Sunday on the train to Kamyanets-Podilsky

I managed to head to sleep a little after 1AM and slept until 9:30, although I was cold so I didn’t really sleep that well. Finally at some point in the middle of the night I grabbed my black fleece and was able to sleep much better.

On the train ride, I made lists of everything in need to get done in the next few days before my family arrives and made some travel plans for when they are here. I also worked on my speeches for tomorrow, for a conference in Kyiv at the end of April and for the American Studies Conference in the Crimea in June.

At one point this woman kept coming over and repeating the word keechee. Finally, my companion recognized the word for cat. This woman thought her cat was in the compartment. He saw a small hole between the train compartments where the cat might have crawled. WHAT? I am not a cat person, and the thought of a cat in this tiny compartment, freaking out, with an elaborate lock on the door, freaked me out. I started having visions of my BFF Courtney in a van one summer night in Illinois, when she suddenly realized that there were cats that had crawled into the van she was driving. We thoroughly inspected the compartment. No cat, thank goodness.

Then, the train car woman kept coming over and, upon realizing that we couldn’t understand her at all, became increasingly exasperated. Evidently Ukraine has a daylight savings time, and we gained an hour, so the train ride was actually closer to 15.5 hours and not the expected 16.5. When we got off the train a bit bewildered, I still had no idea what was going on, so I asked the people, “Khmelniski?” They responded with tak, tak, taks, so I knew we were in the right place.

We promptly took a taxi for 300 UAH to Kamyanets-Podilsky, the town where I am speaking tomorrow. It took about an hour and a half. It was raining. When I arrived, I just wanted to take a shower. We ended up walking a few blocks around 7PM to go to Pizza Celentano, the closest restaurant. I had an individual pizza with chicken, corn, mushrooms, and red peppers. It was good and a nice change from Ukrainian food.

Oksana is picking me up at 10AM tomorrow. I will lecture at 10:35. No lecture on Tuesday, evidently, which will be nice. She is supposed to show us around the Old Town and the fortress here and the fortress in Khotyn. Ellie, one of the Americans who was with us in Kharkiv, sent us an advance copy a friend of her’s had just submitted to the Wall Street Journal that will run in the upcoming weekend edition of WSJ (April ¾). There is a section in the WSJ that features interesting places to visit around the world, and her friend had just coincidentally submitted an article about Kaymanets-Podilsky. Hopefully it will stop raining!