Where are Ron and Ellen?
Summer 2002
Thursday 29 August 2002
Afton, Virginia, USA
Dear Family and Friends,
Here in the Blue Ridge mountains, we had a day of slow steady rain yesterday, the first rain we've had in weeks. It certainly isn't enough to break the severe drought conditions in this part of the US, where rivers and ponds are drying up and wells are running dry, but it at least gave us a break and cooled off the temperatures a bit. And other parts of the world have flooding....
For those of you interested in family photos, I have recently revised and updated our Web collection. If you want to look at the photos, click here. (http://www.cfw.com/~renders/family_photos.html) While I was in Oregon I took some new photos of Steven and of his house, but the roll of film is still in the camera with about half left on it. Once I finish that (more pictures of grandchildren!) and develop it, I hope to have a few more photos to add.
I find it ironic that originally Ron didn't plan to go to Kiev, but has ended up spending 2 weeks there and loving it!
Love to all,
Hello from Kiev, Ukraine,
It is hard to believe that I have been in Kiev for two weeks! While it has certainly been a very different experience than the previous several weeks, I can not account for where the days have gone. And this was a city I was considering not visiting because I was afraid to visit by myself without speaking the language after hearing and reading about all the scams that are pulled on tourists, especially western ones.
Kira, a young graduate of William and Mary, and now a teacher at the Silk Road International School in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan introduced me to the city and the metro when we arrived together on the train from Lviv two weeks ago. Before she left for Lithuania, on the same day we arrived, she showed me around the old city, took me through the St. Sophia Cathedral complex and taught me how to use the metro, which is quite a challenge to navigate between the Russia/Ukrainian signs and the Lonely Planet guidebook. Kira was a most unusual and interesting person, traveling alone in Ukraine and the rest of eastern Europe and the part of the world that I call the "Stans". Now I know it is possible.
Khreshchatyk Street will always be my memory of Kiev, its wide 6 lanes, with a 30 foot wide sidewalk on the south side on the street level and another just as wide higher sidewalk above with landscaping in between. On the north side there is another sidewalk, more than 30 feet wide, but on part of it cars park. Frequently, and every weekend, the traffic is blocked from the road and the whole area becomes a major place for people to walk, meet, make music, parade, watch concerts, the fireworks, display the latest fashions, and just enjoy life in the city. Because the city is surrounded by huge complexes of high rise apartment buildings (what I call the communist architecture), there are millions of people within a short metro or bus or van ride of the downtown area, and it seems thousands of them are always walking along Khreshchatyk Street.
Two evenings there were rehearsals for the grand parade on Saturday to celebrate their Independence Day. On the day of the parade I managed to get between the various police and military lines and found myself in some kind of restricted area to watch the couple of thousand military troops from all of the various branches of the military with their different formal uniforms march by. There were several military bands also playing and marching. On Sat and Sun evenings there were significant fireworks, staggered through out the evening. Independence Plaza had a huge concert with thousands attending, and down the road was another, just as large, rock/popular music concert for the younger crowd. And along Khrehchatyk were numerous musicians, some with their own amplification systems, playing for smaller groups of people.
Looking for a travel agency listed in the Lonely Planet Guide, I found the address and the building had several businesses but not the travel agency. I noticed a sign on a door saying something like USAID, so I went in and asked for help. The secretary called the number listed in the guide to find out the new address. Ann, the manager of the office, heard the discussion in English, and came out and invited me into her office. She had recently moved here from Bulgaria. Somewhere in the conversation, the fact that I was traveling by bicycle came up and spread through the office, so when I left Ann's office another lady, Natalia, who worked for Ann, wanted to talk to me. She and her husband are bicyclists and have bicycled extensively in the Crimea area. The next day her husband Vadine, took me to the market to buy detailed maps of Odessa and the Crimea, and then took me home to see their travel pictures. It was a pleasure to see the four bicycles hanging on the wall in their small apartment. And this was one of my few visits to homes in Kiev, an experience that I always look forward to with pleasure.
The market Vadine took me to was well organized, permanent little booths, and larger than any market I have seen in Ukraine. I returned another day to shop. Also Vadine pointed out the Babyn Yar ravine where over 100,000 people (Jews, Gypsies and partisans) were killed by the Nazis. He said that they preferred to bicycle in the other part of the park, since it just didn't feel as good there.
Ann also invited me to a party on Friday night at Gary's home. He is a lawyer who works for Ann as well as teaches at three (I think) universities here. At the party I met a couple of his students who had won in an international competition of moot courts. They were quite sharp and spoke excellent English.
Ann, who got her graduate degree from UVA, is the project manager for Financial Markets International, one of the beltway bandits that has a contract with the FCC [I suspect Ron means the FTC - Federal Trade Commission, not the FCC - Federal Communications Commission] to consult with the Ukrainian government in setting up their capital market, like our stock exchange and Wall Street. Kathryn just graduated from UNC and won a scholarship to travel four months in Europe, and is returning to London to do an internship.
For the Independence celebration another road was blocked off for the sale of artwork and crafts, and on Sunday I went with Gary, Ann, and Kathryn. Ann was the big spender buying artwork, an antique spinning wheel and an icon. That evening Margaret and I went to a harpsichord concert in one of the churches and later walked through the St. Andrews Church complex, and the next day we went to the flower display that Tanya had showed me Friday and I bought some seeds and dried flower art under glass. There were flower exhibits from many different cities in Ukraine.
I met Tanya watching the rehearsal for the parade as she was watching her military brother. Tanya, 21, is an English teacher and gave me a tour around town for several hours one day, using metro, buses, vans, and walking a lot. Later in the evening she introduced me to her boy friend, 32, and he dropped me off on Khreshchatyk Street in his Mercedes. Zhanna, who I met on my bicycle trip through the mountains, also gave me a long tour on another day, including a boat ride along the river in the evening for the sunset. Vic, a retired guy who was born here and was looking up his relatives invited me to tour with him, but I choose to do email instead that day. There have been no shortage of people willing to give me tours around town, and I keep seeing new places and learning new things.
The days have been full of walking, touring, buses, vans, metros, museums, restaurants, music, conversation and miscommunications, with lots of little surprises like the wonderful couple playing a guitar and violin in an underground passage under Khreshchatyk Street where a crowd had stopped to listen, applaud, dance and throw money into the violin case. Other surprises included $.40 hot dogs and $1.60 broiled salmon in a Russian cafeteria. Some of the major attractions are the St. Sophia Cathedral complex, Podil, the historic district, St. Andrew's Church, and the Caves Monastery, which covers a very large area and could take more than a day to really tour. Looking at some of the old Orthodox Churches on the hill tops from a distance reminded me of Istanbul. With the river running down the middle of the city, it also reminded me of Prague and Budapest. The city is covered with trees, flowers and parks, another positive effect of the land use policies of the communist era.
Many an evening I sat with Kirt, Ken, Chad (Virginia) and Jeff, the military guys from the American Embassy, drinking beer and watching the parade of people walk by, at the street cafe on Khreshchatyk Street near the Cowboy Bar, where we usually moved later. Several evenings we were joined by three Vietnam vets, who were retired policemen now working in Bosnia and spending their vacation in Kiev.
All in all I enjoyed Kiev very much and would like to return again for a longer more relaxed visit some time in the future. I think it would be more pleasant when it is cooler, and probably beautiful in the winter. But I am also excited about getting on my bicycle again and heading for Odessa, another city that has always fascinated me.
Perhaps the next report will be from Odessa.
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Last updated: 7 September 2002