losers back home

I went to Puzata Xata, the cheap Ukrainian buffet. It was a great place to visit, since the food was almost always tasty, ethnic, cheap and the interiors made it look as though I were eating somewhere fancy. Not to mention, the sheer quantity of beautiful Ukrainian women that lingered around tables, eating sausages and cakes – that certainly was not a negative. On Tuesday nights, an English club meets at the Puzata Xata at Kontraktova Square, attracting a large variety of Ukrainians and native English speakers who want to practice their English. I had gone with Daria one week, who noted that all the American and British men in attendance were mostly LBHs, or Losers Back Home. I couldn't help to agree. I had met a couple of LBHs before – many of them had come to Ukraine, feeling as poor and miserable and unwanted people in the US and enjoyed the popularity they received being English practice tools.

I met one near 50 year old guy who had published his own poetry book and carried it around to show off to young 18 year old Ukrainian girls. “I'm a published poet,” he'd tell them, showing them his book. I was with another Ukrainian guy who was running a hostel then. The younger Ukrainian said, “Oh, I didn't know you were a poet.”

“What do you think I do? I'm a poet. Obviously. I can't believe you didn't know. How could you not know?” the guy said. He was skinny with a mustache and beard and wore a cardigan, but not in a slightly “I'm cool because I do my own thing way” but rather in a “I'm a douchebag” way. It was clear he was a LBH. He kept talking to the girl saying, “Do you like any American authors? Oh, I'm a literature professor. Hemingway is so awful, the way he writes women is miserable. They're just not strong characters, they're so dainty.”

“But man,” I interrupted. “Femininity in the 20s was centered around daintiness, especially in Spain and Italy. And when you couple that with a culture that promotes women's virginity and innocence, that's what you get. I met many Georgian girls who act exactly like the characters in his books. I think critics of Hemingway in this regard often just don't understand the culture that he was writing from.”

“No, you just don't understand a weak writer.”

“You can call him weak all you want, but he at least didn't have to publish his own books.” I didn't know why I was protecting Hemingway, but if someone was going to critique him, it should have been on something more substantial than a bogus textbook feminist argument.

The LBHs were everywhere that teaching English was involved, mainly for that reason. Occasionally you met an English teacher who had a genuine interest in Slavic and Eastern European culture, but it was the exception and not the rule. Most had come to Ukraine to score with girls who would have been far above them on the ladder scale had they stayed back in the United States. That was the same comment that Daria was making. “You seem to be the only normal guy I've met from the States,” she said.

“I'm really not a good standard of normality,” I told her. “Did I mention, I play accordion?”

Also at Puzata Xata, on Monday nights, is Russian language club. Since I need all the practice I can get, I decided to go. Chris wanted in on the practicing action, though truly I know he was going for \ulterior motives. Granted, if I got some hot Ukrainian tail due to my love of Russian language, I wouldn't be against it. But that wasn't the primo uno reason I was going. And, just my luck, it was all Frenchmen at my table who barely had a Russian skill and one Ukrainian girl, who spoke at a level only just above my own.

About thirty minutes into the club, I got a call. “Shawn, can you come to the school?” Tanya, my new boss, asked. “I have a class for you to substitute.”

“I'm a bit far now, in Podil, it will take me some 40 minutes to get there, at least.”

“That's okay, just come as soon as you can.”

I got up from the table and went over to Chris. “Hey man, I got to go,” I told him.

“Where are you going?” he said, looking something like a lost child. It was clear he wanted to come with me.

“To work!” I said, leaving him confused. I raced out of the Puzata Xata towards the metro. When I arrived at the school, Tanya led me to the class. During class, I felt I was back in my natural state. My new students encompassed everything I had liked about teaching English back in Georgia. They were all friendly, playful and excited to learn – thus saving me from all the aspects of teaching in Georgia that I hated. When I finished cleaning the classroom, Tanya came to me. “Listen, you will be the new permanent teacher for this class, okay? It will be 200 grivna a session. You have an envelope from Valya?” Valya was the mother of the two year old I had tried to teach that morning.

“Yes, here it is.” I handed Tanya the envelope.

Tanya tour it open and took some cash out. “Here, this is for you,” she said, handing me 200 grivna. “I'll see you next Monday? And if you want to attend anyone else's classes, you are welcome.”

“Thanks,” I said. I had a new class to prepare for. I left, wanting to celebrate with someone somewhere, but couldn't, since I didn't want to ride 30 minutes on the metro back into town and more importantly, since I didn't want to spend much money. Instead I just went to the store and picked up a beer, so I could drink it watching a movie back at home.

wash your hands to teach

It was time to get a job. I had a few leads from Bruce, a guy I had met a while back and stayed in contact with, meeting him for coffee once in a week or two. He gave me the email of a place near where I lived, near the Kharkivska metro. “They're about to have a few openings,” he told me, “since I'll be leaving them soon, and they have a really unmotivated teacher there too. I trust you're motivated enough. You've got to be careful who you recommend, because their actions can always reflect back to your own reputation.” We were at Kofe Hauz, his hands were pressed tight around a cup of steaming coffee. I was sipping on my own usual mocha. “Just know that even if you send something now though, you might not hear back from them for a while. I mean, it is the break. The break doesn't end for a few more weeks, on January 10th. People want to read the application and make immediate hires, that's just how it works here, with teaching especially. If you can't work immediately, don't apply until you can.”

I took his advice and waited until it was closer to the end of the break. When I was in Kharkivska was when I sent out an email to his lead, Tanya. A few days later, Tanya emailed back and said almost the same thing. “Just come in on January 11th and we can talk.” On January 11th,I came to the school. The language school had its own office in the elementary school and borrowed the classrooms after the school was out. As I walked in, there were still some children lingering in the courtyard, even though by seven o'clock the dark had already settled over the city and stray dogs had come out to make their rounds at trash containers everywhere.

“You are Tanya?” I asked the girl sitting at the desk on a laptop.

“No, I'm Maria,” she said, smiling. “Tanya's coming though.”

I waited for a bit and chatted with Maria. She was something of the main clerk for the language school. We chatted for a bit. She was from the Southeastern part of Ukraine, where it was the most industrialized and Russian. She shared the family name of a famous Russian marshal who was one of Stalin's top advisors during World War II. “Once, in Bulgaria, I was late for a plane because of my connecting flight from Turkey. They held the plan for almost an hour for me. The Bulgarian captain greeted me, saying he remembered what the marshal had done for his own father.”

Finally Tanya came, who was every bit as attractive as the younger Maria. “We can take you on as a substitute first, but otherwise we have too many teachers as it is. Oh, but I do know one client who has a two year old daughter. Have you worked any with two year olds?”

“The youngest I've taught was an eight year old, but I'm willing to try anything,” I said. I couldn't imagine how I'd come across to the mother of a two year old girl or how I would just teach her. I could just play with her and talk to her, I suppose that would work. The daughter of one of my old host families in Georgia was two years old and we got along just fine. That's what I told the mother when we talked on the phone. “Though, to be honest, she ended up teaching me more Georgian than I taught her English!”

I went to the meet the next week on Monday. “You'll go to Lebidinska Metro and meet the driver there,” she instructed me. “Meet there at 8:30.” I was there at 8:35, underestimating how slow the metro would be, and how slow my walk to it would be, since I seemed determined on taking wrong turns. I exited the metro into the tunnels and first took the tunnel to the right. I didn't think the station would be too complicated, but I should have realized that almost all the stations are. The driver called me and spoke in Russian, “Where are you?”

“I'm here at the metro,” I said. I was looking around for landmarks. “Where are you?”

“I'm on the side with the green fence. Do you see a green fence?”

“No, I see a green store though.”

“Oh, you are on the other side.” He hung up. I went back down into the winding maze of tunnels, filled with fruit sellers and window electronics and underwear vendors and came out near a green fence, behind which was a construction site.

My phone rang again. “Where are you?” the driver asked.

“I'm on the side with the construction.”

“Oh, I came to meet you over on the side with the green store, next to where all the marshrutkas are.”

“Oh, okay, I'll come to you,” I said. “Just wait.” I went back into the tunnels and up near where I started. I went to the parking lot with the marshrutkas and was immediately met by a tall man in a black leather coat. “You're Shawn?”

“That's me.”

“Good, I finally found you!” he said. “Come with me, I'm on the other side of the metro.” We went back into the tunnels and came up near the construction site. We walked down there a bit and went up to a black Volkswagen minivan. “If you come back, this is where I always park and wait, got it?”

“Got it,” I nodded as I entered the minivan, which was already full, with six other passengers. As we drove, I wondered if these passengers would be dropped off before or after me. If they were dropped off before, I might be even more late. As we drove further out of town and into a forest, it became clear to me that perhaps these other passengers were going to the same place I was. And if they were, what kind of place was I coming to? The forest cleared out, revealing a huge mansion. Two security guards in black suits and earpieces were at the door, looking into the forest. A quick glance around the forest revealed other security checkpoints, forming a vague perimeter around the mansion. As I approached the door, I expected the large Ukrainian man to take my laptop case and search it, while the other over-sized guard checked my body, but instead they simply opened the door for me and allowed me on through.

The huge, two story circular entrance had stairs that followed either wall, with a black and white checkered tiled floor underneath. A Christmas tree still towered in the center, its peak reaching up to the ceiling, branches still laden with blue and red ornaments. I was brought to a cloak room on the side, where I could leave my things. The mother came in as I was taking off my coat and greeted me, introducing me to her daughter, Lydia. “Hello Lydia,” I said. “How are you?” I bent down to greet the girl, extending my hand. She took it and said, “I'm good.”

“What's your name?”

“Lydia,” she said. She stepped back behind her mothers legs and stared out at me from there.

“If you'd come this way and wash your hands,” her mother, Valya, told me. She was a dark haired Ukrainian woman. More homely than I would expect from someone this wealthy. I would have expected more of a trophy wife, but clearly she had some hidden attributes, or the man married simply to have a mother for his children, since it was clear she was not of the working type.

I spent an hour and a half with the Lydia and her mother, who mostly sat in the corner of the large parlor room watching us. Lydia and I sat at a small plastic table, playing with a monkey doll and plastic fruits. The entire time, I felt a bit like the Mad Hatter playing tea with little Alice, having her pour me pretend tea into my little plastic tea cup. “Pour me some tea, Lydia,” I would say.

“No,” she would reply.

“Why can't I have some tea?”

“Mommy!” Lydia said, repeating the word again and again until finally her mother came over and joined us, sitting on another plastic chair.

“I'm right here,” she said. Lydia immediately went to her and climbed up into her lap.

By the end of the hour and a half, the mother gave me a few pointers. “So, just next time, remember that. And we'll work through Tanya, okay? And give this envelope to Tanya, too.”

“Sure, right,” I said, taking the envelope from her and silently wondering what was in it. I felt like as I was just on a date with the mom and said something wrong – it was that kind of awkward. The driver pulled up in his minivan. This time it was just him and me. As he drove, we chatted in Russian a little, though I was constantly thrown in slight confusion whenever he said a word with a “g” in it since Western Ukrainians often have a hard time with the letter, pronouncing it like “h”. He was clearly a Western Ukrainian. “Where are you hoinh?” he asked.

“Just drop me at the metro, that's fine,” I told him. “Kiev's a great city, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's really hreat.”

in search of shisha

After I moved into my apartment, I found myself having the “now what” moment. My week of partying in Kharkiv had come to an end and I had to find new ways to occupy myself in Kiev. I had already been building an array of friends here before I had left, so I decided to tap into that pool and get back in touch with Bridget. “You want to get some drinks sometime?” I asked her over Facebook.

“Actually, you know there's a Hash meeting and a concert tomorrow,” she wrote back. “You want to come?”

“Right on.” Hashing is an international club that involves jogging, scavenger hunting and drinking. I loved at the very least doing a third of those activities. Basically, what it involves is a group of people meeting at a pub somewhere in a city. They then follow a “maze” of flour spots that the leaders have put out and they try to find the correct location. At the end of this, there's typically a break for beer followed by another flour maze, then after the hashing is done, everybody meets again to drink up all the calories they burned while jogging around in circles looking for the right path. The things some people invent to pass the time in this life! All in all though, I suppose it's better than wearing hair underwear and flogging yourself in a dungeon. 

One view along the hash, piano made of tiles

Organizing the hash was Dima, the same large Ukrainian guy who was trying to kiss me at Anika's party. I didn't mind seeing him again, since he seemed a decent enough fellow, despite all the drunken kisses. Though I got used to men trying to kiss me a lot with their slobbery lips while I was in Georgia, so this wasn't too huge of a concern for me. I realized that some Eastern Europeans and Asians just tend to take the bromance thing to a whole new notch. 

more public art on the route

There was a decent mix of foreigners and Ukrainians in the group. There was one English guy who was in Kiev teaching English for one company. “You should apply there, they take everyone,” he said. I did apply later, but never heard back from them. Then there was Daria, a girl who reminded me of the cartoon character of the same name, with a very dry wit and a face that looked like she was never impressed with anything. She carried a professional style camera with her and was taking pictures of all the different scenes of the city that we witnessed. There was also Tanya, another girl who was obsessed with drawing, she kept a sketch book with her wherever she went. Her goal in life was to design monsters for video games. In the meantime, she was in love with a guy from Canada who she may or may not see again.

After the hash, we all went back to Anika's place where we tanked up on beer, vodka and sandwiches before we headed on to the concert. The concert was at a place called Babuin, a more Bohemian style cafe that commonly had live music. Books lined all the walls and Ukrainian hipsters adorned the chairs, reading books and surfing on their MacBooks while adjusting their fake, horn rimmed glasses. Though I have a natural disdain for hipsters – back when I lived in Denver, I used to wax ecstatic for hours regarding how the degeneration of a society can be measured by the presence of fixed gear bicycles – I always enjoyed their locales. Mostly because hipster girls tend to be fairly attractive, slim, wearing black dresses and makeup. The only downside was that hipster girls tended to like more about as much as they'd like Tupac.

The band that we watched was a folk band, playing a variety of old Ukrainian songs on ethnic instruments. The music was a bit staunch and rigid though, and there was something a bit too aristocratic about it to make it real folksy.  It was more like if the king hired a "folk" band to play something nice for the nobility, like when Presidents of the United States of America played at a Billy Clinton rally in the nineties.

More interesting was when they were finished. In the other room entered a group of street bards, dressed up in colored cloaks and masks. They carried instruments with them, violins, accordions and bass drums, along with a stench that could be smelled from the other room. They played a much more lively version of Ukrainian folk. They played two or three songs in the bar, while sending a bouncy woman around with a hat to collect money from the onlookers, before they retreated back up the stairs and went back onto the street. I assumed they were some sort of musicians' collective who just toured bars and tried to live off tip money.

My friends Alex and Katsia showed up, with an expressed intention to go somewhere to smoke some hookah. As some of our troupe broke up, Alex stood up and said, “Let's get out of here and get some shisha.” We took some of the hashers with us in a jaunt across town, looking for a hookah place where we knew we wouldn't have to reserve a table – in most Kievan bars, table reservations are a must, as they usually don't have standing room in most of the bars. Alex took a path that led us through alleys and courtyards, while Daria kept calling a boy to tell her their exact location.

“Why doesn't he just meet us where we're going?” I asked her.

“Because he wants to try to catch up with us,” she said.

“But with this route, he'll never be able to find us,” I said.

“He keeps saying we're going the wrong direction.”

We finally found the bar, and a few of the other hashers caught up with us, but unfortunately the bar had stopped serving hookah for some mysterious reason. “They usually have hookah,” Alex explained. “I wouldn't have led you guys ll the way here if I had known.” “I thought it was a fun route,” I chimed in. “Maybe the hookah guy is just out? Who knows. Palata No. 6 serves shisha, we can check if they've got any.” We went on to Palata No. 6, but without calling ahead for reservations, we found it impossible to get a seat there. We decided to just walk in one direction go to the first place that served hookah, Uruk, which ended up being an Uzbek restaurant near Zoloti Vorota. Uzbek food revolved mostly around pilaf and these dumplings that mysteriously looked a lot like Georgian khinkali. I opted against ordering them, since their cost was the same as how much khinkali cost at the Georgian restaurant I had found in Kiev a month back. The hookah was also the most expensive I had found yet in Ukraine. It was more than El Mate, and didn't have the premium hookah service and flavor that accompanied the usual trip to El Mate.

Dima caught up with us at the Uzbek place, but only at the end. Everyone had to leave to catch their respective metros. I was the last out, leaving Daria and Dima alone at the bar. I raced to the metro, still having plenty of time for the last train. Getting out at my stop some 30 minutes later, the air was crisp and cold and I listened to my headphones on the walk back to my apartment, ever enjoying the lights of the surrounding apartment towers.

the azeri

One morning, Sasha had called from Kharkiv. I was in the other room and only heard tidbits of the conversation. “The police were called? What for? There hasn't been anything here Sasha, it's been all quiet. There was a kids party upstairs, but that was it. Shawn's been quiet. There hasn't been anything happening. No, Sasha, you need to talk with the landlord and put your foot down. Nothing's been happening here.” The conversation gave me a little to worry about, but not much to think about. I went back to surfing on Facebook. But then later that day, there was a knock on the door. I approached it, looking for a key, but then it opened on its own. A short, wide man with darker skin and a thick, Stalin-esque mustache walked in. He looked Caucasian, but I couldn't tell if he was Azeri, Armenian or Georgian, he had one of those pan-Caucasus looks about him.

He immediately walked in and started looking around. “Who are you?” I asked in Russian.

“I am the owner,” he said in Russian. “Who are you?”

“We're Sasha's friends,” I said. I didn't know how much he knew about us or if Sasha had even told him about renting the other rooms out to other people. Being an international, you quickly learned that things like housing you wanted to know the least about and accepted the most tenacious agreements.

“Which rooms are you staying in? That one?” he pointed to Chris's room. The room was a disaster. Papers were everywhere, the white pleather couch was missing cushions, there was a mattress on the floor.

“Yes, we're both in that one.”

“And there's another occupied one,” he said, looking back at my room. “Who's in that one?”

“I don't know, we just got here.”

He pulled us into the kitchen. “Listen,” he said, putting his hands on the table. “Where are you from?”

“We're Americans.”

Chris chimed in, “Tell him we have our documents. Everything's in order. I can show him my work documents and registration.”

“We have our documents. Everything's in order. He's got a work visa.”

Chris ran out of the room for a moment. The owner said, “I'm just worried about foreigners. You know, we are not supposed to have foreigners. They bring attention. You know, if someone asks about foreigners, then the police might come and check into and I'd have to pay the bribes. I don't like that. I'm weary about foreigners.”

“What's he saying?” Chris asked me when he came back in with a stack of sheets. I translated for him. Chris hand the papers to the owner. “These guys are always overwhelmed by papers,” he said to me in English, handing over all his papers.

“What did he say?” the owner said.

“He said that he was working in L'vov,” I translated. While the owner perused the documents, I asked him where he was from.

“Azerbaijan.”

“Azerbaijan! Yaxshi!” I exclaimed. “Yaxshi” meant “good” in Azeri. I switched to Azeri. “How are you?”

“I'm good,” he said in Azeri. “And you?”

“I'm good too. How long have you been in Ukraine?”

“For 20 years,” he said.

I had expended my knowledge of Azeri, so I switched back to Russian. “20 years? That's a long time. Do you go back often?”

“Yes, often,” he said. “So how long are you guys staying here?”

Chris had gotten up to fix some tea for us.

“We've been staying for a week.”

“How long will you stay?” he asked.

“Can we stay for a couple of months?”

“What would you pay?”

“How about 1300 a month?” This was the same amount that Sasha was charging me. I figured it would be okay to offer that.

“How about in American dollars?” he asked.

“That is a joke, right?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. I couldn't tell if he was relaxing a bit. Only a small flicker of a smile came across his face, but I couldn't read why he smiled like such. I also noticed that he didn't necessarily agree to that price.

“So why are you guys in Ukraine?” he asked.

After translating the question, Chris had me translate his response. “I'm here because I want to get more into Orthodoxy. I'm really active in the Church.”

“And what are you?” the owner asked me.

“Catholic,” I replied.

“I'm Muslim.”

This is when Chris started reciting a syrah. Chris had, in the course of his career as an English teacher, lived and worked in Syria, where he also studied Islam and Arabic. When Chris finished reciting the syrah, the owner took it up and recited the rest. “Do you know what that means?”

“It means that God is one,” Chris said.

“Yes,” the owner said. “Listen, when someone comes here, tell them you are a friend of Taymaz. That's me. If someone comes asking, they can't know you are living here. Just tell them that you are friends of mine and are visiting. You're visiting from L'vov. Understand?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” we replied.

“Listen, Taymaz, do you know where any good cheap Azeri restaurants are around here?” I asked him, interested in where I could get some lamb shish kebab and pilaf.

“We could go get some food now if you want to join us?” Chris said.

“Okay, I know a place very close,” Taymaz said. “But first I need to say my prayers.” He stood up, took off his jacket and went into the next room to say the prayers. I drank the rest of my tea while Chris went on talking, theorizing about just why Taymaz had come in.

“Do you think the whole thing about the police was a ruse?” he asked.

“It might well have been. He might have just wanted to check out the situation here.”

Taymaz came back in the room. “What do you want to eat?”

“I guess some shish kebab,” I told him.

“I'll call a place.”

“Before we go, I need to go shower.” I went to take a shower. When I came back, Taymaz was still sitting there with Chris. Not having a common language, they sat silently. “How about 1600 grivna for the room per month?” he asked.

“I need to talk with Sasha about that,” I replied. I had agreed with Sasha at 1300 grivna, plus 200 for the bills.

“I need to talk with him about that,” he said. “1600 grivna?” he repeated, holding up a calculator. I knew that if I had refused to deal, then it would be obvious to him that we had made an arrangement with Sasha already. But on the other hand, we didn't know what Sasha had arranged with him and if Sasha was receiving a cut from our rent money. I wouldn't have minded that, as long as Sasha would have told me in advance what exactly was going on. After Taymaz insisted on solidifying the deal, I decided to go ahead and enter into negotiations.

“1500, but only if it includes everything. All bills paid,” I said.

Taymaz considered and then agreed. “Okay then,” he said. “I don't want to put you guys out on the street during winter. Where would you go? 1500 is okay, with everything.”

Taymaz then brought us down to his car and drove us over the river. He was on the phone, so I had to wait before I asked him where he was taking us. I heard him saying on the phone though, “2,000 would be normal, yes? 2,000 for each room, with all the bills paid. In March we do that. The contract is until the end of March.” I didn't know what contract he was talking about, but I can only assume he had a surprise waiting for Sasha when it was time to renegotiate.

When Taymaz hung up, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Ah, that other place was out of lamb. I'm taking you to another place I know about. But I don't know how it is.”

“It's not expensive is it?”

“I don't know, I've never been there.” When he parked the car opposite the street of the restaurant, he said, “I don't eat at restaurants anyway. I eat only clean food. So I'll leave you two guys here.”

“Where's the metro from here?”

“Far, you can just take the bus back. Any bus.”

“Right. The idea was to eat with you, Taymaz.”

“No, that's okay, I don't eat out as it is.”

He left us on the side of the road. Luckily the temperature hadn't turned too cold yet. “Do you really want to eat here?” asked Chris.

“No, not really, let's get back. I'm supposed to meet a girl soon anyway.”

that guy

near my hood

 I got back to Kiev. From the train station, I decided to first go to the new apartment and try out the keys. I was in a rush to make sure I hadn't been scammed again and was given a fake set of keys while someone scored on my money. Then I was going to go back into town to get my main backpack, which I had left at the hostel, since I didn't want to drag it all around Kharkiv. When I made it back to my apartment, I met my new roommate, Chris. When I came into the apartment, he was asleep, but soon woke up. When he came to introduce himself to me, he wore a towel wrapped around his waist and a t-shirt. He was short and bald, with intense brown eyes that seemed to pop out and shake when he talked with someone – and he never talked about frivolous things. As his eyes popped, he would also lick his lips constantly, almost appearing like Heath Ledger's rendition of the Joker, just without makeup, scars and knives. He would prefer guns anyway.

I sat down and decided to try to talk with him for a bit to get to know my new neighbor. Chris was originally from the Pacific Northwest. He had searched most of his early life for a religion that he felt fit the Bible the most, going from Baptist to Pentecostal before finally setting on Catholicism. He became a very strict and traditional Catholic, even going on many Catholic missions around the world, from India to South America. Eventually, he became disillusioned to what he saw was the collapse of the Church due to liberalism and decentralization. He decided he'd look into Eastern Christianity. He went to L'vov, Ukraine, to see how the Greek Catholics were, if they were holding true to a pre-Vatican II Church. When he saw the Novus Ordo mass being practiced there, he was further disillusioned and decided to join the Russian Orthodox Church – what he saw was the most conservative of all churches (I've since tried to tell him that Georgians managed to beat the Russians in having a conservative and traditional church).

“I can't stand America anymore,” he told me. He got up to stir his pot of legumes and grains that was boiling on the stove. “It's full of degenerate mongrels. We've let our society completely collapse. I just can't stand it. I had to come here to find something better. But you know, even here, with how everyone is looking to the West, you can see the degeneration slowly creep in. Here still, though, they have family values. They don't divorce, the wives serve their husbands, you know. Children are more obedient, because you can hit them if they aren't. They stay in line. When I was teaching classes in a Catholic school in India, I was trying to keep the class calm. But they were crazy. The headmaster told me, 'Look Chris, just put a stick on your table.' So I did. And the class was calm for a few days, but then they realized I wasn't going to use the stick. A few days later, the headmaster came back in, 'Look Chris,' he said to me, 'you'll find the boy who is loudest and noisiest of them, just give him a thwack.' And I did. They shut up and paid attention the rest of the semester.”

Sipping tea, after I got my bag, he went on, “You know what another problem in America is? Mexicans. I used to think they'd have a positive influence, because they had family values. But they don't have family values anymore. They've come to America and degenerated in all the negative ways Americans have and are even worse, since they come to America and don't even try to adapt to the culture. They keep speaking their Spanish. When I worked on a farm, I'd work side by side with the Mexicans. They're hard workers. And even though I spoke Spanish, I would only speak English to them because they were in my country and they should be speaking English.”

“But you don't speak Ukrainian or Russian?” I interjected.

“That's something different entirely,” he replied. “They're in our country, wanting all of our rights and benefits, they have to learn our language.”

“Many just want to make money and go back home.”

“That might be how it used to be, but now Mexico is even more degenerate than America, with how bad all the gang violence has gotten. And they're bringing all that violence into America. We should just get rid of them all, and the ones that don't want to go should be shot.”

“I don't know, I think language is a thing of economics. I don't understand how you Republicans can preach laissez-faire on nearly everything, but when it comes to language, you puss out. Why? You can't learn another language? Whatever language is economically advantageous to speak and know, people will learn. All second generation immigrants speak English fine.”

“But they're degenerates. And they're preserving their own degenerate race when they refuse to bledn into America.” And so on.

Chris was a generally amicable guy, even though he had some pretty extreme opinions on everything, like how domestic violence wasn't the government's business, how Sharia law was good because it enforced family values and how all Socialist health care was the worst in the world though he'd only lived in England and Italy (the two countries with the worst healthcare in Europe) and that America's was the best, especially because of the malpractice lawsuits and insurance structure. Despite his opinions though, he was able to keep them at the table. He never grew violent or directly offensive, nor did he ever yell or become haughty and he always let the other person talk. But Chris could out talk anyone and would keep talking for hours after I got bored of the subject. Which was impressive, because I was normally that guy. 

near my hood, after the first snow

I had been lying low for those few days. Chris was also on a permanent state of lying low, complaining about not being able to exercise since he was in a slump, or about how he hated the growing degeneracy of the Ukrainian people. I certainly wasn't the most positive charge in the power plant, but he was a charge, that much was certain. We walked around the neighborhood a few times. Kharkivska mostly consisted of massive Soviet block apartments that looked rather barren at first site. But then I began to notice a cafe here, a bar there, a pub over there, hair salons and butchers, milk shops and fish shops.  They even had small beer shops that served some twenty different beers from keg to bottle. The place was crawling with activity – it was an unexpected surprise.

little things

I went to Dasha's squat one last time, where I found the room full of people. When they saw me, they all gave me a cheer. “The American has returned!” Andrei cried. Immediately they brought me a glass of whiskey. “You couldn't get the train?”

“It looks like I'll be with you guys another night,” I said, taking the glass of whiskey and drinking around with them. They then began to pour some champagne and toasting “to victory!” “What's all this?” I asked someone.

“They just won the pub quiz,” Dima told me. We poured more rounds for each other.

Andrei called out to me, “American! Play that song I really like!” I pulled out my accordion again and started played a set for everyone. Dasha smiled, clapped and brought me another round. She said, “I can't stay too long, I've got work in the morning. But I love your singing.”

The night passed into the morning, with much drinking and talking. Eventually, the dancing began and I took over the console behind the bar, playing random Russian songs.

“How do you know these songs?” Dima kept asking me. “People in America don't know these, right?”

“Right, I just do,” I said as I was putting on Leningrad's “Svoboda”. “Svoboda” is easily my favorite song by Leningrad, its chorus borrowing from an earlier Russian hair metal band named Kipelov. The lines, translated, are: “I'm free, like the birds in the sky / I'm free, I forgot what fear is.” The song is, on the surface, about a woman leaving the singer and now he's free. The truth is though, his lover was the Soviet Union and he's singing about its collapse. The Leningrad version is more clear on its subject. “Just when you go against the stream / you understand what free opinion costs / Links gather into long chains / the line of life become exact... to be different means to always be the same, choose what you want, poverty or prison / nobody gets freedom without a reason / there is no exit and there is no entry.” The song not only has a meaning I can relate with, but also memories that carry along with it. I remember going to parties in Tbilisi to visit my Estonian friends, where me and Mathis would run around the place screaming, “Ya svaboden! Slovna ptitsa v nebecax!” at the top of our lungs, drinks held high to the air and arms around each others shoulders. A scene later repeated in Estonia, near his home.

“You are the best couchsurfer to stay here!” he said. It wasn't the last time he said it during the night. They had told me about a few of the past couchsurfers who had come. There was a Dutch guy who was there, busy finding women off the internet to come visit him at the squat. One girl had come and he catered to her needs, only to find her wanting money from him before he left. Then there was an English guy who was busy traveling across the world. He spent an entire week there, doing nothing but playing on their Sega II. I wasn't simply the latest normal couchsurfer to come, but also one with a genuine interest in their culture. I can imagine, compared to those other guys, I was quite a magnificent traveler.

The next day, I had spent most of my time in a coffee shop, waiting for it to pass. There are coffee shops everywhere in the big cities in Ukraine, most of them resembling Starbucks, with the same corporate feel and almost identical emblems. However, they usually also include servers and free internet, two things Starbucks lacks. At the coffee shop, I received word from a Fellowship that I had applied for. The Fellowship was done by a Russian bank, wanting to bring Americans in to share their experience and knowledge as short term interns with Russian businesses and NGOs. They offered to fly me from Kiev to New York to interview. Of course, I immediately decided on this route of action and told my parents and friends and began to plot a trip to Denver if they'd let me stay a little bit longer in the States. From the cafe, I went back to the squat to gather my things and spend my remaining time with Dasha and Andrei.

I left the squat the next night. More people gathered there in the evening to celebrate Dima's birthday. I couldn't stay though, since I was able to buy my ticket online successfully and I had to make my train for that night. Dasha went with me to the train station to say goodbye. We waited for about an hour at the coffee shop that was right near the station, where we talked. She was worried about her tenure as a mother. “I don't feel like a mother, but I want to be something to my boy,” she told me. Her boy was 8 years old and she was raising him with the help of her parents. “I guess I just don't want to grow up. I want to be something different, but I want to be something for him.” She was having a hard time expressing her concerns in English.

We met Sasha, my new roommate at the platform at 11:30 at night. My train was in twenty minutes. When I first booked, I had some reservations about trusting the Ukrainian railways with twenty minutes, since I knew Ukrainians, like most Europeans outside of Germany, to be perpetually late. Sasha had reassured me earlier and sure enough, the train was on time. Sasha and his girlfriend strolled up to me. “Ah, you weren't kidding about playing the accordion!” he said, pointing to my cart and box. “You really do play.”

“Yeah, why would I joke about that?” I said, shrugging. “Merry Christmas, by the way.” January 7^th, the next day, was Orthodox Christmas.

“Thanks, Merry Christmas. So here are the keys,” he said. Sasha's eyes were always bright and glowing and with his nearly modelesque stature, he reminded me of Awesome from the television series Chuck. He handed me the key ring and told me what each of the keys did. “Listen Shawn, we have to go catch our bus before it leaves.” They left.

Dasha had been lurking in the background, smoking a cigarette. She seemed somewhat shy about my leaving. “It's been fun,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. Smoke trailed up from the tip of her cigarette, joining the smoke she exhaled, gathering under her hood before continuing to dissipate into the air.

“Listen, I know it's cold. You don't have to wait her with me, you can go catch the metro.”

“Are you telling me to go?”

“No, I'm just – I mean, wait here if you want, but I understand if you need to go catch the metro.” We walked over to the next platform and waited for my train, neither of us saying anything. It rolled up, again exactly on time. I was beginning to be really impressed with the rail system in Ukraine. Comfortable, on time, and now with my knowledge of the existence of on-line rail tickets, easy to use.

I shared the compartment with an overweight Ukrainian girl – perhaps the first truly overweight girl I had seen in Ukraine. I was afraid that I would come on board and wake up the inhabitants, since the train had first departed from Lugansk two hours earlier, but the girl had gone out of the train for a breath of air. She came back in with a quick grunt of a hello in Russian. She laid down and tried to sleep, but her phone kept going off and she talked in whispers. The light overhead was still on and I couldn't find the switch for it.

“Is that light automatic?” I asked her in Russian. The train hadn't begun moving yet, so I assumed that maybe the light would just go off after they started rolling and it was only on for the convenience of the new passengers.

“No, there's a switch over there,” she said. She rolled up and across the room, shuffling aside my jacket which was hanging against the wall and turned off the light. She then rolled back to her bed. Her bed was also on the lower bunk on the opposite side of mine. The top bunks were empty.

“What's the word for the thing that turns on the light?” I asked.

“Light-turn-offer. Or light-turn-onner, depending.”

“That's funny.”

“Russian is a very rich language.”

“I know! With words like light-turn-offer and light-turn-onner! It's why I love it so much.” It was often surprising how simple some things in Russian language was, especially in light of its absurd grammatical complexities. It's the little things like “lightswitch” and all of its comedic rhymes that make it all worthwhile.

Even though the girl snored and breathed heavily through the night, I managed to sleep.

like planets in alignment

I still had to bring Tasha her key back, since she had to leave in the morning for work while I was still asleep. We met near the Kharkiv planetarium, a building a block off one of the main streets, towering high in some sort of Soviet pride of science and stars. I imagined scores of Pioneers, children in red scarves and brown uniforms, surrounding the building in the past, weaving in and out of the lines to gaze at the artificial lights in dreams that one of them might be the next Yuri Gagarin. I stood outside the planetarium in the dark. It was only five in the afternoon, but the winter dusk had already settled in, making it seem like a late night KGB drop. Tasha came running up the hill and hugged me in greeting. “Here's your key.”

“Did you get your ticket?” she asked.

“There was quite a line. I mean, an insane line,” I said. “I spent all day at the place. But I got it eventually.”

“You know, you could have just gotten your ticket online. I thought that's what you were going to do.”

“There's a webpage for that?” I asked.

“It's even in English. That's what all the foreigners do, I thought.” She was smiling, laughing.

“Your last boyfriend was in the Peace Corps here, so he probably knew a little bit more than I do.”

“True,” she said.

“What's the website?”

“E-kvytok.com.ua,” she said. “You should use that. You can charge to your credit card too.”

“Ah,” I said. “Thanks. Good to know for next time. Anyways, I've got to get going.” We hugged again. I wanted to hold her longer, but it seemed it would be awkward to do so outside the planetarium.

“I'll see you in Kiev then,” she said, smiling. “We've got a lot to do there. Go to that shisha place you were talking about, and that gay club I was talking about.” We left each other, like two planets that were momentarily aligned continuing on their orbit, rocketing towards the sun at different speeds.

I went to the squat. Andrei was already there, cleaning the place and making pizzas. He worked there for Dasha as a kind of club operator, keeping everything clean and making food for dinner. I liked these little communal life that I kept running across, from Kharkiv to Berlin. They gave me confidence in human existence that I didn't have in the overbearing world of the corporations. Granted, they were in nature parasitic, relying on the products and services of corporations in order to exist. If everyone were aware of what freedoms could be had outside of the corporate sphere, then there would be no comforts left. I'm not saying that in communes nobody works – everybody works and at times, much harder. But their work seems all that much more satisfactory. Even in traveling, I find myself cleaning dishes, picking things up, cooking, performing accordion and trying to make life easier for those I'm staying with. I don't consider these things work, but they are. They're all services that cost a person time, or money, if the person pays another to do such. All of economics runs off of this exchange principal of labor – a principal I was still working off of, even using couchsurfing. Labor, however, doesn't have to be demeaning or degrading; it can be fulfilling. There are certainly those in the modern system that feel they have a fulfilling position – and they do. Maybe even, it is better to live that way. But I'm not so lucky to be one of those that finds happiness in slavery.

My new roommate in Kiev, Sasha, called me. “Shawn, where are you? We have been waiting here at the apartment for you.”

“I thought you said that you wouldn't be home on Thursday, so to come on Friday, yeah?”

“No, we said on the 5^th,” he said. “It is the 5^th now. Shawn, you see, the problem is that we are going to Kharkiv on Friday night.”

“Well, what time does your train get in?” I asked.

“It gets in at 11:30 at night,” he said. That meant the train got in after I left.

“Are there any other roommates?”

“There is Steve, the American, but the problem is that Saturday is Orthodox Christmas and he is very religious, so probably he will be gone all day.”

“Oh,” I said.

“So how are you going to get the key? Can you get here tomorrow?”

“I'll see what I can do.” I hung up the phone, somewhat saddened. I was hoping to party all night with the crew at the squat and then to leave the next day. I voiced my problem and thoughts out loud to Andrei, “Maybe I could stay with you guys for a couple of drinks, then go off and get a train for tonight. Or I could get a later train for tomorrow night.” I decided to try the first idea and if that failed, then the second. I waited a little while until a reasonable time to go, thinking that if I was able to change the tickets, then I could just wait at the station or at a nearby coffee shop. At the squat, people kept coming in. First Tasha, then Dima with a large smile, Misha with a striped sweater. They kept coming. They were gathering to play pub trivia.

I returned to the train station, this time with all of my luggage, which I had worked down to being just my accordion and my Soviet Red Army pack. I knew the routine now. I had to avoid, at all cost, the regular ticket desks for Ukrainians. I first looked for the international desk, it was already closed. Then I went the information desk and asked about the trains leaving. Tonight's train was already booked. But there was a train coming through at one and another at one thirty. I weighed my options and then called Sasha back.

“Look, would it be possible to just meet you here in Kharkiv?” I asked. “Then I could get the key from you when you get here and I could take the next train out.”

“Yes, of course, that is possible,” he said. In truth, I had to repeat this a few times, so that my voice was clear over the din of the train station, with the constant conversations and mechanical announcements being broadcast through the air. After we agreed on the drop, I went to the Ukrainian ticket lines, knowing that I was going to be waiting for another hour while the people back at the squat continued on their own party.

While I stood in line, another old person who couldn't read Ukrainian asked me if this was the right line. “I guess,” I told her back. “It seems to me they're always the wrong line, so they all must be the right one, yeah?” She looked back at me as though I were talking nonsense.

The minutes turned into half hours and the half hours turned into hours. But I was glad for two things, that at least I wasn't constantly switching lines because the clerks were going on breaks, like the problem I had the day before. Also, I wasn't in Georgia where no line existed, since Georgians are incapable of the concept of waiting for one's own turn. In Georgia, even when you talk to a bank teller, Georgians try to jump ahead of you by addressing the bank teller while you have already begun discussing your business. “Waiting is for other people,” one Georgian told me once.

I had to go to the restroom. The lady in front of me promised to save my position. I raced across the train station to the only men's restroom, ran past the stern looking babushka with the broom and used the urinal. When I made it back, some ten minutes later, I noticed the line had barely moved.

When I at last got to the front of the line, I told the clerk, “I bought the wrong ticket. Can I exchange it for the train that leaves tomorrow at midnight?”

“I can give you a refund here, but you'll have to go to the office outside to buy next day tickets. We sell only today's tickets here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, of course,” I told her, while telling myself, “I understand that this whole ticketing system is bullshit.” It was a surprise to me that the entire train system seemed pretty efficient – the trains were always on the dot in timing and they were fairly comfortable. But for the ticketing! I left with my money back in my hand and made it back to the squat.