets hoping to catch another train that night. 

I went to the information window and they said that part of our tickets was still good but there were no more trains that night.  We could leave at 5:50am.  So I went to the ticket counter thinking that we would receive money back.  (Keep in mind that I only know Russian and English and Hungarians refuse to speak Russian and some know English.  Which makes some things complicated.)  The lady at the counter told me something and gave me back the tickets so I returned to the information counter.  The lady was kind but couldn’t figure out why I was back.  She gave us back the tickets and said something so I thought we had to go back to the ticket counter.  We stood in the line again and the ticket lady got frustrated not understanding what we wanted.  So again I went back to the information counter.  By that time I just smiled at her, she laughed and covered her eyes.  Again I thought she sent me back to the ticket counter so we stood in line again.  Then a girl tried to translate for us and gave up because she didn’t understand what we wanted to do.  So again we returned to the information counter and again the lady laughed and covered her face.  Fortunately a guy translated for us and finally I understood that in Hungary the tickets are sold by how many miles not by destination.  Our tickets were still good for travel the next morning without changing anything or paying more. 

Most people were very kind to us in Hungary.  After our major confusion about the tickets and no one speaking the same language, the first lady that I went to at the ticket counter went off duty before we went back the second and third times.  She must have heard about all our confusion and she actually tracked us down to make sure that we understood about our tickets.  That was very nice of her.  Also that evening as we were racing to find the platform where the train was that we THOUGHT that we were taking, we asked an old man for help because we couldn’t find it and time was running out.  The old man told us and we race off in that direction.  A few minutes later the old man came puffing up behind me to tell me that he told me wrong.  It was clear on the other side of the station.  So I thanked him and took off again.  Then it dawned on me that that man didn’t have to run after us to correct his mistake.  How kind of him to make the extra effort.  Also the man from whom we rented our room saw us stopping at the money exchange in the train station.  Of course it is quite a rip off there but by the time we had finished the ticket comedy show while carrying our heavy backpacks, we just wanted to get some money and return to the hostel and rent a room for another night and go to sleep.  So it didn’t really matter to me to get less money in exchanging the dollars so that I didn’t have to lug my backpack around looking for better exchange rates.  So the man we rented a room from saw us and gave me a hard time for not finding a better place.  Of course I told him I really didn’t care at that point.  I was too tired.  So he took my back pack and escorted us to the better money exchange place and then back to the hostel.  How kind.

Returning we still had no idea what the train schedules would be.  So we left Budapest at 5:50 am.  At the Hungarian border town, we had to wait 3 hours or so.  But it was nice.  There was a small restaurant so we were able to get something to drink and it was a comfortable wait.  Then we arrived in the Ukrainian border town at 5:00pm only to find out that we couldn’t get a train to Kiev until 2:00AM! A 9 hour wait in a dark, semi-clean train station with no seats or restaurant.  When I looked dismayed, she told me about another train we could take to another town and then from there to Kiev.  We only had 10 minutes to buy the tickets and find the train and get on.  But to us it was worth the try.  But then I didn’t have all the Ukrainian money. In the midst of trying to quickly buy the train tickets and finding that I was short of money, there was an elderly lady who was constantly badgering me, trying to get me to sell her my old train ticket even when I continually refused and asked her to leave us alone.  Even though she was very irritating, she did help by calling a man over to trade money with us. So we were able to buy the tickets and run and catch the train.  We would only have a 3-4 hour layover in Liviv and we heard that there were seats and places to eat at that time of night there.  But God was good.  As we were checking the platform board when we arrived, we noticed that in 10 minutes a train was leaving for Kiev so we rushed to the ticket counter and changed our tickets and ran for the train and made it.  How great!  We had no layover.

God was good.  Even with all the language and travel challenges, we had a good time and it was a nice change. But I must say that it was nice to come “home” to a language that we can mostly understand and customs that we have come to understand.

Well what can I say?  The university near me wants Pete and me to show a film for their English class next week which thrills me.  But my cell phone died today and it has Pete’s cell phone number.  I tried to email him but I can’t get connected to the internet line.  Hopefully he is available for next Tuesday morning. 

Also today I am stuck at home waiting for my landlords to bring me water pipes for the bathroom since our hot water pipe has a hole in it.  We have been without hot water since Sunday morning.  It looks like it will be too late for the repairs to get started today so that means tomorrow I will also cancel my plans (the orphanage) to be home for the repairs.  Isn’t that life?