Blini, Booze, and Bears, oh my!

In this installment of my grand adventures: The Trip East!

Several of us Fulbrighters in Western Ukraine were pondering how much we love the places we've been in that region, but since many people consider Ukraine to be a country divided, we felt it necessary to take it upon ourselves to venture out east of the Dniper. We wanted to go to Dnipropetrovsk and then to Kharkiv, but given my tight working schedule and the weird scheduling of Ukrainian trains, it was necessary to cut the trip down to just Kharkiv.


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Kharkiv is in Ukraine's northeast, quite near the Russian border.

On Thursday evening I took an express train to Kyiv, arriving around 10 pm. Joel, another Fulbrighter living in L'viv, and I both stayed that night at the home of Talia, a Fulbrighter who lives in Kyiv, and in the morning we all got up to meet Mike, another Kyiv Fulbrighter, for our InterCity Express trip to Kharkiv.

The InterCity Express trains are Ukraine's new attraction, a special class of high-speed trains that runs only between the biggest cities-- airplane-style seats, glass doors with touch-panels, nice bathrooms, wi-fi (although it rarely works), and LCD tvs with in-trip movies. I was really excited about them until Joel pointed out that they would basically be normal for Western Europe and America. Oh, how living in a developing country changes your perspective on things...

Anyway, we arrived in Kharkiv around 11 am. Our first impressions upon seeing Kharkiv: it was almost warm outside, and the train station was beautiful. We liked it already.

Like most of Kharkiv, this train station was beautiful, but SO Soviet-- these murals all glorified the working man :)

Then we wandered around the area near the train station for a bit before getting on the metro. Our first find in Kharkiv: this monument to the Soviet firefighters.

Then we realized that Kharkiv was not a small town, and to get anywhere it really was necessary to use the metro. We took it to the main square which, like every other main square in every other Ukrainian city, was called Ploshcha Svobody (Freedom Square). This square in Kharkiv is supposedly the second largest public square in the world, second only to Tienanmen Square. When we arrived they were setting up decorations for the Maslenitsa festival, which we hadn't even realized would be that weekend but resolved to come back for.

The best part was the Maslenitsa statue who appeared to be mirroring the pose of Lenin in the background :D

Lenin overlooked the square

Because we couldn't check in to our apartment until 1 pm, we decided to go have some lunch. We found a restaurant on the square which Talia eloquently described as "aggressively Ukrainian" and stopped in for a lunch of delicious (if greasy and heavy) Ukrainian food. I had deruni c m'yasom (potato pancakes stuffed with meat... I forgot it was Friday :\) and borshch. It was SO FILLING.

These salt and pepper shakers were just too cute.

After we had checked into our apartment, we all crashed for a few hours since none of us had really slept the night before. By the time we roused ourselves it was already nearing dinnertime, so we headed in the direction of Pushkinska Street, which had a real college-town atmosphere: lots of little boutiques and cute restaurants-- but for the Cyrillic signs, we may well have been in any American city. We stopped at a chocolate cafe to use the internet because all of the others still needed to turn in their abstracts for their presentations at the Fulbright retreat next month and they were due that day... I had already done mine, but I needed to do some lesson planning. After we were done there, we tried to go to the Pivo bar that Mike and Joel wanted to see, but they didn't have room for us and so we had dinner at a little Mediterranean bistro instead. I hadn't had hummus since Turkey-- it's so hard to find in Ukraine! So that was a welcome change of pace. After that, Talia and I both turned in because we were really tired, but the boys stayed out drinking.

The view down the street from our apartment... Uspensky Cathedral

On Saturday we all slept in, still worn out from our traveling. By the time we started to get up and moving, it was nearly noon. We headed up Vulnitsa Sumska (the main street) to get a general overview of the town on our way to the Maslenitsa festival.

Uspensky Cathedral in the daytime

 

Kharkiv's famous giant thermometer... which just tells you it was cold outside.

The two main transportation options in Ukraine :P

Ploshcha Konstitutsiyi, with the "Slava Ukraina" (Glory to Ukraine) statue in the foreground and the spires of the monastery complex in the background

Now THAT'S a paint job.

A theatre... I was intrigued by the fact that only the front had been repainted.

A bust of Gogol, a famous writer who lived in this region

Everything was so Soviet...

Only in Ukraine does your neighborhood Starbucks-ish coffee shop also have a full cocktail menu...

An ineresting theatre

Wedding photos at the... whatever that is.

And of course, no Ukrainian city would be complete without a statue of Shevchenko... this time, flawlessly merged with the Soviet glorification of the proletariat.

After about a mile walk, we made it back to Ploshcha Svobody, where the Maslenitsa festival was in full swing.

Maslenitsa is the Russian equivalent of Mardi Gras. Right before the start of Orthodox Lent, it is customary to celebrate by eating all the things which are forbidden during Lent: milk, eggs, butter. Since all of these foods are ingredients in blini (crepes), this is a very popular food.

It just wouldn't be a party without camel rides...

Young men in various stages of undress tried to climb this smooth pole to take one of the bags of goodies at the top. To me this seemed like just public humiliation.

It was chaos. Everywhere there was music and dancing, people in all kinds of crazy costumes, booths selling blini and shashlyk and other kinds of food.

Outdoor blini ovens!

These poor folk instrumentalists had to compete with the 5000 blasting stereos all around...

On the main stage, folk dancers! I absolutely adored their costumes. I want to make a coat like that.
They danced to all kinds of folk music, even at one point to the Tetris theme song (which, as you may or may not know, is originally a Russian folk song).

And this, my friends, is what it's all about. Blini with apricot jam. Mmmm

And chicken shashlyk!

Talia's candid shot of us eating lunch. I love how both of the boys are eyeing my food.

Because of the nature of the festival, chickens were one of the main symbols present here. There were statues of them everywhere.

...and apparently, someone tried to bring the chicken theme into the 21st century, by adding an Angry Bird!! Hahaha

Tradition + technology WIN.

Mmmm... pork

The four Fulbright travelers!

As we left the festival, we saw a guy actually get to the top of the pole!

We left the festival in midafternoon because we wanted to try to go see the art museum. Unfortunately we didn't know exactly where it was and didn't have our guidebook with us. So we wandered a bit, and asked for some directions. Then we found one gallery.

Yes, that is Putin in a spaceship with some otters. I don't get it either.

Unfortunately, this privately owned family gallery was closed until Thursday.

We decided that without the guidebook, we probably weren't going to find the museum. So we headed back to the apartment to grab our computers, then went to the sushi bar downstairs to use their internet and warm up for an hour or so.

This sushi bar had the coolest sugar cubes ever.

Then we headed back to the festival for the evening activities!

And cotton candy

And of course, more blini

Talia approves.

And then the real fun started.

You remember that weird clown-thing standing in front of Lenin?

This thing?

Well apparently on Maslenitsa, the Russians follow the pagan custom of burning a straw effigy of winter. So after a long and impressive dance with lit torches, the effigy was lit, and fireworks were set off. It was nothing short of epic.

I have a great video of this, but since it's so huge I can't upload it. Instead the pictures will have to suffice.

After the fireworks show we met up with Laura, a former Fulbrighter who lives in Kyiv, and after dinner at a delicious Georgian restaurant, we spent the evening at her apartment drinking and chatting.

The next morning, I got up early to go see the monastery complex by myself.

Uspensky Cathedral from close up

On the other side of Uspensky Cathedral, there was a park overlooking Blahoveshchensky Cathedral, otherwise known as the "Candy Cane Church."

I'll bet you can't guess why they call it that.

Then I headed over, across the park and down the street toward the monastery complex. I was completely incognito in my knitted hat and my Ukrainian coat and boots... I even knew how to cross myself the right way and when to do it. :)

The blue church on the right is Pokrovska church and the yellow one is Ozeyansky Church.

Services were going on in the yellow church. I ducked in for a few minutes, but it was too crowded to really get inside or to really experience the prayer itself.

The two churches are connected.

The bell tower

On the way back, I stopped for a few moments on Ploshcha Konstitutsiyi.

And a better view of the buildings across the street, which we'd walked under the day before.

This is officially The Most Soviet Building I Have Ever Seen.

I went back and met up with the others, and we set out in search of some lunch. First we tried the main market, Barabashova.

But it was mind-bogglingly big and we never did figure out where the food was. I *did* buy some peach hot cocoa, however, which was completely divine. Instead, we ended up heading back to grab some lunch on our way to the art museum... except we never did make it to the art museum, either. :(

After going back to the apartment, collecting our things, and checking out, the boys wanted to go to an Irish pub since it was St. Patrick's day. We tried both of the main ones in the city, though, and both were full.

Is it just me, or is this sign telling me to drink and drive?

Instead we went to a cafe/lounge for a cup of tea, then it was time to catch our train back to Kyiv, which got in around 11 pm and then I had to get up bright and early to catch my train back to Vinnytsia at 6:30 am (which I almost didn't make, because we thought the subway opened at 5:00 but really it didn't open until 5:30... but in the end I caught it with ten minutes to spare. Then slept the whole way home).

So, basically that was my crazy weekend in Kharkiv. Now I'll play myself out with pictures from various stations of the Kharkiv metro.