Ukraine (Part 2)

...Continued from previous entry. You've gotta read that or you won't appreciate how scary Ukraine is. Serious, folks, I remember asking Mariah if they would start to miss us on Sunday or Monday or Tuesday, and where they would start to look for our bodies...

By the third ATM machine, we had Ukrainian cash in our hands. Playing it safe, we selected one of the middle amounts of money -- 40 roubles, or whatever they're called here, our research hadn't extended that far. After doing some research, and my online bank account proves it, we had sadly managed to take out only $8.13 worth of money.

We walked off to find a hotel, figuring that to be a better plan than the tent in my backpack. We walked toward the nicest of the buildings in town. The sign proved it to be a hospital, until our assumption was corrected by a man who said the English word "customshouse." But when we asked "Hol van hotel," he pointed just a block away and said, "three up." "Three stories up?" "Igan, three stories up!" Smiling, we turned and took off.

We walked into an automatic door and through a bank lobby, a dash confused. Accosting number four was an armed guard who pounced on us as we stood confused. He looked Russian, spoke harshly and was packing heat...fairly intimidating. We explained that we don't speak any of the languages he speaks, or at least tried to do that in the languages that we don't speak. When we asked "Hotel?" he pointed at himself. We were a little skeptical. He drew the number 93 on a sheet of paper. We only had 40 of the mystery currency, we took another trip to the ATM. Out of earshot, we asked each other if we trusted this dude enough to give him money, entrust our lives to him, etc. Lacking better options, we went back, but only after a beer to calm our nerves.

I held my hand out. I wanted to shake his hand. I wanted to know his name. I wanted him to know our names, too, so he would feel bad when he shot us. Luckily, he smiled. I was Jeremy. She was Mariah. And he was Janos. He took us upstairs to show us the big room and the little room. The first room was great. Private bathroom, two little single beds, a refrigerator - even a balcony over looking the courtyard! The finishing touch was a small set of china in a cabinet. We couldn't believe it when the second room was even better! A television and everything. We quickly cheapskated back to the original, hardly believing our nearly-first-world luck, and went back downstairs.

He pulled me into his office, he wasn't interested in doing business in the presence of a woman. We slowly filled out police registration cards in small block letters. We worked on a desk covered with a sheet of glass. Underneath the glass gleamed illustrations of and instructions for Soviet automatic rifles, pistols and other assorted weaponry. Sweet.

Next challenge, food. We lasted less than a minute in our first restaurant attempt, before walking out in confusion. We were pretty discouraged. The menu was in Ukrainian and the waitresses all answered negatively to our inquiries into their language abilities. Nothing. And we were hungry.

In desperation, we grabbed a guidebook that had Russian phrases. If necessary, we would understand the Ukrainian menu by using the similar Russian words. The second restaurant proved to be more hospitable, though. The waitress, upon hearing our language skills, called over a friend who, while not fluent in English or German, was comfortable acting out the animal actions and noises for beef, pork and chicken. I pointed to something, anything on the chicken page. Mariah pointed to a word on the beef page. And we added, "two coca-colas, please." At least some things, like coke, are universal.

After supper, we napped, like any good traveller would. We then set out for a hike and wandered into a high school disco. We deftly dodged the bouncers with the Hungarian equivalent of "We are American teachers." Even without any liquor, the students were dancing strong. We particularly liked "Don't Phunk with my Heart," and so did the kids.

And then it was time for a midnight hot chocolate, as the weather is cooling down here in Central Europe. We applauded ourselves repeatedly. We had survived several accostings, and we had perhaps even thrived. We had ordered beers and hot chocolates, enjoyed a hot meal, and had comfortable beds to return to. Life, it turns out, in Ukraine is good.

We awoke the next morning and the sun was shining. All the problems that could have been problems -- we couldn't read the timetable, had no idea when our train left, didn't know how to clear customs, didn't know we had to buy a surcharge for the return journey, and came remarkably close to missing the last train out of the Ukraine -- we miraculously solved just as they appeared.

Two girls, who spoke a wonderfully-broken English, helped us with the timetables. They dragged us from window to window until they found the answer. Then we spent the rest of the morning waving at them around town.

A nice English teacher, who was Ukrainian by blood but taught in Hungary helped us buy the supplement back to Hungary. He look really confused when the customs official turned us away and pointed to the ticket-window, but certainly less confused than Mariah and I would have been alone. We followed him, blindly. It's a good thing he was not going to Kiev.

And then in the line for customs, two very nice young men eased our worries. Both had studied in Kiev, one is now in an English-medium grad program in Budapest, the other works in Uzhgorod, a city we will visit in the future. We talked for a long time, it was very nice. We exchanged e-mail addresses.

I don't know for sure, but it seemed like they were about 25 years old. Just like me. I shook my head when I thought to myself that if the course of human events had gone just a little differently at one moment or another, I might not have meet these wonderful chaps in a Ukrainian train station, but on a battlefield of a world war.

So are the thoughts you think after a long 20 hours in a place as wildly different as the Ukraine. I'm happy to say that I fully intend on going back soon. I slept well Sunday night.