Our Last Day In Kyiv - For The Time Being
Thursday, June 8
The first thing to do was to arrange for the storage of the luggage at the hotel for two weeks. The receptionist at the desk today was very pretty and very unconcerned with helping us (or anyone else as far as we could tell). We got a bit of a run around, but finally we were told by someone, who seemed to know what he was doing, that we could leave the luggage if we were coming back in two weeks. This meant, of course, that when we came back to retrieve the bags we would have to spend the night there (YUCK!!!). This luggage thing is a real drag – but as I pointed out to Ed, even if I had taken practically no clothes at all, it would have meant just 2 suitcases less – most of the stuff is for the computer, for our beds, for Belle, and for our various medical conditions!!!
Of course when the time came to leave the hotel, we were told that we couldn’t leave the luggage. After some negotiation we found that we COULD do so, for $10 U.S. cash per day, payable in advance, naturally. We were learning the meaning of "theUkrainian way". We were also learning that we were being held hostage by all these suitcases and cartons.
We arranged for a minivan to take us, and the bags we are bringing with us to Kharkiv, to the IRF offices (again, a long involved negotiation because of all the luggage). Ed had his meeting (without Arkadiy, who hadn’t been able to leave Kharkiv to attend), I worked on the blog a little, and then went to buy a few provisions for the train trip before we left in our minivan to meet Sasha at the train station.
I went across the street to some little markets and was doing very poorly (I wasn’t even able to get across the idea that I wanted bottled water without carbonation!), when a woman asked, in English, if she could help me. She got me the right water and I thanked her. I then proceeded to the bread store, giving up on the cheese and sausage part of the transaction. I ran into the same young woman at the bread store, where she got some great looking black bread, so I asked her to tell them to give me the same thing. I’m really sorry I didn’t get the name of the bread because it is fantastically delicious. She then went with me to the cheese and sausage place and got me some terrific cheese that I think is called “russia” and some nice Kilbasi sausage for our feast on the train. The entire picnic will set us back about $4!!!! Including the bottled water!!!! The amazing thing about this encounter is that this woman, who is from Kyiv, now lives in Encino, where she works as a sonogram technician!!!! She's been there about 8 years and is back for a month long visit with her family and friends. It really is a very small world. We exchanged phone numbers and I told her that when we get back to the States I would like to take her to lunch. I hope I do so - it's so easy to forget these things. But when you are completely dependent on the kindness of strangers, as we are now, you learn how important these gestures are.
We arrived at the station early, snagged a porter with a big trolley, hooked up with Sasha, and began the long trek to the track for the "speedy" train to Kharkiv. When the doors to the train opened, the woman who was in charge of our car (another Soviet prison guard type) took one look at us, at Belle, and at all our luggage and immediately demanded 300 Hryvnas ($60) to let us put everything on the train!! Well, this was a problem – we only had 230 Hryvnas, and we still had to give something to the porter (we had stupidly forgotten to negotiate his price first and so we had no idea how much he intended to extract from us). Sasha talked to the porter and we agreed that he would negotiate with the woman in charge of our car on the train, and that he and she would split the 300 Hryvnas. I explained to Sasha that this was still a problem since we only had 230 Hryvnas, but we seemed to be between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, Ed went off to change money, Sasha went off to her seat in the next car, I boarded the train with Belle, and the porter (to whom I had given all our money – 230 Hryvnas) began to load all the bags onto the car. He came back to me with a thumbs up sign before Ed ever arrived with more Hryvnas, so we managed to get on board for an additional fee of only $46 instead of the $60 originally demanded! This was the first time we had come out ahead in a Ukrainian negotiation!
We shared the compartment with a very nice woman and her two children who seemed to be about 10 to 12 years old - a beautiful little girl and a little boy. The little girl spoke a bit of English, and we had some conversation with her (she fell in love with Belle, thank god, so we didn’t have to put Belle in her case). They play movies (in either Russian or Ukrainian, I couldn’t really tell) during the entire trip on the TV screens in the compartment (there are two of them, one facing in each direction so both rows of seats can see), and there did not appear to be any way to turn off the sound or picture – so we saw 3 movies, one a love story, one an adventure film and one a comedy – and we understood practically nothing. No reading on this trip I'm afraid.
Oh, and remember how I thought I had so much time on my cell phone? Well, I was on the train and remembered that Laura would be only one hour earlier now instead of 9 hours ahead because now I was in Europe, not way far away in the U.S. - California to boot. So I dialed Laura's number on my cell phone, she was home, and I started to tell her about my adventures until the phone went dead after about 10 minutes. No more time left! Apparently calls to Western Europe cost about $4 a minute!! Well that's it for calls outside the Ukraine on my cell phone. From now on it's Skype or nothing.
We arrived in Kharkiv at 11:30 p.m., right on schedule. We met up with Sasha, got some porters (again, stupidly not negotiating the price in advance) and stuffed ourselves into two cabs. I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Elena, the woman in charge of getting us our apartment (who was expecting us on the earlier train and who was supposed to have sent a minivan to meet us and take us to the studio apartment), but she had emailed me the addresses of the two apartments and given me the door codes for them before we left the States, so I figured we would just go to the address (38 Sumskaya) and fend for ourselves, before having the taxi take Sasha to the Hotel Kharkiv.
We arrived at 38 Sumskaya, which turned out to be 36/38 Sumskaya (the address I had been given for the larger apartment we were to move into on June 19), only to be told that there is no 38 Sumskaya, Apartment 40 (our studio apartment number). But we were also told that there is indeed an Apartment 64 (the bigger apartment we are scheduled to move into on June 19) at that location, so at least we knew that our “real” apartment existed.
We decided to try our luck at the hotel with Sasha. She went in and came out to tell us that the only doubles they had were “deluxe” for $170!! We couldn’t believe it, but again, what could we do? And we didn’t even know if they would allow Belle. We just decided not to mention Belle and try our luck. There were actually quite a few Brits checking in ahead of us, so all this took a while, during which time we found out that even though a sign said you could use credit cards, you couldn’t. Cash only. In advance!!!! So we handed over $200 American dollars and got back our change in Hryvnas (at least the Hryvna is pegged to the dollar, so you get a pretty consistent exchange rate of about 5.05 HVA to the dollar). They’re doing some “remodeling” at the hotel, so there was no real elevator service, but fortunately we were only on the second floor. We left the big bags downstairs with reception (they don't have a baggage room or a porter or a concierge) and took our rollies up to the second floor. Imagine our shock – this room was really nice!! Compared to the Hotel Kreshchatek this was the Four Seasons – maybe even Ventana!!
We went to sleep as soon as we could so that Ed would be alert for his first meeting with Arkadiy and Gennady the next morning at 10 a.m., and so that I would have the strength to deal with Elena and the mysterious studio apartment that didn’t seem to exist!!
The first thing to do was to arrange for the storage of the luggage at the hotel for two weeks. The receptionist at the desk today was very pretty and very unconcerned with helping us (or anyone else as far as we could tell). We got a bit of a run around, but finally we were told by someone, who seemed to know what he was doing, that we could leave the luggage if we were coming back in two weeks. This meant, of course, that when we came back to retrieve the bags we would have to spend the night there (YUCK!!!). This luggage thing is a real drag – but as I pointed out to Ed, even if I had taken practically no clothes at all, it would have meant just 2 suitcases less – most of the stuff is for the computer, for our beds, for Belle, and for our various medical conditions!!!
Of course when the time came to leave the hotel, we were told that we couldn’t leave the luggage. After some negotiation we found that we COULD do so, for $10 U.S. cash per day, payable in advance, naturally. We were learning the meaning of "theUkrainian way". We were also learning that we were being held hostage by all these suitcases and cartons.
We arranged for a minivan to take us, and the bags we are bringing with us to Kharkiv, to the IRF offices (again, a long involved negotiation because of all the luggage). Ed had his meeting (without Arkadiy, who hadn’t been able to leave Kharkiv to attend), I worked on the blog a little, and then went to buy a few provisions for the train trip before we left in our minivan to meet Sasha at the train station.
I went across the street to some little markets and was doing very poorly (I wasn’t even able to get across the idea that I wanted bottled water without carbonation!), when a woman asked, in English, if she could help me. She got me the right water and I thanked her. I then proceeded to the bread store, giving up on the cheese and sausage part of the transaction. I ran into the same young woman at the bread store, where she got some great looking black bread, so I asked her to tell them to give me the same thing. I’m really sorry I didn’t get the name of the bread because it is fantastically delicious. She then went with me to the cheese and sausage place and got me some terrific cheese that I think is called “russia” and some nice Kilbasi sausage for our feast on the train. The entire picnic will set us back about $4!!!! Including the bottled water!!!! The amazing thing about this encounter is that this woman, who is from Kyiv, now lives in Encino, where she works as a sonogram technician!!!! She's been there about 8 years and is back for a month long visit with her family and friends. It really is a very small world. We exchanged phone numbers and I told her that when we get back to the States I would like to take her to lunch. I hope I do so - it's so easy to forget these things. But when you are completely dependent on the kindness of strangers, as we are now, you learn how important these gestures are.
We arrived at the station early, snagged a porter with a big trolley, hooked up with Sasha, and began the long trek to the track for the "speedy" train to Kharkiv. When the doors to the train opened, the woman who was in charge of our car (another Soviet prison guard type) took one look at us, at Belle, and at all our luggage and immediately demanded 300 Hryvnas ($60) to let us put everything on the train!! Well, this was a problem – we only had 230 Hryvnas, and we still had to give something to the porter (we had stupidly forgotten to negotiate his price first and so we had no idea how much he intended to extract from us). Sasha talked to the porter and we agreed that he would negotiate with the woman in charge of our car on the train, and that he and she would split the 300 Hryvnas. I explained to Sasha that this was still a problem since we only had 230 Hryvnas, but we seemed to be between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, Ed went off to change money, Sasha went off to her seat in the next car, I boarded the train with Belle, and the porter (to whom I had given all our money – 230 Hryvnas) began to load all the bags onto the car. He came back to me with a thumbs up sign before Ed ever arrived with more Hryvnas, so we managed to get on board for an additional fee of only $46 instead of the $60 originally demanded! This was the first time we had come out ahead in a Ukrainian negotiation!
We shared the compartment with a very nice woman and her two children who seemed to be about 10 to 12 years old - a beautiful little girl and a little boy. The little girl spoke a bit of English, and we had some conversation with her (she fell in love with Belle, thank god, so we didn’t have to put Belle in her case). They play movies (in either Russian or Ukrainian, I couldn’t really tell) during the entire trip on the TV screens in the compartment (there are two of them, one facing in each direction so both rows of seats can see), and there did not appear to be any way to turn off the sound or picture – so we saw 3 movies, one a love story, one an adventure film and one a comedy – and we understood practically nothing. No reading on this trip I'm afraid.
Oh, and remember how I thought I had so much time on my cell phone? Well, I was on the train and remembered that Laura would be only one hour earlier now instead of 9 hours ahead because now I was in Europe, not way far away in the U.S. - California to boot. So I dialed Laura's number on my cell phone, she was home, and I started to tell her about my adventures until the phone went dead after about 10 minutes. No more time left! Apparently calls to Western Europe cost about $4 a minute!! Well that's it for calls outside the Ukraine on my cell phone. From now on it's Skype or nothing.
We arrived in Kharkiv at 11:30 p.m., right on schedule. We met up with Sasha, got some porters (again, stupidly not negotiating the price in advance) and stuffed ourselves into two cabs. I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Elena, the woman in charge of getting us our apartment (who was expecting us on the earlier train and who was supposed to have sent a minivan to meet us and take us to the studio apartment), but she had emailed me the addresses of the two apartments and given me the door codes for them before we left the States, so I figured we would just go to the address (38 Sumskaya) and fend for ourselves, before having the taxi take Sasha to the Hotel Kharkiv.
We arrived at 38 Sumskaya, which turned out to be 36/38 Sumskaya (the address I had been given for the larger apartment we were to move into on June 19), only to be told that there is no 38 Sumskaya, Apartment 40 (our studio apartment number). But we were also told that there is indeed an Apartment 64 (the bigger apartment we are scheduled to move into on June 19) at that location, so at least we knew that our “real” apartment existed.
We decided to try our luck at the hotel with Sasha. She went in and came out to tell us that the only doubles they had were “deluxe” for $170!! We couldn’t believe it, but again, what could we do? And we didn’t even know if they would allow Belle. We just decided not to mention Belle and try our luck. There were actually quite a few Brits checking in ahead of us, so all this took a while, during which time we found out that even though a sign said you could use credit cards, you couldn’t. Cash only. In advance!!!! So we handed over $200 American dollars and got back our change in Hryvnas (at least the Hryvna is pegged to the dollar, so you get a pretty consistent exchange rate of about 5.05 HVA to the dollar). They’re doing some “remodeling” at the hotel, so there was no real elevator service, but fortunately we were only on the second floor. We left the big bags downstairs with reception (they don't have a baggage room or a porter or a concierge) and took our rollies up to the second floor. Imagine our shock – this room was really nice!! Compared to the Hotel Kreshchatek this was the Four Seasons – maybe even Ventana!!
We went to sleep as soon as we could so that Ed would be alert for his first meeting with Arkadiy and Gennady the next morning at 10 a.m., and so that I would have the strength to deal with Elena and the mysterious studio apartment that didn’t seem to exist!!
posted by Susan Spivak at 5:30 PM
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