Ukrainian Food: meat, grease, and sour cream

One major way in which the United States differs from the rest of the world is in its lack of a national cuisine. There are a few patently American dishes, like hotdogs, boiled peanuts and corn bread, but nearly every other dish is a hybridized form of some other nation’s culinary fare. French fries are Belgian, pizza is Italian, fried chicken is West African, and hamburgers are [allegedly] German- from Hamburg. Not to mention Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and Thai, which have also found their way into our national culinary culture. Of course, we are a nation of immigrants, so it’s perfectly sensible to be this way
In Eastern Europe, however, national cuisine is still a defining characteristic, as defining even as language. Ukrainians eat Ukrainian food every day, for every meal, and have little desire to broaden their tastes. Ethnic food has hardly taken off. You can find an odd assortment of Italian and Japanese restaurants in the cities, but there is little beyond that. In Moscow, a city of over 10 million people (larger than New York), there were only 2 or 3 Indian restaurants. I have only seen one in Kiev (a city of around 6 million).
I have been living here for nearly a month and have eaten nothing but Ukrainian food. Every day I wake up to a Ukrainian breakfast, go to a Ukrainian cafeteria for lunch, and come home to a Ukrainian dinner. If I go out to dinner, it is to a Ukrainian restaurant.
There is no real breakfast food here, so the morning meals vary from day to day. Some days breakfast is fatty sliced sausage or cheese laid over thickly buttered bread. Fried eggs are popular, though they never fully cook the egg white so it is a bit like eating cold snot. Some days it will be thick sausages that taste like bologna, other days it will be hot-dogs and pickles. One morning I was given salmon patties and gretchka, or buckwheat. The safest dish is kasha, which is basically just slightly sweetened oatmeal.
If breakfast did not pack on enough calories from fat, then lunch certainly does the trick. The first course is usually a salad, but do not let that confuse you. Salad here means a few vegetables to go with the mayonnaise. Borsch, a bright pink soup made from beets and cabbage, is a staple and is delicious with a dollop of sour cream. Then come potatoes and stroganoff or maybe fried cutlet. Finally, a serving of vereneki, or dumplings, with more sour cream on top. I usually wash it all down with a glass of chilled berry tea, or compote.
Dinners are a somewhat lighter affair, consisting of soup and some kind of meat entrée. Potato patties stuffed with ground beef, ground pork cutlets with onion, ground fish patties, or dumplings are typical. If eating at a restaurant, I wash all of this down with a liter of beer.
The other day I walked into the kitchen to find my host mother preparing food. She had a big bowl of slimy dark meat that she was about to fry with onions. Fearing for the worse, I asked her what kind of meat it was. She smiled and said “pechonka,” or liver! I flatly refused to eat it in spite of her protests and insistence that it was “vkusno,” or tasty.
Even though it is usually over-salted, bland, greasy, fattening, starchy, and reheated in the microwave, I have been enjoying the food. The extra calories are absolutely necessary in the extreme cold, even if you can feel your blood running thicker.

Freezing Arctic Weather and Pick Pockets

This is the absolute coldest time of year- right in the heart of winter- and the temperature creeps down into the -20’s during the daytime. In this kind of weather you can feel the boogers in your nose freeze when you breathe. When I walk to the metro after taking my morning shower, my hair freezes. Coming out of the metro I am engulfed in a huge cloud of steam as the heat coming through the doors instantly vaporizes the frigid air.
Enormous icicles dangle from porches and from the tops of buildings. Some days the sidewalks are blocked off to let workers clean the roofs and knock the ice down. I hear from the Ukrainians that people are killed every year by falling icicles. The other day I picked an enormous one from a low hanging building. It weighed about 20 pounds and was more than three feet long. I can imagine what it would do to a person if it fell on them from three stories up.
Although it is as cold as the center of hell (think Dante’s hell) the weather has been beautiful. Every day has been sunny and bright without a cloud in the sky. It’s too bad it’s too cold to go on walks.
It is so cold here that my classes were cancelled for the week. Only my economics classes though, not the language ones. I guess Ukrainians can’t handle the cold the way Russians can.

Today the French traveller fella’ and I were planning to go cross country skiing, even if it meant battling the frost. I stepped into the crowded metro and was bumped into by some guy. I felt something move in my back pocket, and when I reached back and patted myself my wallet was gone. The metro was moving at this point and there were three guys standing close to me who were all likely suspects. I grabbed the guy closest to me and started feeling his pockets, but there was nothing. He even opened his bag to show me that it was empty. There was another greasy Euro-trash acne-scarred guy who I confronted, and then some other guy in a black hat who was acting suspiciously unaware.
Basically, the wallet was gone. The first guy was probably the guy who grabbed it out of my pocket. He then probably passed it off to one of those other guys, but how was I going the prove that? I decided to try to follow the guy in the black hat and so John Christoff and I got off the train. The guy in the black hat disappeared in the crowd and the other guys on the train were long gone.
They didn’t get that much: only 200 griven ($25), a few 1$ bills (useless here) and an assortment of small bills from Ghana and Lithuania. But, now my driver’s license, library card, gym card, student i.d., and my 50% off coupon for the Ukrainian cafeteria are all gone. It’s frustrating and inconvenient, but everything is replaceable.
After being robbed at machete point in Ghana, I can’t complain too much.

Expats

Expatriates are a unique breed of people and consistently prove to be more interesting than the general population. There is some extraordinary grit in the expat soul, some insatiable restlessness that pushes them along to greater adventures. They straddle the border of madness and eccentricity, living lives outside of the cultural box that they were born in. They can’t really be said to belong to any nation, to be bound to any country, culture, or people. They are global citizens, so to speak, as they hop from country to country and continent-to-continent, living and working.
This quirkiness usually makes for an altogether charming and friendly person. The Americans and Western Europeans who I have met here in Kiev and also in Russia, Estonia, and Ghana are like characters out of books.
Living in a foreign country, you are part audience and part actor. You spend a lot of time observing the locals and marveling at the strange ways in which they conduct their daily lives. It’s like being Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas present: you can watch the people and see how they live, but cannot interact. At first you are caught off guard, especially when they start babbling at you in their foreign tongues and you have no clue what it is they are intending to communicate. It feels like being on a different planet at first. But then you start to notice that when the locals interact with one another they are dropping recognizable emotional cues. Whatever that guy just said to that girl, she is obviously smitten; whatever happened today, the woman on the metro is just ready to get home. You can see things in people’s faces that language need not express.
With time, the strange scenes take on a feeling of normalcy and you start to notice yourself assimilating. Of course, you never become like the locals, but the strange babble they speak starts to take on meaning and you are even able to babble back. You start to feel like you are an actor in the drama and another one of the people making the city operate.
I am studying at a language school here in Kiev called NovaMova and it attracts people from all over the world trying to learn Russian.
People come to NovaMova for a few weeks at a time or a few months, as in my case. Most people come here alone, so everyone is always very open to making friends. I always make sure to talk to the newcomers (although, I am a newcomer myself) and make them feel welcome by inviting them to lunch or something. In this way, we have made a giant entourage that always goes out together to bars and other social activities.
Everyone has some story to tell. I met one British guy who lives in Geneva working for the United Nations. He had been sent as a translator to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which, for those who don’t know, is one of the worst places to ever go on the whole planet. He was sent as a translator to document war crimes and human rights violations.
Another guy here is a professional wind-surfer/sailor and extreme sportsmen. He works 4 months out of the year during the summer season, and spends the other 8 months travelling and learning languages. He was a GreenPeace activist and was shot at with tear-gas canisters while protesting in the West Bank.
Then there is another guy who is a professional traveller as far as I can tell. He is French but lives in Singapore, and has been to almost every far-flung region of the earth. He was telling me about sailing around Antarctica, hiking through the Himalayas in winter, trekking through the wild mountains of Tajikistan (at the border of Afghanistan), riding over snowy peaks on an old Soviet helicopter in Kazakhstan, sightseeing in Yemen and Eritrea, and crossing the Sahara on foot from Senegal through Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia. He also toured North Korea and Madagascar.
One of our good friends from Switzerland, Lorraine, just left with her boyfriend, Paddi, to take the Trans-Siberian railway. They will be heading from Kiev to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and then across the vast Russian wilderness past the Ural Mountains and through Siberia. At Lake Baikal they will catch a southbound train and go through Mongolia into China. The train ends at Beijing, and from there I think they will probably travel around Southeast Asia.
Several of my good friends here have studied in Central Asia- in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan- and that has really fueled my desire to visit. So, if it works out, next stop Kyrgyzstan!
There are a lot of good folks here and I am really enjoying myself.

Underground Monk Mummies

Saturday is excursion day and I was running late. I ran up the escalators and out of Aresenalna station 25 minutes after the meeting time. After being angrily pelted by a few snowballs we were on our way to the Kievo-Pecherska Lavra, a huge and (apparently) very famous monastery.
Passing under the impressive 12th century archway we entered the monastic compound. The snow was falling thickly by this time and had covered the trees and roofs of the buildings. The golden domes shone brilliantly against the white of the snow. The icons with their inhuman proportions and oddly rendered joints stood in their grottoes and made the whole scene feel very Russian.
Although I am in Ukraine, Kiev may as well be a Russian city. Most everyone speaks Russian as their first language, though all advertising is done in Ukrainian. The monastery was Russian Orthodox and part of the Moscow “diocese” (if that’s what it’s called in the Orthodox church).
The Lavra is known for its underground caves where the holy relics of monks are buried. I was expecting to walk through an earthen tomb with open gravesites in the walls where centuries old corpses were decomposing and the skeletal remains of the monks sat in piles. But, as we made our way down into the caves I found that this was not the case.
Because this is a very holy site in the Orthodox Church, we were all given candles to carry and told not to take any pictures. The candles must be held between the middle and ring fingers of the left hand, I didn’t remember to ask the significance.
Down a dark passageway lit only by our candles, we made our way into the caves. A traffic jam of believers was holding us up and as I got closer I saw that they were all bending down and kissing a glass coffin. Inside was the body of some saint covered by an ornate cloth with jewels and embroidery.
As we moved on past more glass coffins, I was surprised to see that a few of the bodies had their hands uncovered and folded across their chests. The skin on the hands was shriveled and brown but otherwise intact. Believers would stand over the little caskets and bend down to kiss the feet, then move and kiss the body and then the face. Some of them would sit their foreheads on the glass for about 15 seconds. It was a bit creepy really.
This got me thinking about Lenin. His body is preserved in a crystal sarcophagus in Moscow, and visiting his mausoleum is treated as a very solemn affair, similar to visiting the monks’ corpses. It is clear that Lenin’s preservation was done in the same spirit and that his body was meant to remain as a holy relic of sorts.
One of the guys on the expedition had converted to Russian Orthodoxy and had also taken part in kissing the coffins and crossing himself before icons the whole time we were there. So, I directed all of my church questions to him. I asked how the saints’ bodies were preserved and why they weren’t decomposing. He said, “because they’re saints,” though I suspect there is some sort of embalming technique.
Someone asked our tour guide about the monks that lived here in the monastery and how one would go about joining. She explained that this monastery was very important and very rich and that not just anyone could sign up to be a monk here. She told us that the monks here drove Porsche’s and Mercedes and wore Gucci and Prada; she said that many of them came from family money.
That put a bad taste in my mouth.
“Daddy, I’m bored, can I become a monk?”
“Sure, son, whatever you like.”
Anyway, the monastery was beautiful and everything, but like most religious sites—the Vatican, these Russian monasteries, etc.—it felt like it was built more to the glory of political elites than to the glory of God.

Крещения

January 19th is a holiday in the Orthodox tradition that commemorates the baptism of Jesus. On this day all of the waters become holy and believers wade out naked into the rivers and lakes in a ritualistic freezing bath. Many of them then proceed to drink copiously to warm themselves and become stumblingly drunk.
Here in Kiev, the city was abuzz with talk of the holiday. Especially for us foreigners, every Ukrainian I know was asking me if I knew of the holiday and if I would swim. My host mother had told me the night before that she would be staying up until midnight so that she could fill a few water bottles from her sink, which she usually doesn’t drink from without first filtering. She said that at midnight, the earth would bloom as the water became blessed. Of course, she must have been speaking metaphorically, because nothing blooms this time of year in the sub-zero temperatures.
One of the guys who works at the school told me that he had gone swimming that morning and he seemed awfully proud of it. The teachers were all discussing the holiday in class and I heard once again how all of the waters were indeed sacrosanct today. I also learned that it was impossible to get sick from swimming in the freezing water—like, actually impossible. I didn’t know if people were just kidding around about all of this, like maybe how we pretend to believe in ghosts on Halloween and Santa Claus at Christmas. But, the more I asked about it the more I came to understand that this was not a holiday story for fun; people were under the real impression that the water possessed some holy quality.
Something I have noticed here in Eastern Europe is that mysticism and superstition is still very much alive. Those same holiday traditions that we take as entertaining remnants and observe as a matter of convention are taken seriously here. Even in daily life people are more superstitious.
Ever the skeptic, I was on the lookout for any signs of the divine all day and decided to join up with some friends to go swim that evening.
After my morning shower in the blessed water I felt my usual self. I washed down my breakfast of hotdogs and pickles with tea, which should have been blessed as well I assume. With an excessively full day ahead of me, an edge of stress was mounting. By mid-afternoon I was fully flustered as I rushed to get to class and made it thirty minutes late and then had to leave early to meet with the swimming group.
A large group had assembled in the computer room of the language school. I put on my bathing suit under my boxers, long johns, and pants and we set off. I had forgotten to bring a towel and had also forgotten my slippers. I had walked around earlier trying to buy a pair but decided against paying $6 for them—big mistake.
The 12 of us set off on the metro and arrived at “Gidropark.” By this time the sun had set and the temperature had dropped to about -10 celsius. We walked down towards the river where a large crowd had amassed. As we came closer I had the unpleasant sight of several grown men running out of the water completely naked, penises a-flopping for all to see.
Down on the bank I started to undress. I didn’t realize how biting the cold was until I took off my shirt and felt the wind blow right through the tissue, fat, and muscle of my chest. I took off one shoe and put my foot down on the snow-covered sand. In the time it took to take off the other shoe, my toes had gone completely numb. Everyone else was undressing and we got together for a group photo.
Me and two others were set to go on the count of three. Running to the water, one of the other guys slipped on the ice and slid in on his back. I ran in and submerged myself, too numb already to feel much additional shock from the cold. I didn’t feel like spending too much time in the freezing filthy water of the Dnieper, so I hopped back out. It was probably warmer in the water, especially with the wind chill, and I was jumping up and down trying to swish all of the water off of me with my hands. I begged a towel from one of the other guys after he’d already dried off, though it didn’t do much good.
Toes and feet had become painfully cold, legs were too numb to feel, and everything else felt like it had just experienced an electric shock. The hair on my head had already frozen into little hedgehog needles. Although they were covered in sand and wet, I shoved my feet down into my boots without my socks on to try to get some relief. The buttons on my shirt were difficult to work as my fingers had become arthritic with the frost. I had to get my wet bathing suit off but was in no position to amble about in the dark looking for a good spot to change. So, I grabbed a towel—which was abnormally small—and tried to cover myself up. There simply was not enough fabric, so I just turned around, covered my front, and pulled the suit down. There I was in all of my pride, standing naked on the frozen banks of the Dnieper!
Dressed again and filthy from the sand, we made our way back to the metro. My bathing suit had frozen completely in the form of my legs. On the sidewalk we ran into a number of other swimmers who were now stumbling so drunkenly that one of them fell right into one of the girls I was with. I noticed that one of the drunk swimmers was carrying a beeswax candle, the kind that are always sold in the Orthodox churches here.
Back on the subway I was feeling anything but blessed. Sensation was starting to circulate back into my extremities. My toes were painfully sore and I thought I may have gotten some mild frostbite. My hair started to thaw under my hat.
At the bar afterwards we all sat and merrily passed around the cameras looking at pictures from the swim. After a few rounds of drinks I think I started to feel the holiness of the day flowing down deep into my tummy, filling me with a radiant and blooming glow. With new friends around and big anticipation for new and wonderful adventures, I think I finally began to understand what made this holiday so special.

First Impressions of Kiev

Today I ventured into downtown Kiev to try to locate my school and to buy a 3G modem thing so that I can have internet. I took the metro into the center and walked around a bit.
I’m excited to meet some people here so that I can have someone to explore with. It looks like there is tons to do in Kiev, so now to find some people to do it with!
I miss home and friends a bit, though the emotions are not running nearly as high as they were last time. The first two weeks in Moscow were pretty lonely and miserable as I sat around the hostel with nothing to do but dwell on how much I missed my girlfriend and stuff. I remember calling home on Skype and talking to Mom and Dad; they said I looked like I was about to cry. I remember wanting to come home and thinking that this was a huge mistake.
This time around I am feeling really great. The visit to Moscow really boosted my spirits as almost every one of my good friends came out to see me. It’s funny to think that I only knew those kids for one semester and yet, they all mean the world to me. Maybe it’s because when I was there, everything was running in slow motion with the newness and excitement so that these new friendships at almost at once became deeply rooted. My emotional intensity was heightened too, so it made all of the connections feel really strong. I don’t know how to explain it, but those kids are some of my best friends and I feel closer to them than most people I’ve met at Clemson.
This time I’m hitting the ground running. I think I’ll look into joining a gym tomorrow and also into getting a camera so that I can start making some videos. The Russian is already coming along great just from speaking with my host. I am surprised at how well I understand her: even if I don’t know the words, the context is enough to put things together. My mind just fills in the gaps. This is how language is learned naturally.
All things bode well.