5 THINGS THAT STILL
NEED IMPROVEMENT HERE
1.
Bathrooms. There are still places in Ukraine,
new and old, that have those porcelain holes in the floor and stink to high
heaven. I will not stand for it. ;) I
now have a 5-star rating system for Ukrainian bathrooms. If it’s a hole in the floor, it gets 0
stars. I add one star each for: a bowl (which may or may not have a seat);
toilet paper, soap, and something to dry my hands with. I take away half a point if the soap or
towel is communal. The fifth star is
for disposable toilet seat covers. (Yes, they do exist in Ukraine.) So, for example, the bathroom at an internet
café in Odessa got 1 ½ stars (bowl
plus communal soap). The public bathroom
in Old Town Kamyanets-Podilsky gets 3.75 stars because you have to get your
toilet paper ration from the attendant before you go in. The express train between Kyiv and Kharkiv
has a 5-star bathroom. The best
bathroom in Ukraine,
though, is at Buffalo 99, an American restaurant in Odessa. As my colleague Kitty pointed out, not only
does it have a bowl, soap, towels, and toilet seat covers, there are
illustrations for the uninitiated on how to use a toilet seat cover.
2.
Scheduling and Planning. Those people who have waited for me
to finalize plans to come visit know that making plans is not my forte
either. Maybe that is just a reflection
of my true Ukrainian roots. But here in
Ukraine, lack
of scheduling and planning is not an exception, it’s a way of life. At schools and universities, holidays and
exams are scheduled no more than three weeks in advance, and generally only a
few days in advance. So even though
March 8 is a holiday every year, I didn’t know whether I’d have Monday off
until the Wednesday before. Unofficial
events can be even worse. I once
planned to give a presentation and got a call at the exact time the
presentation was supposed to start that the presentation was being
cancelled. I’ve gone to teach a class
and walked into the classroom to find another teacher there because the program
director forgot that he’d scheduled me to come. The last two examples I’ve learned to accept as more free time
for me, and I’ve learned to get the Embassy list of holiday schedules so that I
can be prepared for possible holidays, but not knowing when the school year
will end still drives me batty.
3.
Travel headaches. Whoever said “getting there is half
the fun” never traveled in Ukraine.
I prefer to say “getting there is half the adventure”. It’s still nothing like the stories I hear
about Southeast Asia or Argentina,
but there seem to be more discomforts than comforts here. Kyiv is a relatively small airport but it
still takes an hour to get through customs and passport control, and the rules
for how to get through seem to change every week. Flight schedules are limited, and if you have to take an
overnight train to the airport it’s even more limited. Trains are usually comfortable—if they’re
not sweltering hot or freezing cold or filled with a bunch of drunken men. The wait to buy tickets at certain stations
can be half an hour (which feels like 10 hours). And God help you if you waited in the wrong line for a
ticket! Trolleybuses, marshrutkas and
Metro trains are often overcrowded.
Ukrainians avoid opening windows on buses and marshrutkas on hot days
because that would create too much of a draft and it might make them sick. Most long distance buses look 30-50 years
old. Drivers pass each other on the
road in ways and at speeds that are hair-raising for the average American. And don’t even get me started on the stories
about crossing international borders in a train or bus.
That
doesn’t mean it’s impossible to travel in style. Like I said, the express train from Kyiv-Kharkiv is superb, and
there’s a “Grand Tour” train car from Kyiv to Lviv. I like the tea or coffee that is served on the trains for 60
kopeks in glasses with metal holders. And
there are many good, responsible, reliable drivers with decent cars.
4.
Service. Service in shops and stores is
deplorable. I can stand at a counter
for 5 minutes while the clerk reads a book or counts money without hearing so
much as a “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Many food shops still keep everything behind the counter so you either
have to put up with the wait for service, or go to another store.
Ukraine is
still a “here today, gone tomorrow” society.
While I can get everything I NEED, if I see something on the shelf I
like I have to buy it because it might not be there next week. Though it might come back a week after
that. But the clerks won’t know, and
they won’t apologize for not having it.
Maybe that is the vestige of a Soviet economy that was driven by supply
and not demand. But it still irks
me.
That said,
it’s not entirely bad. Restaurant
service, if you can get and keep the server’s attention, is pretty good. Servers are efficient and quiet. Also, at different stores and in the bazaars
you can sometimes find that one person who is really friendly and talkative,
and that you enjoy going to each week to do your business. I feel that way about the women who work at
the laundry service, and the women who make the food in the university café
downstairs. So it’s possible that to
get good service you just have to find people you can establish a relationship
with. And if you stay at high-end
hotels the people generally speak English and the service is of high quality.
5.
Corruption. As a foreigner, corruption doesn’t
touch my daily life directly. But it
still makes me sick to know that members of the Ukrainian parliament have
immunity from prosecution for crimes, and that they are given a 75,000 DOLLAR
budget for a car while pensioners have to wait in line three hours for 50
gryvnias. Some people barely have
enough to eat while the Verkhovna Rada has a digital voting system.
It also
shocks me every time when I hear stories from students about the level of
corruption in many phases of life. One
student said she wants to be a prison guard because they make a lot of money
from prisoners who bribe them for different things. Other students have told me that to get a good job you have to
pay the employer a lot of money in dollars.
Students who don’t want to study can simply pay the teacher to get a
passing grade. I try to ask them if
THEY will accept bribes in the future; if they won’t then there is hope that
the system will change. Some say they won’t,
some say they might.
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