Surviving...And Thriving...In Ukraine!

Last night, under the glow of my headlamp as I was walking home from the train station about twenty minutes outside of Heves proper, I cracked open a celebratory beer. And I did have reason to celebrate: I had ventured to Ukraine and lived to tell the story.

But I will not lie, there were moments where that outcome was in doubt.

Mariah -- a young woman of dazzling locks of blonde curls and just by chance a 2003 spring graduate of the University of Wisconsin -- lives and teaches just 30 km from the Ukrainian border. How spectacular it would be, we long speculated, to visit a country where one could very well put the article "THE" in front of the country's name and get away with it. That was the extent of our knowledge on the land, language and culture of this country, but we set out for the train station Saturday morning with smiles on our faces.

Behind the smiles, we were a little tired. The previous night had included, as is a recurring theme here in Hungary, free palinka. It's relatively easy to make friends here in Hungary. You ask, "Do you speak English?" And whether they do or don't, you've made a friend. Only one of them spoke English Friday night, the only girl in the group. Perhaps that was another significant factor in our new Friday night friendship: the 6:1 ratio of men to women in their party and the 1:1 ratio of Mariahs for every me in our party.

Zahony is the Hungarian half of the border crossing. After an hour's wait to catch the 15 minute train to Zahony, we had to wait another two hours for another train past Zahony, so we walked and talked and ate. And had just enough time to let ourselves get nervous: We really had no clue what in the world was going on.

Somehow finding the right train at the right track at the right time, we jumped aboard, dreams of crossing the border into the former Soviet Union aflutter in our heads. It was then that we began to be accosted.

First, it was the smiling grandmother, whether Ukrainian or Hungarian or Russian I have no idea. She smiled gleaming gold teeth and invited me into conversation with a vaguely sinister come-here gesture with her finger. She eyed my ticket and handed me a 200 forint bill (one dollar). She cooed, "billet, billet" or something that sounds something like the German word for ticket. I had no idea why she wanted my ticket, but I was getting nervous. The people seemed different here, I felt like I couldn't trust their benevolence. Beginning to panic at the fear of not understanding a damn thing, I refused to look at her. I sat in nerve-wracking silence. I think Mariah was even more nervous than I was.

We crossed the River Tisza, the international border. An armed guard, complete in camouflage, sat in a lookout post next to a guard dog. I made a joke about jumping out of the train and making a run for it. I don't think we laughed.

But Ukraine opened up in front of us. Buildings made out of bricks and mortar, not sticks, straw or stones. Mountains in the background. The train crawled on, no more than ten kilometers an hour. The gold-toothed granny still wanted my ticket.

Incident number two: a dozen well-armed border guards, military inspectors and customs officials boarded the train as we stopped. Not sure what to do, we sat. Apparently it was the right choice. Finally a woman with red hair shooting out from underneath a beret approached us. Given a choice between happy or unhappy, I would say she looked unhappy. But she was our best friend in the world, she had a pre-elementary understanding of the English language. Happy to have a "friend" in Ukraine, we handed over our passports. Then she walked away with them.

I think we tried to quell our state of mortification with a laugh. I can assure you it did not work. In desperation, I built a Hungarian sentence: "Hol van passport?" adapting from the critical sentence "Where is bathroom?" in all the necessary spots. A grunt, a groan, a gesture or a Ukrainian phrase later, we learned we need to reclaim them in customs.

Just three months ago, Ukrainian law was loosened to allow Americans easier access to the country of 40 million people. Previous to the change, Americans needed a letter of invitation and a tourist visa which cost 100 dollars. Now, the only prerequisite is enough daring, bravado or stupidity to attempt to enter the country. You're allowed to stay 90 days. We set our sights lower. I had a copy of the Ukrainian decree, printed off the State Department website, as proof in case they hadn't heard about the rule change at this little outpost. They looked at us skeptically when we stated the purpose of our visit: success was surviving Ukraine for an hour -- one night at the most -- getting back on the train and returning to Hungary. They thought about it a moment, then stamped our passports. We were free to enter the country.

We stood and gawked inside the train station. Pigeons flew through the rafters. Paint was peeling off of walls and ceilings. Stray dogs ran through the doors. Cheap plywood was nailed into place of more permanent solutions to the problems of the aging train station. Gypsy children spun coins on the ground. Every sign, timetable and notice was written in Cyrillic Ukrainian (not too different from Russian.) The grandmothers, now more than one, kept demanding to buy our ticket stub.

And two Americans stood and gawked in the middle of it all.

One man at last spoke broken English. He told us of the time change. It was now an hour later, 17:00. The last train back for Hungary left at 18:00. One woman spoke spectacular German, although she insisted that my German was wonderful, so she must not have known the difference between German of high and low quality. She told us a little bit about the country, but then dashed off.

We had no idea what to do, but an hour to do it. So we walked. It's usually a good solution.

That's when we were accosted again. This time, it was gypsy beggars, on at least three different occasions. Ukraine's GDP is a third of Hungary's, but the city of Csop (pronounced in any language like the English word chop) looked at about the same standard of living as any Hungarian city. After we walked out of the depressing train station, the city opened up into a beautiful courtyard. A beautiful new station -- reserved for domestic trains -- sat next to the dilapidated one. Several pastel baroque buildings lined the east and west sides of the courtyard and the southern end housed two blocks of sidewalk cafes and little shops. A quaint cobblestone road split the two halves. We walked through the square, then to the left. Past the downtown of two square blocks, the city seemed to be small houses for kilometers in each direction.

Half an hour passed as we walked, we were nearing decision time. Mariah put her debit card into a machine. No matter what she pressed, no money came out. I did the same, no money. Resigned by a lack of money to face defeat, we were ready to tuck our tail between our legs and retreat back to Hungary.

But alas, Mariah and I -- and our whole contingent of Americans here in Hungary -- are first and foremost adventurers in a land primed for adventure: Eastern Europe. We aren't content to write bitchy blog entries and e-mails about how hard or frustrating or lonely or difficult or nonsensical it is to live and to teach and to simply be here in a whole different culture, we would much rather find a bit of happiness.

The clock hit 6:00 pm. The last train to Hungary had left. We were willingly not aboard. We had stranded ourselves in Ukraine...the Ukraine...all in the name of adventure!