destruction ice / would suffice

Our couchsurfing hosts were busy for our first day in Kiev, so they directed us to a nice shisha bar hidden in a courtyard surrounded by imperious residential blocks. The center of Kiev is full of them, towering some five or six stories, built or restored after the Second World War and many painted in bright pastel colors, or left in the soft beige of stone, with statues of gargoyles and naked women, imitating the art that was there before the war devastated the city. Ukraine had not yet really recovered from the economic collapse of the fall of the Soviet Union, not like Baltic countries had. Those pastel paints had long faded and cracked, showing signs of soot, ash and age, yet the center city was still beautiful in its own somber way and there were plenty of signs of revival, new layers of paint covering the old. The outer neighborhoods were rows of the more typical Soviet block apartment style, canyons of morose and grey concrete, sharp and dark like the lives of the inhabitants, the light fading in the twilight of the eternally missing winter sun. The outer city reminded me of the neighborhoods of Tbilisi and Rustavi in Georgia that I had become accustomed to. My eyes fell to the dying trees and the gutters and the broken marble blocks under my feet, wet from the falling rain. I felt at home once again after my long travels. I was no longer in alien countries, but somewhere I could relate with, somewhere I was used to. Unlike Tbilisi though, Kiev was filled with an inordinate amount of sushi and shisha bars, chocolate shops and an inordinate amount of McDonald's. Life pulsed on the streets, people moved back and forth, even through the mist and rain, filling the cafes and bars. 

The Ukrainians themselves were hardly like the cloudy sky and cement blocks. When we first arrived, walking up the stairs of Alex’s apartment building, we passed people who said hello and smiled as I allowed them to pass around my bags and accordion. Just in Alex’s building alone, I got five more smiles than I got from nearly my entire time in Hungary – it was a warming difference. Budapest is generally a cleaner and more modern city than Kiev, but the people there were as opposite as their city as the Ukrainians were to Kiev. In fact, outside of the typically rude Soviet-style customer service, Ukrainians proved to me to be a very warm people. They packed the sidewalks, bracing their jackets from the cold. Musicians were at every metro and underground station, playing accordion or guitar and singing. 

Pavlos and I had spent our first day at the shisha bar, smoking and talking and loitering on the internet. The bar was called El Mate. At its door was a mural of Communist Cuban freedom fighters with the words, “El Cuba Libre” and a young Che Guevara holding up his fist. Down the stairs was a Cuban flag and the interior was decorated in bamboo and wood lattice-worked furniture. Inside were photographs of Che Guevara, striking different heroic poses and generally looking hairy and bad-ass, as he does. There we met the friendly hookah-preparer, Adriano. Adriano even prepared the shisha himself, mixing in the tobacco, fruits and molasses. He was an always smiling Arab from Lebanon whose dream was to have a Ukrainian wife and live in Canada. The next few days, Pavlos hung out with him a lot, hoping that Adriano could hook him up with some Ukrainian girls. In the meantime, Adriano was hoping that Pavlos could get him to Canada somehow. Maybe by making a few calls to his friends back there. “I know this pregnant girl who works in immigration,” Pavlos told him. “Maybe you two could hook up.”

After our time at the shisha bar, we left and met up with Alex and Katsia at their apartment. Pavlos cooked some of his classic Greek lentil soup. He had to replace the lentils with beans since he couldn’t find any, the grocery store selection being as diverse as a scene in the desert. The soup still came out flavorful. “It's a great vegetarian dish,” I said.

“No, it's vegan, not vegetarian,” Pavlos corrected me. “It has no animal products whatsoever.”

“I know what veganism is. This is still vegetarian. All vegan foods are vegetarian.”

“No, vegan products have no meat whatsoever. It's an old Greek Christian tradition.”

“It's an old Hindu tradition, to have no meat products whatsover. It was there first.”

“The Hindus didn't come until the 300s.”

“The rig vedas came around 1000 BC, it's hardly a new tradition. Anyways, it doesn't change the fact that all vegan food is vegetarian.”

“Vegetarian food includes eggs and dairy, this does not.”

“It doesn't matter. If it's vegan, it's vegetarian. You're just wanting to argue.”

“This conversation is over. I'm ending it now.” Pavlos put his foot down, placing a cold wall between us. It wasn't the first time.

“Oh, you're ending it? No, I'm ending it.” I meet ice with fire. Of course, either way, hell is just as nice.

“I'm ending it,” Pavlos retorted. This childish schism went on for some few minutes while our hosts played with their spoons, swirling them in the bean soup, both caught in silence as they uncomfortably observed this battle. In the end, Pavlos had his way and ended it and I grunted and grew silent. It wasn't the first or the last time that Pavlos wanted to completely ignore my input or refuse any ability for me to know what I'm talking about. He went on to explain all the glories of Greek olive oil for an hour or two.

The next day, I went to find the Russian Embassy. I walked across the city, spanning the broad valleys of the Soviet block apartments. I passed a protest marching around a building, holding up white signs with red hearts. The last prime minister had been arrested and imprisoned on corruption charges – a humorous charge considering the current prime minister and the crude oil-like consistency of corruption inherent in the Ukrainian system. Riot police were lined up along the streets surrounding the protest, stone-faced police officers in black armor, hands resting on the hilts of their black steel batons. It was a scene quite unlike the riot police I saw in Paris outside their Occupy Paris rally, where there the police were huddled in groups, drinking steaming coffee and joking with each other. But it was still a better site than in most rallies I’ve seen in America. Here the riot police were not confronting the crowds, where in America they typically form a wall around the protestors, waiting for someone to break the cold peace that exists between officer and civilian. The more time I spend in actual police states, the more I wonder about America and how close we’ve been becoming. I’ve been living in countries where people are regularly arrested for political activities and it saddens me to see Americans calling for the arrest of protesters in my own homeland. The freedom of speech and assembly is a dying right.

At the Russian embassy, I met the gatekeeper. That is to say, the guy who makes sure all the documents are in order. “You'll just have to copy this,” he said in Russian.

“Where?” I was afraid I'd have to leave the embassy and look for some hidden xerox shop.

“Just in that room there.”

When I had all the documents in order, I went into the visa application room, where the older lady gathered all my documents together and looked at them. “But do you have permission to stay in Ukraine longer than three months?”

“No, just the normal stamp. The US and Ukraine have a visa waiver agreement good for three months.”

“Without a permission, you have to wait two weeks, without your passport.”

“Okay, fine.”

“And also, you need an original copy of the invitation. You'll have to call this company's Moscow office for them to send it DHL. If you can get it to me by Friday, then you can get there by New Years.”

“Really? Do you really need it?” I said. “I've got a friend there I haven't seen in ages, he has a new family, I really need to visit him.”

“No, it is not allowed. These are the rules to get a visa in Ukraine. They cannot be changed.”

I left, somewhat resigned. It took the short walk to meet Pavlos at the sushi shop to restore my spirit. “They want the original invitation,” I told Pavlos. “It's stupid, they issued the original invitation – the Russian government in Moscow. Why can't a copy be good enough?” And then I set off to get the original document, having it sent to Alex's house, though we were to stay at another couchsurfers house soon after.