When in Ukraine experience

Currently I'm on an upperbunk in the platscart wagon of a train headed back to Odessa from a weekend in ivano franckof, surrounded by snoring Ukrainians. Down the aisle from me I can see my 6'7" Austrian friend Flor's feet hanging off the end of his bunk. We passed the 16 hour train ride the only way I know how, by drinking heavily. A few beers and vodka shots into the ride, people around us started to really open up and we began to practice our Russian. At one point a man brought to us a plastic bottle of clear liquid. Real ukranian moonshine. Of course I stepped up to the plate! Truly a once in a lifetime experience and I wasn't going to pass it up for something silly like fear of going blind. I would be lying if I said it wasn't that bad. It really really was that bad. Any who. I climbed up into my bed at 9:30.

The weekend overall was a great success, the apex of which was summitting the highest mountain in the Ukraine. There is something so empowering about climbing a mountain. It's like you accomplished the best thing you could. You can't go any higher. We even felt extra badass because wanting to go quickly we chose the "steep" route, and they weren't kidding. Numerous Ukrainians who were taking this route down as recommended by the woman at the park entrance (jokingly?) encouraged us to turn back. The carpathian mountains around us were breath taking and I really needed this sort of back to beauty release.

Another highlight of that day was our superb negotiating skills with our taxi driver. He drove us two hours out there (would have been a 4 hour bus ride had we made a bus in the morning). We then coerced him into driving us 6 km into the park on some really treacherous roads. We agreed that he would meet us in the same spot at 8 and gave him half his money (the equivilant of 50 usd). He also gave us his "documents" as collateral. It was an amazing soviet Id from 1980. We could tell he was a genuinely helpful guy who was also making a ton of money off us. We really liked him. We even took up his offer to take us to a nearby town with some of the popular sights of the area including a museum of intricate decorated Easter eggs the next day. When he rolled in in the morning he had his 12 year old son with him and he spent the day as our personal tour guide. He even gave me his phone number in case I ever came back. Good guy.

I also found out the answer to "what's the worst that can happen?" when pointing to something random in a menu you can't understand. In this region people really spoke ukranian which is pretty different from Russian and made many things difficult on our trip, menus definately being the most notable. I couldn't decide and thought fuck it, I'll take whatever and picked something cheap, sola. The waitress repeated my order without any hint of amusement so what I ordered couldn't have been that bad. Wrong. What was brought to me was a plate full of thin white slices of something that at first glance resembled fish and whole cloves of garlic. Ugh. But it didn't smell like fish, and it didn't really feel like meat. It was greasy and hard to pull apart. It didn't really taste like anything at all, but reminded me of eating butter a little. Cheese? Nope. The Austrian figured it out upon tasting. "I tink tis is fet". Oh my god! Yup! Fat! Turns out the guide book actually said that sola was something only available and beloved in Ukraine so I said your welcome to everyone for bringing this cultural experience to them, but a rolly polly puppy enjoyed the meal later.

-- Post From My iPod