DINNER WITH THE DEPARTMENT
Late last week, the assistant dean of my department told me that teachers and administrators from the English department would be getting together to go to a café in celebration of Women’s Day (March 8). I was told the teachers would meet at 4:00 on Tuesday, March 5. I said I wanted to go, but I had a class at that time. I was told not to worry, that the last period of class would be cancelled so that teachers could attend this event. I thought it was odd to put a teachers’ social event ahead of classes, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to eat dinner and socialize with the staff, whom I never see outside of the 20 or 30 minutes between classes.
I met the assistant dean and two other teachers at the university at 3:30 p.m., and we took the Metro together to the restaurant. It was a small café that had a separate room (with its own locking coat rack) for a large party. There was a long table plus a short table arranged in a T-shape with beautiful silk tablecloths and place settings that included for each person a juice/water glass, a wine glass, and a shot glass. Many people in our room and in the main restaurant brought their own bottles of water, juice, wine or liquor to share with the group. I felt bad that I hadn’t brought anything, but my colleagues told me not to worry about it.
The appetizers were already on the table. There was a small platter with a small fish cut into pieces and covered with onion and lemon. My colleagues told me it was herring. I thought of my great-grandfather, who loved creamed herring, and wondered if he would be proud of me for eating pickled herring. It was delicious. Moreover, it was fresh. I don’t think I could touch pickled herring in a jar after eating it this way.
Another medium-sized platter (maybe 2 cups/500 grams worth?) was a salad of shredded beets, cabbage, and fish topped with green onions and mayonnaise. My colleagues told me this is called shuba. Some of my 5th year students had mentioned in their essays about New Year’s and Christmas that they ate shuba as one of their special holiday dishes. Although the word sounds to me like the name of a cat rather than food, the salad really was delicious. I couldn’t wait to tell my students I had tried it.
A large platter contained what looked like slices of meat sealed in a confit made from its own juice. I avoided trying any until a colleague offered me some. It was actually quite good; it tasted like thin tender strips of roast beef. Then I was told I had just eaten tongue. I was glad I found out AFTER I ate it, but since I liked it I ate some more. It was even better with red horseradish.
In addition, there were a few different kinds of salads in small fluted glass bowls that held maybe 1 1/4 cups (300 grams) each. From these small bowls I enjoyed: shredded carrots with pepper, garlic, and mayonnaise; shredded cabbage with cucumber and mayonnaise; diced crab sticks with corn and mayonnaise; and prunes (?) with carrots, raisins, and mayonnaise. Lettuce and tomatoes, the staples of an American salad, are not commonly used in Ukraine. But the Ukrainian salads were so tasty I didn’t miss the American variety. Not all of the bowls had their own spoons or forks, so people just dipped their own forks repeatedly into the salad bowls without care. It must be a European thing. And I must be adapting because I didn’t even get upset on the inside.
On top of this there were slices of white and dark bread, pickles, and tomatoes. And we hadn’t even gotten to the main course.
After noshing on the appetizers for a while, a couple of teachers offered to make toasts. For the first toast, a colleague poured cognac into my glass. (It’s not true French cognac, but a Ukrainian variety.) The cognac was good, better than vodka, but I didn’t realize it was 40% alcohol. Between that and the stuffy atmosphere in the room, I turned red very quickly.
I was asked to make toast number 4. The three toasts before mine were all in Russian, but I was allowed to speak in English. I began by saying that it was difficult to know what to say because I didn’t know what had been said before. That got a good laugh. I then said that in America it is a tradition to make a toast to a person, so I wanted to make a toast to my colleagues who welcomed me not only at their table, but at their university and in their country and by being so friendly and welcoming made it easier to do my job. They seemed to be touched by that.
There was a tape deck, and some of the teachers had brought tapes of dance music. They dragged me into a circle to dance with them. Some of them were obviously very dedicated to club dancing. I was quite surprised. Even my department head really got into it. I had to be careful not to laugh at the teacher doing the John Travolta dance move from “Pulp Fiction”. I was also amused when I heard an English language song called “Rah Rah Rasputin” on one tape. I knew the song because I had heard it in a high school social studies class, but was surprised that my colleagues also knew the song.
The main course, unlike the beautiful spread of appetizers, was a disappointment. The server kept messing up the order and giving people meat when they had asked for fish. She had to be sent back once to get the correct order. My fish dinner came last, a bland slice of baked fish with wedge cut fries and shredded carrots and cabbage (it seems to be a tradition to serve two vegetables with a dinner plate, and there is no choice in what those two vegetables are). I had actually ordered mashed potatoes, but I didn’t ask the server to take it back. I just decided the French fries looked really good and I would be happy with them. A similar problem occurred when I ordered coffee with ice cream, which I had seen on the dessert menu. I expected it to be ice cream with coffee in it (or vice versa). Instead, I was given a cup of coffee and an ice cream sundae. Not what I had ordered, but the sundae looked too good to send back. Six months ago I would have been really irritated by such a mistake. I would have felt a responsibility even to complain to teach the server and my colleagues a lesson about service. . It was one of my Ukrainian colleagues who had been to England who said that Ukraine still has to learn to change its mentality about good reliable service.
I offered to share some ice cream with one of my colleagues but she declined because she had been suffering lately from a sore throat. Her comment reflects a Ukrainian belief (not a superstition my colleagues inform me, but a truism) that having very cold foods or drinks will give you a sore throat.
The meal, excluding drinks and dessert, was 20 gryvnias (about 3.75 USD) per person. My dessert and coffee were an additional 6 gryvnias (a little over a dollar).
Four hours later it was time for me to go. I drank one more shot of cognac for the road with the teachers who hadn’t left yet. In the time I was there I counted 11 formal toasts (for which I took at least a sip of cognac or wine or in one case coffee), plus several simple toasts (a clink of a glass with a chug of a shot of vodka) done in small groups. The image I had been given about Ukrainians/Russians and their drinking was validated by my own eyes this evening. But my sense of self is changing. I remember sitting in an orientation session in Washington in August talking about how I was going to defend myself against pressure to drink a lot by saying I get sick after two drinks. Instead I find myself just quietly going with the flow. Self-analysis aside, though, this evening will definitely go down as one of my happy memories of my time in Ukraine.