First Days in Kharkiv

From my personal journal

Friday, August 31, 2001

I’m here in the kitchen of my new apartment. I’ll explain in a minute why I’m writing from the kitchen. First let me say that Austrian and Tyrolean Airlines are great. With Tyrolean I was on a Canadair regional jet. I’d never been on a plane that small in my life. Entering into Kharkiv was an experience. We flew over lots of farms and gardens and then suddenly there was a landing strip. Immigration checked our passports at the bottom of the plane, then a bus took us to the airport terminal. The airport is about the size and feel of a small museum rather than an airport. I took a picture of it, but wish I had taken a picture of the sign that said “International arrivals”, whose entrance was nothing more than double brown wooden doors, like you’d expect to see in an apartment building entrance in New York or Philadelphia. There was a woman collecting health insurance money for foreign tourists. It took two other people to translate that I was invited by a state institution and didn’t need the insurance under the Ukrainian law. What a crazy law though! Then we were trying to get deklaratsia (customs declaration) forms in English, but they only had a few. So I read the information from someone else’s form in English, and answered the questions on the Ukrainian form. The same man who waved the plane to its stop (without orange lights and in a very dry manner) unloaded the bags onto a truck and helped me carry my bags through x-ray. Customs made me open up the big blue bag, and they kept asking if things were old or new. Then they let me go. My luggage in general really took a beating. The suitcase my brother gave me split down the side. Good thing I had that one piece of tape around it. The zipper on my wheeled carryon is stuck. And my favorite dress is stuck in the zipper of my big blue bag.

Two teachers from the university were there to meet me. We loaded up the university van (a Toyota minivan?) and the driver took us to my apartment. The woman who rented an apartment to last year’s English language fellow agreed to reduce her rent, and the apartment is closer to the university than another one they had found for me which was cheaper but a 10-minute trolleybus ride away. So they felt cost-wise and conveniencewise it would be better for me here. On the outside it looks like a slum. The roads are barely paved and have gaping potholes in them. Inside is nicer than I expected. Lots of furnishings and dishes and things. There’s no carpet, but there is some kind of linoleum. I had trouble working the lock on the inner door (every home has two doors with locks for security) but the landlady brought someone and he fixed it. Unfortunately, somehow the phone stopped working around the same time. At least I was able to get a call out to my aunt before that happened.

The teachers wanted to walk me to the supermarket once things seemed settled. I got on the elevator with one of them and the landlady and in trying to hold the door open for the second teacher, I accidentally hit the button to close it. I tried to hit another button, and my landlady got upset. Apparently, if you press too many buttons in the elevator at once, it stops between floors. (NB: If two people get on the elevator at the same time, it’s customary to ask where the other person is going so you can coordinate pressing the elevator buttons.)

There are lots of apartment buildings here and it’s easy to get lost. One of my landmarks to the main highway looks like a day care center. (Turns out it’s a small grocery shop). The other landmark is a disco club called Manhattan (written in Latin letters no less). There are lots of bread shops too, just called “Bread.” Sometimes it’s in Ukrainian, sometimes it’s in Russian. They showed me one store that just sold dairy products. Milk is safe to drink if it’s pasteurized. Lots of yogurt—people seem to like that in Europe.

We walked through the Metro to an open air market. We stopped at a currency exchange. The man wouldn’t take my 10 dollar bill because it was too old. So I gave him a 20, and he gave me 10 dollars worth of hryvnias and a crisp 10 dollar bill in change. That was the first time I’d ever gone to a currency exchange and gotten my own currency back. We all had a good laugh about that. The other laugh came at the supermarket. They check bags. When I walked in, they asked if I had chewing gum or cigarettes in my purse. Sure enough, I had an unopened carton of cigarettes. I had to check the cigarettes. Again, we all laughed. The really funny part is I don’t smoke; I brought them for emergencies (i.e. in case I have to bribe someone or barter with it).

Oh yeah, the kitchen: The plug at my desk is too small for my three-pronged adapter. The only place where it will work is the kitchen. So I use battery power in my bedroom, then take the computer to the kitchen. (NB: my landlady saw my laptop in the kitchen and brought me a plug adapter a few weeks later, so now I can use the computer at the desk in my bedroom.)

Saturday, September 1, 2001

I woke up this morning and found water on the floor of the toilet room. (It’s not a bathroom cuz the bath is in a separate room). My first instinct was to turn off the pipes, but after the past evening’s experiences, I was afraid the pipes would burst or something. That is, all of my intuitive or instinctive actions may not be appropriate (or may be totally inappropriate) for this environment.

Today was a nice day anyway. It was very warm out. A recent graduate of the university showed me around the city. She was wearing a suit and low heeled shoes. We took the Metro (50 kopeks one way) to the Universitet stop. The metro entrance runs on a sensor system. You drop the token in the slot and when the green arrow lights up you walk through. If you try to walk through before you get the green light, an alarm sounds and the doors close on you. This is the opposite of the Washington Metro, so I nearly lost 50 kopeks putting a token into a machine whose doors were closed (a sign that the entrance was broken). Luckily my guide warned me in time. Anyway, when we got out of the metro we walked to Kharkiv National University where the British Council office is. We saw the statue of Lenin and walked through Shevchenko Park past the zoo to a new monument to football players and the monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko. We walked down a major street (Symska) past a monument to the 1917 Revolution and the first McDonalds (Chicken McNuggets looks so cute in Cyrillic!) to a new monument celebrating 10 years of Ukrainian independence. I saw a big department store and two beautiful cathedrals. We also saw lots of weddings. It’s a tradition for the bride and groom after the ceremony to drive around to major monuments in the city, leave flowers, and take pictures. One bride had a pink wedding dress. The maid of honor and best man each wore a sash. They don’t have an entourage of bridesmaids and groomsmen as we do in the States. We walked back up another major street (Puskhinska) and took the metro back to the university. Even though it was Saturday, it was the first day of school. I saw many children and university students going to school in suits and fancy dresses. I also met the dean of my department here, which was a little embarrassing because I was wearing jeans and a sweater. My guide and I continued on to have lunch at a café downstairs. I had two sandwiches (a sandwich here is a slice of white bread with a piece of meat on top) and a Fanta.

After lunch, my guide showed me the Internet café. The keyboard at the Internet café is in American English. This was very good news. We walked back to my apartment from the café. My phone wasn’t working. I showed the girl the toilet and she shut off the water. Then we went to a neighbor’s. The girl called my landlady for me and chewed her out about the toilet. After she left I went to the Internet café, then walked around the market by myself. I browsed the supermarket more leisurely. Not much in the way of frozen food there. Meats looked kind of scary. The rabbit still had whiskers. At least I was able to find some ramen. Only 41 kopeks. But there are no vegetables in it. That would be good to buy to add into ramen. Now I’m wishing I’d brought chopsticks. Who said they wouldn’t be useful here?

Sunday, September 2, 2001

The landlady came this evening with a man to look at the toilet. The tank is cracked (it’s made of plastic); she and the man will come back Tuesday morning to fix it. In the mean time I’m supposed to pour water down the toilet with a bucket instead of flushing it. The telephone man will come Monday evening to finish fixing the telephone. It’s very frustrating trying to deal with all of this stuff without knowing the language. The landlady is really trying to get me to stay. She decided to take me downstairs to show me where to get water, and to find out the times when water is available. (You can’t drink water from the tap so some people buy potable water from a truck). (NB: I have never been at the right place at the right time to get this water. Instead I buy 5L bottles of Ordana spring water at a producti store). The landlady walked me to the corner where there is a small river, and there are two forests I can walk through (or ski through in the winter). I think I was more interested in the gas station, which looked abandoned to me. Then she showed me the “magazin” (store) where I can buy grains and oil. The ramen there was only 33 kopeks. And they had spaghetti, which the supermarket didn’t. She tried to get me to buy spaghetti and a ramen seasoning packet, but I explained I wanted the instant version. I’m still having a hard time trusting her, even after she showed me around and explained that her daughter is in college in Iowa, her husband left her after 20 years, and she is all alone. But the truth is I’m starting to feel comfortable in my apartment and everything is starting to feel familiar and I don’t want to change if I don’t have to.

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