I visited my homeland of Ukraine from June 29th to July 28th this summer. It wasn’t so much for vacation, but because I needed to get a passport and it’s a really complex process which I won’t even go into. So without further ado, here’s a short summary of my long stay there.
On my trip to Ukraine, there were some things I liked and some things that ticked me off. Most people there are really friendly and hospitable. Every house we went to greeted us with a huge feast and great people. Kiev is beautiful and the historic buildings are well maintained.
My grandma and I with the Taras Bulba statue in Kiev.
Which reminds me of an interesting thing that happened in Kiev was that we were just walking on the street and a elderly Jewish woman carrying lots of shopping bags noticed that we were looking for something. Without us even asking her, she came up to us and asked if we were looking for something. We replied that we were looking for a bathroom. Without any hesitation she invited us to her home to use the bathroom. We were so surprised but gladly accepted. We not only got to use the bathroom in her home but we stayed there over an hour and drank tea and she told us about her family in New York and all kinds of stuff. She even offered us to eat but that was just too much.
I think that story really shows how great our Ukrainian people are.
A beautiful government building in the center of Kiev
Mykolaiv on the other hand is not doing so great. Our imbecilic government there has decided to partner up with beer companies and opened up hundreds if not thousands of walk-in bars where people sit 24hrs a day and drink while music is blaring at high decibels. Just in the area where my grandma lives there are at least 20 of them all in easy walking distance. Drinking is a really big problem in Ukraine, or at least almost everywhere I went. It’s so common to be walking along the street and see a guy with a bottle of piva (Russian for beer) in one hand and another one holding a cigarette.
Government building in Mykolaiv.
The roads in Mykolaiv are also pretty disgraceful. The same yamas (holes) that were once there are still there, residing with some new ones. Most of the manholes have missing covers. Driving on those roads must be a real joy, but it seems that the drivers there already know the exact coordinates of every single one and just drive around them. Traffic lights are scarce but at least there are zebra crossings in many places where the drivers usually stop to let people go. I say usually because a drunk may not see or care enough.
The buildings, even the government ones, are not well maintained in Mykolaiv. The story of how me an my mom ran around town getting stupid agreement or notary letters or whatever they are is really sad. The papers you need to get a passport really don’t make sense to me as the fact that you can’t do everything in one place like in any other country in the world or at least the other two I’ve lived in…
Lenin and City Hall
The historic center of Ukraine. I have a picture of myself with this marble sphere from 10 years ago.
But it also seems that the life for people in Mykolaiv is improving tremendously. Air-conditioners are becoming more commonplace for middle-class households as are new plastic windows (replacing the old wooden ones). Some new malls have also opened up in Mykolaiv. The biggest and best one is “Kisheny” which could rival any Wal-Mart in the US or Sainsbury’s in the UK.
A lot of new stores selling tech equipment have also opened up near my grandma’s house and people are buying new TVs, washing machines and electric hot-water heaters, something that was undreamed of in Mykolaiv. The first McDonald’s opened up in Mykolaiv a couple of years ago and it’s pretty nice. Ketchup’s not free though as I was surprised to learn when I asked the cashier for some.
Another city I visited while I was in Ukraine was the northern city of Kriminchuk. Kriminchuk is a much better city than Mykolaiv for sure. It’s cleaner, the roads are really good (they were actually repaving the road near your mom’s house), and I didn’t see a single one of those bars I was talking about earlier. The Dnieper river is beautiful to look at but I would never swim in it (it stinks and is polluted).
A relative’s dacha (summer house) that we visited in Kriminchuk
So that’s an extremely shortened version of a description of my trip. I had a 3-page long text document in which I ranted about Ukraine but it was lost when my computer crashed and it made Ukraine seem like a shit hole so I don’t even want to think about putting it out.
For more photos (about 170 more) go check out my Flickr set.
And for some culture shocks about Ukraine, read this.
