A series of stories from the trip to Ukraine with Nick and Ethan.
Getting There
Ukraine was the second part of Spring Break for Nick, Ethan, and I. We travelled there from Krakow Poland via a bus and two trains, totaling about 12 hours of travel. Originally, we were supposed to travel to Ukraine by two trains, but we were emailed a few weeks before Spring Break and told that there was work on the first train's line, so we had to take a bus first. On the day of travel, we were waiting at the bus station (it seemed like the appropriate place to wait for a bus), but we were not seeing any buses that were going to the city we were headed to. With about fifteen minutes until we were supposed to leave, we went up to the ladies at the ticket counter and were told to go to the train station. That did not make sense, but we rushed there to see if they could help. On the way there, I saw a sign that said "Rail Replacement Bus Service." That sounded right, so we started following signs in that direction. With about five minutes until our departure time, we ended up outside with a bunch of buses. The first one in line was headed to the correct city, thank goodness. But, as we approached, the driver pointed us down the line. Sure enough, down towards the end of the row of buses was another bus going to our city. We rushed over and showed the driver our ticket. He said (or rather communicated) that we were not supposed to be on his bus. Now we were panicking. We had minutes until we were supposed to leave and had been turned down by both drivers. We were about to rush back to the train station, when we saw two buses lined up in the street. We ran up to the first one, showed the driver the ticket, and were welcomed aboard with two minutes to spare.
The rest of the trip went smoothly, with one other funny incident. When we were on the train that would actually take us to Kyev, we had to go through Polish border security and Ukrainian border security. The Ukrainians were very kind to us, but, when they were leaving us, one of them called out, "Good luck," over his shoulder. Good luck. That is not what we wanted to hear, however, we decided that it was more of a 'break a leg' than a 'you have no chance;' he probably just did not know the connotation that 'good luck' can have in English. That was what we told ourselves anyways.
"50 Dollars"
Upon arriving in Kyev at about midnight, we left the train station. We wanted to find a taxi to take us to the place where we would meet our AirBnb host. That was no hard task, for as soon as we left the station, we were bombarded by cab drivers who wanted us (and everyone else) to ride with them. We found a place to look around, wanting a taxi that looked like an actual taxi, rather than some random guy with a car from the 90s. We found one, approached the driver, and showed him where we wanted to go. He said, "50 dollars," which we took to mean 50 Ukrainian dollars (I never actually learned how to pronounce the name of their currency--you can try if you'd like: Ukrainian hryvnia (rihv-nee-uh?) (I have no idea if what I am doing with these parentheses is grammatically legal, but it works in math)). We took the cab, and, upon arrival, discovered that he meant 50 US dollars (the equivalent of over 1300 rye-vin-ai-ay). This was an absolute rip-off (it was less than a ten minute cab ride and it would end up costing us less when we went to the airport almost an hour away), but we did not really have an argument against him. It was also late, we had been travelling for 12 hours, and none of us were in the mood to argue with a frustrated Ukrainian taxi driver. So we paid the 50 dollars worth of hurry-vee-nee-a and went on our way, although not entirely happy. (I am still confused as to why the driver would have assumed that we had 50 US dollars on us when we had just arrived in Ukraine via train. If it had been by plane, I could maybe understand, but we arrived by train--which means that we travelled from somewhere in Europe--so the chances of us having euros was pretty good, but the chances of us having dollars, not so much.
A Late Night Walk
After our taxi experience, we walked through a sketchy looking iron gate and past a guy (probably a little older than us) smoking a cigarette by a set of spiral stairs. The company we were renting our AirBnb from had a sign that said to go up the stairs, so we proceeded up them. The young guy followed us up and introduced himself (I do not recall his name, we will call him Yaroslav) and said that he would check us in. Yaroslav was very friendly and helpful, even going so far as to walk us to our AirBnb to make sure we found it and got in alright. He seemed somewhat confused as to why three American college students were in Ukraine, but he offered us advice and made small talk the whole way to the apartment.
It was a good thing that Yaroslav came with us. It was a somewhat confusing walk, involving a wall to climb (via stairs that were built in to the side) and another sketchy iron gate. The streets were also somewhat creepy, as it was not well lit and there was a lot of construction going on. However, we eventually made it to our room, ready to sleep.
Welcome to the Soviet Union (title to be read in a thick, Eastern European accent)
A few brief comments on our room. It was perfectly livable, but it was certainly an apartment from when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. It was very plain, had several spots on the wooden floor that were soft, a TV from the 90s at the earliest, and a washing machine that appeared to run on water from a filled bathtub. All-in-all, it was a wonderfully queer little place that we enjoyed staying in.
To Be Continued
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