Ukraine and Russia

We flew to Kiev where we spent the day before catching a train to our destination of Kharkov. That’s where they held the first communication workshop. We all stayed with families in town. I was with a family of three in the suburbs. There was Roma, Rosa and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Julie who spoke halting English. Whatever we were paying them to host us probably wasn’t much by our standards but I think it was a lot for them. Rosa seemed like she was trying to fatten me up.

For my first meal she gave me a huge bowl of soup; a plate of stew; a salad of cucumbers, tomato and onions; and bread. Then she offered me a bowl of special Ukranian soup called Borscht. For dinner there was a plate of potatoes, salad, fish and a dessert of cheese, yogurt and sugar. I was so full, I couldn’t eat the dessert.

I watched some of the Olympics with my hosts and I pulled out my pictures. Laura had sent me off with a mini album full. They loved them and thought Laura was very beautiful. Then they showed me some of their pictures. We talked a little about politics. Julie didn’t want the Soviet Union to break up but she wanted to go to America. Most of the Ukrainians weren’t too enamored by the political changes that were happening. The whole country was also enthralled with a Mexican soap opera. Julie told me she didn’t like it but she couldn’t stop watching it either.

I had a bad dream that night that fighting broke out where we were and I was trying to take pictures but everything was going wrong - my film jammed, I ran out of film, my cameras were breaking. I was wondering if it might come true. Breakfast was eggs, potato and salad, along with the ever-present bread and tea. She also offered me some more fish which I politely refused.

Roma took me down to the main square in town to look around. They said it was the largest square in Europe but I don’t think that was true. It is the largest in Ukraine. It was surrounded by the main hotel, the main university, the TV station, the former Communist headquarters and in the center was the ubiquitous statue of Lenin.

In the U.S., weddings are fairly private affairs. They seemed rather more public in Eastern Europe. We saw several every weekend and they were usually eager for us to help them celebrate.

One day we were walking along a thoroughfare in Kharkov when we saw a wedding party outside a restaurant. I went over with one of our girls to take pictures and they invited us to join them. We decided to hang out briefly. Although I don’t like alcohol, I took the opportunity to try a small sip of Vodka.

The next day, our team went to a restaurant for dinner where there was another wedding reception. I took some pictures and one of the fathers asked if I could send him some because they didn’t have a photographer. Of course there were no digital cameras in those days and with regular cameras, developing and printing were too expensive for them back then. He offered to pay me but I wouldn’t hear of it. He gave me a bottle of champagne instead. I had a couple of sips and the team took care of the rest. I did send them the pictures after we got back.

Our next destination was St. Petersburg, Russia. St. Petersburg was the imperial capital of Russia until the communists took over and moved it to Moscow, although it is still considered to be the cultural capital. It’s a beautiful city with numerous churches and palaces. Most everything had to be restored after World War II when the city was bombed out by the Germans. Its name had recently been changed back from its soviet-era name of Leningrad.

Our hotel was in the southern part of the city, quite a distance from the center, in the middle of numerous high rise apartments. We took bus tours into the city and to some surrounding grand summer estates like the Catherine Palace in Pushkin and Peterhof Palace, considered to be the Russian Versailles.

We also toured the Hermitage winter palace in the middle of St. Pete. which is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. Wandering around the streets we saw plenty of weddings. As Russia is known for its cultural arts we also had to attend some kind of show. We went to a cultural dance performance at the St. Petersburg Hotel Concert Hall right on the Neva River.

The ubiquitous Lenin statue


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