Evacuation

Lviv, Ukraine  May 22, 2019
The phone rang in my hotel room.  How odd.  Who could this be?
9;30 in the evening. I had just gone to bed.

It was the hotel reception desk.  The Young woman says she wants me to leave the hotel for half an hour.  Why?    It's hard to explain, she says.  For education reasons.

What?  This makes no sense.  Sorry for the inconvenience she says.  It's only for half an hour.

I object.  I don't want to get up and go out.

Then i wise up.  I figure somethings happening.  Maybe I don't want to be in the hotel.  I decide to walk down the stairs.  I don't want to get caught in the elevator.

In the lobby, people are milling around.  Some have gone outside.  Some guys in boots and reflecting jackets looking like they might be firemen are standing around. Also a bunch of security people.

I go outside and see a middle aged guy I had said hello to when I checked in a couple of days ago.  Maybe he knows what's going on.

We get talking.  He's an Englishman.  He travels here as part of some kind of NGO.  Wondering about the situation in the states.  Worried about Trump.  Thinks its like the 30's which doesn't augur well for the future. Worried for his kids and grandkids.

Biden is the front runner now.  He gave a great speech here in Ukraine a few years ago to the parliament.  Urging them to deal with their massive corruption.  Just one problem with his talk.  Everyone listening knew Biden's son was working for one of the oligarchs so it rang hollow.  Such a waste.

The other really interesting candidate we talk about to oppose Trump is Buttigieg the South Bend Indiana mayor who went on Fox News and wowed them on "hate radio" (as Kamela Harris might refer to it}.  And Fox News' Brit Hume says "Buttigieg is the most impressive candidate since the emergence of Barack Obama."   Golly that must mean more impressive than Trump in the view of Fox News no less.

Standing out in the cool spring air my new acquaintance asks me.  Are you confident Trump will be defeated.  Well I'm as confident of that as anything these days which isn't saying much at all.

Meanwhile, i'm thinking how odd it is that Ukrainians were able to see through their last President who was elected with over 50% of the vote and defeated by a 3 to 1 vote after failing to perform while so many Americans are  taken in by ours.

And as I'm finishing this up I read Teresa May has resigned.  And the only tears for her are her own.

We live in interesting times.

After about a half hour we were let back into the hotel.  I guess it was just a fire drill.  I'm glad it wasn't anything more exciting.

It's been raining a lot here in Ukraine.  But the air is clear and occasionaly the light is extraordinary.

Warmth of Strangers

Vorokhta, Ukraine May 5, 2019

It amazes me that people who, were they to greet me on the street, I would not recognize, immediately remember me when I greet them in their habitat.

That happened today with the "bicycle man" (as I think of him}. He has a thriving business renting bicycles to hikers, backpackers etc, who comprise the largest portion of the visiting population in the non winter months here in Vorokhta a Carpathian mountain town that lives on hik`ers and skiers.

For the last three years I've climbed up the mountain here and made friends with people who live in the hills.  They don't see many (any?) Americans here and they sure don't speak English so it's kind of fun for us to see if we can communicate.  Also i want to see how easy or hard it is for me to make it up the hill as I "mature".

Alas, I don't think I'm going to meet my friends and test my skills this year.  It has been raining every day.  The forecast is for it to continue And the "sunny breaks" don't last long enough other than to lure you up the mountain to great regret when the storms come.

Last year I made it up on a fine day and was planning to go back the next when torrential storms hit.  I thanked the gods for my not being caught in that storm.

But I can reacquaint with bicycle man.  He apologizes for his English, Everyone does who speaks some English here.  English here is, I guess, a bit like French in Russia in Tolstoy's day. Highly prized and regarded.

He said I'm the first person he's talked to in English this year so he is kind of rusty. Because of this lack of English speakers this is where I would choose to spend a few months to really learn the language.

Here it would be a matter of survival and quality of life to know and be able to use it without the ease of just slipping into English. Ukrainian is a beautiful language both visually and aurally.

One of the things we talked about is the new President who was elected here May  2`1.  He's a comedian who played a President in a TV series who ends the corruption.  My friend says people didn't vote for the President elect. They voted against the previous President and boy did they.  Like 3 to 1. The greatest landslide in Ukrainian history.

He tells me the real power lies with the parliament.  Not a good thing since I understand they can't live on their salaries so they get bought by the oligarchs.  That and the fact that the new President is close to one of the oligarchs who owns the TV station that hosted his show doesn't augur well for a change here. And there's that story that billions went missing from the big bank the oligarch owned.

My friend says unlike in the U.S. ..... searching for words he raps on the window ... then he raps on the wood frame for what it's like in Ukraine.. I suggest he's speaking of relative "transparency".

Of course with Trump transparency has gone out the door with all he has to hide. Sad.

There was a lot of hope in this country with the 'Revolution of Dignity" in the Winter of 2014.  I came to Ukraine for the first time soon after.  There were still tents in the main square and barricades next to the Ukraine Hotel where I stayed and returned this Spring.`

The tents and barricades are of course long gone.  I was glad to see, however,  that "The Heavenly Hundred"  those who died in the demonstrations have not been forgotten.  Their pictures have been made more permanent and better protected by surrounding small brick walls.

But the hoped for improvements never came.  In fact the currency lost 3/4 of its value. So the people especially with savings ended much worse off.

My friend says we'll know in a year if the election means change.

I've taken an "anecdotal" poll of people I've met here and I think this wait and see attitude is common and for good reason given the country's history.

Well it stopped raining.   This morning I  couldn't believe what I saw out the window.  Snow.  And its snowing hard. They are forecasting 3-5 inches.  Unbelievable.

4 guys from Kyiv, 1 from  Poland and an American 

I had a couple hours to kill before my afternoon train to Kolomiya so I went to the restaurant for a bowl of borscht and while there met some 40ish guys from Kyiv.  They asked where I was from and when I said "Ya Americanitz" one jumped up and eagerly shook my hand.  They were having a grand time and insisted I join them in a drink.

I figured they were backpacking or hiking and asked it the rain had dampened their spirits.  But no they had just come here to walk around.  4 of them were friends and they had just met the 5th guy who showed me his passport which listed his last name as Vorokhta.  Now how improbable is that?

Well i joined them in a quick toast and then headed for the train.

And so it was, on an otherwise cold and dreary day that I fouund myself by the rail with my spirit warmed and optimistic.

Ghost Town

Rahkiv, Ukraine  May 1, 2019

End of the line. Rakhiv, Ukraine

Oh now I get it, just as I type the date above.  I have the answer to today's mystery.

As I walked into town this morning I noticed the river boiling with brown water flowing from the surrounding mountain streams rushing in a frenzy to get wherever it seems so eager to go.

The heavy rains fill the mountain streams filling the river flowing under the main bridge.

Unlike the river, the town is mysteriously quiet.  I see the restaurant is closed.  A big disappointment.  I anticipated my first coffee in two days,

Yesterday I had tea.  That's what they serve on the train.  One of nicest rides I've experiened. The 7 hour train ride from Lviv, the cultural capital of Ukraine, to Rakhiv the remote last stop on the line deep in the Carpathian mountains.  Other than missing my coffee it was a total delight.

It couldn't have been nicer.  From the moment the nice young woman attendant walked me to my compartment - different from the number on my

My two person train compartment

ticket - which her words explaining did not translate through my primitive knowledge of Ukrainian.
 
I had the whole first class, two person, compartment to myself. Such a luxury compared to being crammed in my seat on my flight from Dulles to Istanbul.

Beautiful views presented themselves through the picture window, undaunted by the gray misty day which only added to the charm.

And all this for 350 hryvnia. A lot of money for train travel in Ukraine but only 14 in dollars. It's great to travel first class especially when it's such a bargain!

So I arrived reasonably well rested but not prepared for the locked gate to the guest house where I had my reservation.  I looked for a door bell but saw none.

(Red building in the cener of picture is guest house where I have reservation)

I did see a series of numbers on the front door of the building inside the gate.  Not in the phone number pattern with which I'm familiar, but i dialed them anyway.

Someone answered in Ukrainian. I spoke in English. She spoke again and so did I and neither of us had a clue what the other was saying.  Then she hung up.

I started imagining various outcomes. None desirable.  So I called again.  Same result.

Then the shade went up in the window in the adjacent building and a woman gesticulated to me.   Then the shade went down.  Was this progress?

A few minutes later a woman came up the street and spoke to me in Ukrainian.  I can't say there was a meeting of minds or language but she did let me into the guest house where we spoke some more without comprehesion.

Then I showed her my online reservation which fortunately I had printed o .. in English of course. We talked and gesticulated some more. She sure didn't seem to have been expectiing me. But eventually we had a meeting of minds and I had a room at last!

Oh, and the mystery?  Have you guessed the answer.  Why so quiet. Everything shut down?

It's May Day. A big day in this former part of the Soviet world.

So here I am in Rahkiv an alpine village with cystal clear air.  A delight with every breath.

Thanks for reading!

Stuff Happens

Lviv, Ukraine, April 29, 2019

I don't know what to say.  I guess I'll just start writing and see what comes out.

This trip has been most unusual. A lot has gone wrong.  I wrote a Blog post but wasn't able to post it because my laptop crashed, irreparably, as it turned out.

Then when I retrieved the post using my new "computer setup" you see in this picture I deleted the post because it's really tricky using this new setup and I hit the wrong key.

I'm using my smart phone and a new blue tooth keyboard and mouse.  The key board is really cool It folds up so I can hold it and my phone and mouse all in one hand or put it all in one pocket.  I like to travel light so this may be what I do from now on. And it has letters in both Roman and Cyrillic.

My laptop crashing was part of a series of "events" the first losing my main credit card temporaily as I was preparing to leave home. And before that finding the debit card I only use for traveling had expired. So I had a new one sent to my hotel in Ukraine, and brought enough cash to survive til it arrived.

Oh, but then I find out, when I get to Ukraine, the new debit card won't arrive til I've left my base hotel in the city of Lviv for the next leg of my trip, a 7 hour train ride deep into the Carpathian mountains for 20 days.

And the the great big "Beginner's Ukrainian" book which i left at the reception desk last year for my return this year is nowhere to be found.  But no worries, I had it scanned into my computer,  yet it's much nicer to study outdoors on a nice Spring day sitting in the park here in Lviv which you can't do with a laptop cause it's too bright to read out.

Oh, and then, of course, if your computer has crashed irretrievably the scanned book isn't available either.

So I don't think you want to hear more about this.  How my best friend in Ukraine who just happens to be a Professor of Computer Science and the nicest guy you could ever meet almost got my laptop working but it turned out to have a bad chip and I had encrypted the hard drive and don't have the encryption key with me and the HP service center I took it to which replaced the chip can't restore it without the key.

So God, or the Gods, have a purpose in all this. To keep us humble? And i've always found that if you look for the good outcome in bad events you can find it.  And in this series, it seems to be my new traveling light and not having to worry about my laptop being stolen with all my personal info.  I'll leave that home from now on.

And my debit card did show up ahead of when they last told me it would.  So I'm good to go.

Easter is a week later here in the Orthodox church.  So I got to attend the most important religious service in the year in this part of the world yesterday.

A lot has happened here.  I arrived just in time for the first day of a new President elect.  Hopefully, it will be the dawn of a new day for Ukraine with a better government than the last.  I wrote about that in my last blog post which disappeared in the ether but I'll deal with that topic in my next post.

For now I just want to launch this before I have the chance to hit the wrong key again.

Happy Easter and Thanks for Reading!