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 7th, 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.
“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 7th, 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.
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