/travel/Ukraine and Poland
Or, more accurately, Lviv and Warsaw.
Last weekend, I went to Lviv. I flew Friday morning. The flight was
relatively interesting; the airplane from Warsaw to Lviv was a prop plane,
which was the first or second time I've been on one. They're hard to accept
as reliable, I guess because you can see so much more of the mechanism.
Landing in Ukraine, I heeded my dad's suggestions for a quick trip through
customs. Mostly this consisted of "the people will try to cut in front of
you in line; don't let them" and "be near the entrance of the from the
plane to the terminal so you get off early." The first I had experienced in
Russia..I'm not very good at being assertive in line, 'cause I'm usually not
rushed, but I tried to assert myself a bit. They were pretty good
line-scuttlers, though. The second one I tried, and was indeed near the bus
doors, but the two people in front of me were large, slow-moving ladies.
Anyway, customs was no big deal. I accidentally lied..err...misspoked, and said I didn't have family in Ukraine. I guess I do, though I hadn't met the ones that actually live there. The customs agent spoke a basic amount of English, but not much.
Then on my way out the final doors, I was accosted and asked if I had health
insurrance. I bluffed my way through, saying that my Irish coverage through
work was world-wide. I actually thought it was at the time, but upon
further reflection, I've changed my mind. :-) I need to actually find out.
My dad said that normally flashing a credit card is sufficient.
I met up with my dad; we wandered around some markets, and went out for dinner. I was self-conscious about taking photos. I was sorta self-conscious about everything. A decent salary there is 100CAD a month. My camera cost 4 months' gross salary.
I met several distant relatives (4th cousins at varying levels of removal). They were warm and welcoming. They seemed reasonably happy, but it seems very fragile -- not a lot of safety net in their lives. The apartment buildings that we visited all had unlit, bare concrete stairs. Inside, they were simple, small, but seemed warm and fairly well equipped &emdash; fridge, TV, stove, phone, etc.
Most places don't
have water all day, and most Ukrainians don't drink the tap water. Hot
water is used sparingly. My dad's flat (at right) is in a part of the city
that inexplicably has water all day. He's fixed it up to western standards,
and it's indeed quite nice. A bit weird in its surroundings, I guess. He's
done a good job, both to the flat, and some work on the building itself.
Nobody has bought the building since independence, so the city is still
nominally responsible for it. There were vagrants sleeping and defecating
in the halls of the building until my dad installed a lock, and he put up
lights, and a door stopper, etc. He painted the door jam black because he
was worried about the stainless steel being a target for theft.
We went to several touristy places, including a museum, and
opera house, and several markets. Probably the most interesting for me was
the Schevchenko Garden (?), which had about a dozen buildings that had been
moved from various villages. Most were about 100 years old. The picture at
left is a milling stone; there were a couple of different techniques for
setting them up. There were several pretty different styles of homestead,
with different thatchings and things. Very interesting, and very simple
living. There was also a schoolhouse, and a blacksmith's shop.
I left with a definite sense of having visited somewhere that was important for me to see. I wish I had been there longer -- it was basically two nights, plus one full and two half days. One of my cousins, who understood enough English to make it workable, invited me to go hiking with him in the Carpathians. His wife was quite good at English, so I can imagine going there for a bit longer in the summer. It's hard to understand what it's like living like that. It's easy to say that they seem happy enough, and that all the extra wealth we Eurocanucks live with doesn't really make us any happier, and so what's the point. But that's definitely not quite right, and I still don't know what to think about it. There's certainly diminishing returns of happiness for it all, but it's obviously a lot more complex and human than that.
More about Warsaw later. Check out the photos.
Comments
jim wrote
Wow, that's incredible. I wonder how far removed from even that city level of living the people in smaller, rural towns.
ps I like the new layout.
