We Meet The OSJI And IRF People
Thursday June 8
The next day, Tuesday, we made it in time for breakfast (which is at the same café where we had toast the day before), and this time we managed to have porridge, cooked in milk, with toast and butter and orange juice and a POT of tea instead of the cups with the milk, water and teabag all sloshing around together. It was delicious.
Thus fortified, we ventured out onto Kreshchatnek, with Belle in tow, to look for SIM cards, phone cards, and money changers. Success on all fronts. I got a UMC SIM card and was all set. There was a young woman at the UMC store who spoke a little English and I got what I thought would be more than enough time on my card to last me until Kharkiv (after all, who was I going to call?). Ed went back to the room and I went to the “Poshta” (post office) alone to get a phone card – this was quite a project. No one spoke any English at all – I think they were all bureaucrats left over from Soviet days – they only spoke Russian and didn’t understand my attempts at Ukrainian. Finally, after an incredibly creative charade I managed to get a 20 Hryvna card (about $4) which I thought would buy us enough time to call the kids and Ed’s mother to let them all know we were safe and sound. We are going to be relying on Skype for all other calls to the U.S.
By the time I got back it was time to take a taxi to the IRF offices for our first meeting with Zaza and Nadia and Sasha who were coming in from the OSJI offices in Hungary, and also with Roman and Vasylyna, who were working at IRF in Kyiv. Ed and I had decided the night before that we would pass on the minivan drive to Kharkiv – instead we would leave everything (except three carry-ons, our briefcases, our small back pack, Belle’s case, and two large suitcases - one with Ed’s clothes – ALL Ed’s clothes – and one with SOME of my clothes) at the hotel storage and come back in two weeks, just before we were scheduled to move into our permanent place in Kharkiv. There was no point in taking everything to the one room temporary studio since I had packed with the idea that, until we finally settled in the one bedroom flat on Sumskaya, I wouldn’t have to open anything except the bags that we would now take with us on this trip to Kharkiv. Just making this decision took a great weight off both of us. We really began to enjoy ourselves now!
Off we went to Artema Street and the IRF offices. This was probably the first such meeting that was attended not only by the volunteer’s wife, but by his dog as well. But Belle was perfect, as usual. Zaza and Nadia and Sasha are incredibly fluent in English, and our first impressions are that these are really smart and dedicated people. Roman seems to be the key figure in getting this project off the ground in the Ukraine - dealing with the Minister of Justice and Minister of Interior to get government approval for the pilot project. It’s a complicated project, and I’m going to leave it to Ed’s blog, if he ever starts one, to describe the ins and outs of the Ukrainian “justice” system, but suffice it to say that it appears that this project is much bigger and much more important than we thought. It’s not just setting up a public defender pilot program – it’s getting the police, prosecutors and judges to recognize that defendants are entitled to see a lawyer BEFORE they are beaten and a confession is secured, rather than AFTER, as is now the case.
After the meeting Ed and I went off with Sasha to try and change our train tickets to the later train the next day so that we could travel with her (she was booked on the later train to Kharkiv), and also so that Ed could attend another meeting in Kyiv with everyone, including Arkadiy who is the leading civil rights lawyer in this country, and the principal point man in the Kharkiv pilot program, that was scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
There are two "fast" trains from Kyiv to Kharkiv – one leaves at 6:10 a.m. and the other leaves at 5:30 p.m. They both take about 6 hours. The queue to get the new tickets was endless and people took forever at the ticket booth, but finally it was our turn. Sasha is a Kyiv native and did all the talking for us – the idea had been to get an entire compartment for me and Ed and Belle – this is not as extravagant as it sounds as the first class train ticket costs $20 and there are 6 seats in the compartment. This way we would have plenty of room for the luggage which, meager as it was in comparison to what we were leaving behind in Kyiv, was still an enormous burden. It began to seem that the luggage was not only affecting, but actually dictating, all our decisions! In any case, we apparently got the last two seats together on the train, so that was that – let the chips fall where they may with the luggage. I didn’t care if we ever got to Kharkiv – I liked Kyiv and had a feeling I wasn’t going to like Kharkiv!
We ended the day with another wonderful meal at another typical Ukrainian restaurant, this time hosted by Zaza. We had blini with red caviar, herring, sturgeon and some cucumbers and tomatoes as starters. Then we did Chinese restaurant style sharing – lots of different types of Varenecki (they are like raviolis and are considered one of the national dishes of the Ukraine), including mutton, potatoes, cheese and other fillings, some sort of steak dish, and Georgian bottled water and red wine (Zaza is from Georgia and Russia is now punishing Georgia by banning the import of wine and bottled water - this is really hurting Georgia as Russia used to get about 80% of its exports, so we all agreed that it was our duty to support Georgia and order the wine). We ended with Napoleons and “bird’s milk” cake and tea. So far the food is definitely A plus!
The next day, Tuesday, we made it in time for breakfast (which is at the same café where we had toast the day before), and this time we managed to have porridge, cooked in milk, with toast and butter and orange juice and a POT of tea instead of the cups with the milk, water and teabag all sloshing around together. It was delicious.
Thus fortified, we ventured out onto Kreshchatnek, with Belle in tow, to look for SIM cards, phone cards, and money changers. Success on all fronts. I got a UMC SIM card and was all set. There was a young woman at the UMC store who spoke a little English and I got what I thought would be more than enough time on my card to last me until Kharkiv (after all, who was I going to call?). Ed went back to the room and I went to the “Poshta” (post office) alone to get a phone card – this was quite a project. No one spoke any English at all – I think they were all bureaucrats left over from Soviet days – they only spoke Russian and didn’t understand my attempts at Ukrainian. Finally, after an incredibly creative charade I managed to get a 20 Hryvna card (about $4) which I thought would buy us enough time to call the kids and Ed’s mother to let them all know we were safe and sound. We are going to be relying on Skype for all other calls to the U.S.
By the time I got back it was time to take a taxi to the IRF offices for our first meeting with Zaza and Nadia and Sasha who were coming in from the OSJI offices in Hungary, and also with Roman and Vasylyna, who were working at IRF in Kyiv. Ed and I had decided the night before that we would pass on the minivan drive to Kharkiv – instead we would leave everything (except three carry-ons, our briefcases, our small back pack, Belle’s case, and two large suitcases - one with Ed’s clothes – ALL Ed’s clothes – and one with SOME of my clothes) at the hotel storage and come back in two weeks, just before we were scheduled to move into our permanent place in Kharkiv. There was no point in taking everything to the one room temporary studio since I had packed with the idea that, until we finally settled in the one bedroom flat on Sumskaya, I wouldn’t have to open anything except the bags that we would now take with us on this trip to Kharkiv. Just making this decision took a great weight off both of us. We really began to enjoy ourselves now!
Off we went to Artema Street and the IRF offices. This was probably the first such meeting that was attended not only by the volunteer’s wife, but by his dog as well. But Belle was perfect, as usual. Zaza and Nadia and Sasha are incredibly fluent in English, and our first impressions are that these are really smart and dedicated people. Roman seems to be the key figure in getting this project off the ground in the Ukraine - dealing with the Minister of Justice and Minister of Interior to get government approval for the pilot project. It’s a complicated project, and I’m going to leave it to Ed’s blog, if he ever starts one, to describe the ins and outs of the Ukrainian “justice” system, but suffice it to say that it appears that this project is much bigger and much more important than we thought. It’s not just setting up a public defender pilot program – it’s getting the police, prosecutors and judges to recognize that defendants are entitled to see a lawyer BEFORE they are beaten and a confession is secured, rather than AFTER, as is now the case.
After the meeting Ed and I went off with Sasha to try and change our train tickets to the later train the next day so that we could travel with her (she was booked on the later train to Kharkiv), and also so that Ed could attend another meeting in Kyiv with everyone, including Arkadiy who is the leading civil rights lawyer in this country, and the principal point man in the Kharkiv pilot program, that was scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
There are two "fast" trains from Kyiv to Kharkiv – one leaves at 6:10 a.m. and the other leaves at 5:30 p.m. They both take about 6 hours. The queue to get the new tickets was endless and people took forever at the ticket booth, but finally it was our turn. Sasha is a Kyiv native and did all the talking for us – the idea had been to get an entire compartment for me and Ed and Belle – this is not as extravagant as it sounds as the first class train ticket costs $20 and there are 6 seats in the compartment. This way we would have plenty of room for the luggage which, meager as it was in comparison to what we were leaving behind in Kyiv, was still an enormous burden. It began to seem that the luggage was not only affecting, but actually dictating, all our decisions! In any case, we apparently got the last two seats together on the train, so that was that – let the chips fall where they may with the luggage. I didn’t care if we ever got to Kharkiv – I liked Kyiv and had a feeling I wasn’t going to like Kharkiv!
We ended the day with another wonderful meal at another typical Ukrainian restaurant, this time hosted by Zaza. We had blini with red caviar, herring, sturgeon and some cucumbers and tomatoes as starters. Then we did Chinese restaurant style sharing – lots of different types of Varenecki (they are like raviolis and are considered one of the national dishes of the Ukraine), including mutton, potatoes, cheese and other fillings, some sort of steak dish, and Georgian bottled water and red wine (Zaza is from Georgia and Russia is now punishing Georgia by banning the import of wine and bottled water - this is really hurting Georgia as Russia used to get about 80% of its exports, so we all agreed that it was our duty to support Georgia and order the wine). We ended with Napoleons and “bird’s milk” cake and tea. So far the food is definitely A plus!
posted by Susan Spivak at 4:20 PM
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