The Second Part in a Series of Stories About Ukraine
"Touch My Monkey"
After the experience with the cab driver the night before, we needed to get more money. This meant that we needed to find an ATM, which should have been an easy task. However, the ATMs we found would not accept our cards Eventually, we found ourselves in an underground mall. I was attempting to pull money out of the machine when my two friends were accosted by two men; each man had a monkey on his shoulder--not a stuffed monkey, but a living, breathing, scurrying monkey. One of the men looked at Ethan and said, "Touch my monkey" (hence the name of the title of the story...see what I did there). Now, having been in Europe for long enough, the three of us knew that guys like this like to offer some novelty, acting really friendly, and then demand a ton of money for it. That being the case, Ethan said, "No thank you." However, after an exchange that was essentially just various re-phrasings of, "No really, touch my monkey," and "No, I really do not want to touch your monkey," the two men just put the monkeys on Ethan. Nick then pulled out his camera (after-all, it is not everyday you get to take a picture of Ethan with monkeys crawling all over him), which was exactly what the two men wanted: "Oh yes, take a picture, take a picture." At this point, there was no way to really back out of it, so Nick took the picture. The two men then put the monkeys on Nick and Ethan took a picture. Right on queue, the two men took back their monkeys and started demanding money. "You have pictures of our monkeys. You must pay." However, Nick and Ethan were broke. The two men then turned to me (I had just finished not getting anything from the ATM) and told me that I had to pay them for my friends pictures. I respectfully declined, as the ATM had not worked (not that I would have given them anything even if I had received money). They did not seem to understand (or they were just jack-wagons--likely the latter of the two) and continued to tell me that I owed them money. We were making our way out of the mall, but the two men continued to follow us. One of them pulled out his phone and said, "I am going to call security."
* * *
Now here is the lesson for anyone who will be travelling to Europe in the future: people such as these two, or the "gladiators" (they are dressed as Roman legionaries, actually--how they could not know that is beyond me) outside the Colosseum, or the men who give bird seed to people to attract pigeons to them for a picture (why anyone would want those disgusting birds anywhere near them is a mystery--unless it is to kick them) are often doing "business" illegally. I have seen a number of the pigeon feeders kicked out of the area that they are "working" in by police, and our professor said that most people have been wanting to make it illegal (rather than just frowned upon) for the "gladiators" to "work" outside the Colosseum and other historical sites. Essentially, what I am trying to say is, if you are somehow goaded into taking a picture with someone like the "gladiators", or someone puts bracelets and weird charm things on your wrist, or someone covers you with monkeys, you do not have to pay them, even if they demand money (or another one of their tricks, say they need money for food (they will take back whatever "free" stuff they gave you if you do not pay them)).
* * *
What I was thinking in my head when the guy said he was going to call security was, "Oh, you'll call security. And then get arrested or at least kicked out of the mall." What I said was, "Sorry, I have no money," and kept walking. Of course, these guys could not actually do anything to us, so they stopped following us as we came out of the underground mall and back to the surface of the Earth.
But wait, there's more.
Upon emerging into the world,within a minute actually, we were approached by a man in a panda suit (not a man with a living panda, just a man in a suit). He said to us (this to be read in a Barney voice), "Hey guys, come take a picture with me." Obviously, after dealing with the monkey men, we were not having any of it; Nick looked at the guy and said, "I don't speak English" (in perfect English, I might add). The panda man yelled an expletive at Nick, and we continued on our merry way.
The Monastery
Most of the first day (after dealing with monkeys and a panda) was spent at a Ukrainian Orthodox Monastery. It was massive, had a half-dozen or more churches, and some of the most beautiful religious art I have seen. We were also able to visit the crypt, which was very dark, aside from the candles people lit in honor of the deceased monks. It was very interesting.
We were at the monastery for the beginning of the Good Friday service and heard some incredible chanting. Ethan enjoyed this tremendously.
On a less holy note (although more holey), the bathrooms were very fitting for a monastery; similar to the monastic toilets in Bulgaria, the toilets were just holes in the ground without a seat. Very simple and monkish.
"Cheer Up, Smile, Nertz"
Ukraine's economy is not the best (but that is to be expected when recovering from occupation by the Soviet Union and being saddled with all the debts from cleaning up a huge nuclear disaster (Chernobyl)). This means that their currency is incredibly devalued. One dollar is worth 27 Ukrainian whatchamacallits. This took some getting used to ("A BigMac for 90 things?! Oh, that is just over 3 dollars. That's a good deal.) I have a Ukrainian penny, which is a little piece of metal that is worth .00037 dollars or three hundredths of an American penny. It is probably worth more to scrap it, but I will keep it as a souvenir.
KFC (Kyev Fried Chicken)
While in Ukraine, we stuck mostly to fast food restaurants to make getting food easier. One of the places we (meaning Ethan and I) went to was KFC (usually referred to as Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we decided that this was Kyev Fried Chicken). At Kyev Fried Chicken, we ordered tacos (because why not got tacos at a KFC in Ukraine); they came in at a whopping buck-and-a-half for two of them. They were small, but good, and they gave us another funny story.
A side-note: Nick could not have KFC, because he is gluten-free (or gluten-intolerant as he likes to say it (although, is he not technically gluten-free if he does not consume gluten?)). Now, why anyone would be intolerant of gluten is beyond me; it is just inconsiderate. To quote Ethan quoting something else, "there are two things I cannot stand: those people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch."
Other Interesting Notes
Three other interesting things that do not really fit in anywhere else:
1. Ukraine uses an entirely different alphabet: the Cyrillic alphabet.
2. All three of us agreed that the best wine we had was in Ukraine and made in Crimea. Sadly, we cannot give a name, as it was spelled in a different alphabet.
3. The Eastern Church celebrates Holy Week the week after the Western Church (I do not know the reason for this), so we actually celebrated Holy Week twice. In Ukraine, we had their Easter Bread, which is pretty much just bread with icing and sprinkles (they even served it to us on the plane ride back to Rome).
Coming Soon...Chernobyl
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