Ukraine Bulletin # 3

Ukraine Bulletin #3
February 2, 2007

Greetings from Dnipropetrovsk!

We arrived yesterday, and are now ensconced in our lovely apartment. It is spacious, and it is equipped with everything, including dishes, soap, TV, trash bags, linens, towels – far more comfort than we expected. It has a security code at the outside door, and two locks on the very solid door. So, there is a lot to get used to. We have stairwell neighbors, but we have not met them yet. There is also a backyard with trees, sheds, an assortment of vents and heating conduits, a trash heap, and plenty of room to play. This morning, a snow lady appeared in the back yard, with wild stick hair. Pigeons and crows live in the trees, and the pigeons are fond of resting on our broad window sills. They are fun to watch. I suppose they believe we are vegetarians.

It has a large kitchen/den/dining room with natural light from two large windows. The bedroom is also large, and has a large window and a balcony looking out on the street – a quiet side street just a short block off a major city road. A desk is in the bedroom…..David colonized it right away.

We went shopping on our way “home” from the airport, so we have enough food to make simple meals, tea, coffee. Lyuda (“Luda”) kindly supplied us with good fresh bread. David is out to the market now, exercising his bargain hunting skills.

Winter is here, finally. After a very warm winter (or, as a new acquaintance, Olga, told us, “a never-ending autumn”), Ukraine got cold weather and snow for the last week. Today it is about 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit, with a biting wind gusting up to about 40 miles per hour. The airport had six inches of snow, and winds about 35 miles per hour. Not much plowing there, and none in the city at all. We felt right at home, brown slush, slick walkways, treacherously icy sidewalks, snow falling so thickly you couldn’t see anything, low cloud cover. Lyuda and her friend, Vladimir, met us and drove us home. Later Vladimir’s son, Dmitri, came with the landlord’s son (also Dmitri), to tell us about the washing machine, heat, and so on.

So, we are wearing all the winter gear we have, and can layer with more fleeces if we need to. And the “old lady’s” crampons I brought will come in handy! Olga, an English professor at the university, came today at noon and we walked downtown. We had lunch, and then rode back in a jitney bus – very cosy and convenient. The city has trams and busses, too, and, of course, is on a major rail line, so David is in public transit heaven.

On our way here, we stopped for three nights in Paris, and three nights in Vienna. Each city was exhilarating and enjoyable, but in totally different ways. We stayed with my French sister Cathie and her husband, son, and dog in Chaville, just outside Paris. We had a warm weekend of catching up, solving problems, chatting, and, of course, wonderful meals. Their living room has both a fireplace and an organ (her husband, Jean Paul, plays organ beautifully) so each evening was a fire, some organ music and white wine … we felt very spoiled.

In Vienna, we stayed in Hotel Regina, and walked all over the city, taking the occasional tram so David could get his transit addiction fix. We spent several hours in the incredible Kunst Historische museum. We devoted our time to the paintings, although, if we had weeks, we could not have seen everything in the museum. Vienna has 180 museums (can this be true?), including one of carriages, one of globes, one of Jewish life in Vienna, and one of Sigmund Freud’s house. Our visit coincided with Vienna’s ball season – 300 balls over a six-week period. There are several per night, and they occur on weekends and on weekdays! We also took a bus tour to the emperor’s summer palace – 1,400 rooms, an enormous cobbled yard, ornate buildings, spectacular gardens. Think Versailles. It includes also a zoo and several other attractions. It is a monument to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s opulence and glory. The rooms are on an enormous scale, with gilt everywhere. We went to the Volksoper (to see “Carmen”) the Statsoper (“Falstaff”) and to see an ice festival on the front lawn of the city hall. Colored lights, open air bars, restaurants where skaters entered with their skates on, ice rinks, a competitive curling match (complete with a beer hall), a skating path through the trees, music. Everyone was having a dandy time, and all ages were there. The festival continues night and day, so there are many kids there during the day, as well, learning to skate by leaning on a penguin who has handles coming out of his head where his “ears” should be.

I had a good time working on both French and German during these visits, and found my German was actually adequate for most situations. I read the Vienna newspapers! David improved in both languages, too. Now we are both adding Russian to the mix. Our first tutoring session is Sunday.

We don’t have high speed Internet at the apartment. There are nearby Internet cafes and clubs. We are exploring these. Our Vonage phone is not in service yet. These are all challenges that David is taking on. He hopes to solve them by mid-February. For now, we can be reached by telephone at our apartment (011 380 056 744 3001 – please don’t call after 2 p.m., Eastern Standard Time) or by e-mail at our regular e-mail address.

Thursday, February 8 we go to Kiev for a Fulbright orientation. We will also have little tours around the city and the US embassy there. Four heavy boxes of books have been shipped from Calais to the embassy. So we will check on the status of those boxes next weekend. We are not overly optimistic, however. We shipped a box by air and one by sea in late December (US postal service) and neither has arrived yet. I must say that we feel perfectly at home here – we are unpacked and all settled in. We are quickly figuring out the obvious things. The more subtle things may take a while to learn.

Hope you all are well.

Best,

Linda