Dinner At Melnitsa

Dinner at Melnitsa was really lovely. Here I am enjoying the balmy summer evening. The set up is great - each table is set in a little landscaped alcove so that it feels very private, but still enables the diners to see and be seen. There were several "She's going out with him???" moments - i.e., beautiful young girls with very short skirts and very high heels, with short, stout, sweaty older men! You get the picture.

The taxi ride there was a bit of an adventure - we hailed a cab and asked, we thought, if he knew where "Restaurant Melnitsa" is. Da Da he said. Ed set the price at 15 HVA and off we went - in what seemed to me, after having studied the map earlier, the wrong direction. After about 20 minutes Ed looked out the window and told me that we were near Arkadiy's office - I told him that, if this was true, we were definitely going in the wrong direction! A few minutes later the driver pulled up in front of some modern looking complex - Nyet Nyet we said - Restaurant MELNITSA. Oh, now he understood! He was very unhappy (not knowing that we had already decided to give him more money), but off we went again. The cab drivers here go so fast (actually, only 45 to 50 miles an hour, but the cabs are little tin cans and they are swerving constantly to avoid trolley tracks, so it feels like 100 miles an hour), and you constantly feel that your life is in danger!




After about 10 minutes we began to see people in bathing suits walking towards us, so we were encouraged. And then we came to the Kharkov River - and a MASS of humanity - honestly, you couldn't see any land at all, it was ALL people. At 7:30 in the evening!! The cab driver wanted to leave us at the top of a narrow road leading to the beach, but we insisted that he take us to the restaurant - and good thing we did too - it must have been at least 1/2 mile further on down the road, and I was wearing my backless high heels for the first (and now, I think, the last) time! No way I could have made it! The road was blocked everywhere with people walking back from the beach. Everyone in the city, it seemed, had gone to the beach - I assume because it was a holiday.

The trip back was not nearly so eventful, or so long. We managed to ask the waiter to call a taxi for us and to wrap up the uneaten portion of our dinner (I had seem someone take home food from another cafe one night, so decided that it was definitely possible to do so here. We, of course, had ordered enough for 4, but everything was so delicious - the crepes with red caviar, the cold eggplant stuffed with baba ganoush, the cold spinach mixed with humus, the hot borscht, the bread, the butter. By the time the roast pork with potatoes in it's own hot clay pot and the lamb shashlik arrived we were stuffed!

We were quite pleased with ourselves at having managed to get the left-overs wrapped and the taxi called. Felling very confident, we showed the taxi driver our paper with our address written on it in Russian, and when Ed asked the price (by saying Skillet), the guy had no idea what he was talking about. So I said "Skeelkuh?" and the driver pointed to the meter. Uh oh, we thought, this could be a recipe for disaster. But what could we do? After going a few meters the driver stopped some people to ask them how to get to our apartment!! They spoke English and we explained that they should just tell him to go down Pushkinskaya and that we would show him where to stop (he was trying to find Chubarya Street - which really has nothing to do with getting us to our apartment, even though it is officially where our building is located). He drove off - at the usual 150 miles an hour (or so it seemed) - and we got home straight away, with the meter reading 18 HVA.

I've been wondering how I'm ever going to readjust to prices back in the U.S. when we go home, and I have finally figured out a system that I think will work. I'm going to pretend that I am spending Dollars here instead of Hrivnas - so if something, like a cappucino, costs me 5 HVA here I'll pretend it cost $5, which is about what it would cost in the U.S. We picked up Ed's dry cleaning today - a suit jacket was pressed, a pair of khakis and a dress shirt were washed and ironed - total cost: 52 HVA. Just about what it would cost in dollars at Brown's. Actually it would probably cost more there!! Ed is going to have to get a haircut soon, and he checked the price at Beatric (the cosmetic surgery center/gym/beauty salon up the street from our apartment), and they told him it would cost about 50 HVA, which is just what it would cost in dollars in the US. (They told me that my haircut and a 2 process color treatment - base coat and highlights - would be 250 HVA - again, just what it would cost in the US in dollars!) I'm sure that Beatric is one of the most expensive places here, but it's convenient, and it seems as if they might know what they're doing. So Ed is getting his hair cut there tomorrow at 11. I'll wait and see what they do to him before I give it a try!

Today we were able to go see the Art Museum (only the 2nd Floor - the 1st Floor requires a separate ticket!). It cost 2 HVA and was well worth it. The building was once a pretty nice structure, we think, but it doesn't make for a very good museum. This country, and this city in particular, are so poor - it is really heartbreaking. There are some really good paintings and drawings in this Museum, in particular Venig's "Ivan the Terrible and his Wet Nurse" and Losenko's "Abel," but the lighting is terrible, and several pictures were covered with cloths to protect them. Not only is the light damaging to the paintings, but it also prevents the viewer from seeing them in some cases. The lights (fluorescent ceiling lights) were manually turned on by the women docents in each room as we entered (these women also guided us to make sure that we didn't miss a room, and that we proceeded through the Museum in the proper order, which was chronological!), and turned off when we left. There were only 3 other visitors when we were there.

We struck out at the Crafts Museum (always "zafstra" - tomorrow) and the Police Museum ("zafstra" again - we think), so we're going to wait a couple of days before we try them again. We passed a children's store on our way back and went in to take a look. Ukrainians worship children, and we were amazed to see what was on offer. This store has everything - there is absolutely no problem getting anything you need for infants and children, from pampers and huggies, to the most elaborate stroller/car seat combos from Italy. We wanted to get something for Jackson and Allan, but there was nothing Ukrainian there at all. Almost everything was American, with English writing or American cartoon characters emblazoned on it! We'll keep searching.

Ed had his weekly phone call with Zaza and Nadia today and was able to report that office space has finally been found, and that Gennady is out looking for furniture (which he may actually have to carry into the office himself!!). Zaza authorized Ed to tell Gennady that he should advertise for a translator - that funds were available to pay for that position - so at least there will be someone in the office who will be able to help Ed communicate with the lawyers. Ed is soooooo anxious to get started - this delay has been hard on him. But he's used the time very productively - he hired a translator to read him the Code of Criminal Procedure, and he's had several meetings with Arkadiy and Gennady - so he has a really good understanding of how the system works here - and he's worked out a plan for having the PD Office lawyers, once they get started, file a series of motions that will bring the systemic problems to the surface and force the courts to deal with the glaring discrepancy between the Constitution and the law, on the one hand, and the practical reality of the police and prosecutors' procedures and conduct(which fly in the face of the statutory and Constitutional provisions), on the other. I hope he can accomplish even 1/100th of what he hopes to do here. It will be a real triumph if he does.

Ed told Zaza and Nadia that he had plans to be away for a few days at the end of July, and that he had planned this trip long ago, when he thought the office would get started at the beginning of June and would be well into it's second month of operation by the time he planned to leave. He told them that he would be going to Moscow where, he explained, he will be meeting with a Justice of New York's highest appellate court who, he is sure, will have many words of wisdom to help Ed accomplish his goals in the Ukraine (all true, but not exactly the real reason we were meeting the Smiths in Moscow!). No problem - thank God - after all the trouble I had getting the visas for this excursion First, I had to get more pages added to Ed's passport (there weren't sufficient pages for the Russian visa because his passport was older than mine and all his visa pages were used up!), and then I had to use an expedited service to get the visas on time; the whole process ended up costing about $400!!! Which reminds me - I'd better check and make sure that visas are not required for Latvia!

Tonight we are going to see "Swan Lake" at the Opera Theater. I'm very curious to see whether this ballet is as well attended as the Giselle we saw with Markova, or whether there will only be a few people there, as there were for the opera the other night.