Finally...Lenin!

Saturday


Woke up on Saturday morning and went to the dining room for breakfast. More fried food. I just couldn’t do it. I felt badly for Tonya, but I just could not force myself to eat and of this. Whatever happened to fruit, cereal, or toast?

We walked to the metro, walking hurriedly past a pack of wild dogs that started going crazy about something right after we passd them. Not fun.

 We went into this church that we passed. Many of the churches are full, and many of the women are running around cleaning the insides of the churches, ostensibly for Easter. Outside, a group of people were selling pussy willos, popular at Easter bc evidently it is the first thing that blooms here.

We got confused on the metro but eventually figured it out and arrived at Universytet. We came out of the station and I found myself finally staring at Lenin.

I hope I get to see you in your casket in Moscow before I leave in June.

I have wanted to find a Lenin statue the entire time I’ve been here. Given that I am living in the pro-Europe, nationalistic western part of Ukraine, this has not been easy. In the west they were all torn down. In Chernivtsi, Andriy’s father evidently helped lead the students in a protest against the USSR and was instrumental in bringing down the Lenin statue. I walked around in search of a cup of coffee. I had wanted to go visit Parizh Café, a funky French café that I realized was Paris Café when the man who was adding money on my Life cell phones said it out loud.

Paris café was cute and bohemian. I liked being there but my stomach was bothering me. Too much fried crap in my body.

We walked around and I noticed that many of the stores had a decent sense of style.

We came upon a McDonalds. McDonalds is always such a lively place in Ukraine. They love it here. It is considered a fairly hip place and fits much higher on the scale of places to eat than it does in America. It is also always very, very crowded. 

The McDrive!

We walked through this park, pass the theater, which is evidently something to see inside and on the walk I noticed the unusual number of buildings with the Soviet hammer and sicle. Khrkov was the first capital of Soviet Ukraine.

I popped into a few stores along the way (including a Sisley) to visit some churches. I walked first to the Pokrovska Monastery, with a church built in 1689.

Then I walked across the river to the Blahoveshchensky Cathedral…the dome is similar to Hagia Sophia. I liked the stripes, as it was something different. The Uspensky Cathedral is the last church pictured. It was behind me as we descended the steps and crossed the river towards Blahoveshchensky. I liked it.

On the way back to town we stopped at the rynok/market. I bought a purple pysanky because I wanted to have one from eastern Ukraine. It was 6 UAH/about 80 US cents. Nice souvenir from Kharkiv.

Earlier in the day, I passed Puzata Haza, one of the most popular national chain restaurants in Ukraine. I couldn’t believe I recognized it when I passed it, given that it was written in Cyrillic, of course. It is a stolovy/cafeteria style traditional food. I decided to have dinner there. It was great…borscht, varynky with potatoes, a pompushki, and sauerkraut. Then we bought some food for the train ride: more oranges and bananas for me, and a bunch of random things … a bag of caramel filled mini-croissants and a poppy seed bread thing. Have I mentioned the ntional obsession with poppy seeds? Ukrainians love them, and when they utilize them in their cooking, they really utilize them. None of this sprinkling of a few poppy seeds in a lemon flavored muffin. They will make bread rolls and pancakes so full of poppy seeds you could fill 3-4 tablespoons. I like poppy seeds, but I have realized that I only like them in small doses, like in a lemon poppy seed muffin.

We returned to the dorm and packed. The train was scheduled to leave at 11:38PM and it was nice to have a bit of downtime before we had to leave for the vogzol. We did the usual second class, buy all 4 couchettes in the compartment and lock the compartment door. Except this time the lock had been removed from the door. Not cool. We were going to be on this train from 11:38PM until 4:03PM the next day. I was planning to pass much of the time sleeping, which is not a comfortable thing to do if you can’t lock the door, although people do it here all the time. Luckily, my companion rigged the door with the Pacsafe. I highly recommend this thing if you travel a lot with your laptop, camera, passport, other valuables, etc. Google pacsafe and read about this compact, light, portable safe that you can attach to something sturdy in your room and, if you ever find yourself on a train with a door that doesn’t lock, you can use it to lock the door as well. Sweet dreams!