Blackberries from Kiev

M's postings from Kiev.
My first day in the Ukraine went pretty well. I landed at the airport and was met with lots of red tape trying to get through immigration--it took about an hour to go through two checks.
I was met at the airport by my driver who was there to take me to the hotel. His name is Yevganey and he is a former officer in the Russian Army. He left the Army because they were not getting paid regularly and it was low paying to begin with now. He now drives tourists around for a living. He likes the freedom they now have in the Ukraine since 1991 but I think he misses the old days when life was a bit easier. Today there are either very rich people or poor people without really much of a middle class.
My hotel is an ancient Soviet relic called Hotel Tourist. The room is remodeled so it is fine, but the elevator is ancient and I am up on the 20th floor. There is also a female attendant on each floor who holds the keys when you are away and keeps the floor tidy. She has a little desk rigjht by the elevator--must be a carryover job from Soviet times!
This afternoon the driver came back with a tour guide and I had a three hour tour of the city by car. There are lots of typical Soviet highrise apartments everywhere that are really ugly and crumbling, but there are also lots of beautiful Greek Orthodox churches and wonderfuly larger than life monuments to Russian/Ukranian friendship and to the Ukrainian independence.
The tour guides name is Yelena and she ia a former English teacher. She became a full-time guide about 20 years ago and got to travel all around the world as a translator for Soviet officials.
Tonight I took the subway (10 cents eac way) into the city center and had dinner at a Cossack themed restaurant. They were dressed in fancy costumes and had a little band singing and playing traditional folk songs. It was a little cheesy but still fun. I had Borscht (beet soup) and Chicken Kiev. For desert I had dumplings stuffed with cherries. All was very good.
When I got back to the hotel tonight I got the key for my room and started getting ready for bed. Then the phone rang and a woman with a thick English accent asked if I wanted a beautiful sex massage! I said nyet! (M did tell me this...)
Tomorrow I'm off with the driver and guide at 8am to try to find the town where Grandma was born. Its not called Heimthal anymore so we are having a little difficulty finding it but I think we will manage.

Day 2
I had a really successful day today. I found the village where Grandma was born! I wasn't too confident in the morning when we left the hotel at 8am. We were guessing on the area and spelling of the town. The driver had a map from the Internet that listed the town names in German before the first world war. We fouind a name that we thought was correct and headed off.
About two and a half hours into the journey I looked at the map and saw 'Heimtal' in a slightly different area on the map so we stopped the car and tried to pinpoint that on today's road map.
We headed off the main highway first on to a bumpy asphalt road which then turned into a gravel road and then in to a dirt road. We passed cows and geese in front of farm houses and also passed lots of people on horse and buggy. It was like stepping back in time.
Finally after having to stop several time to ask locals for directions, we turned on to a paved road and saw the sign marking 'Yasynivka' which is the current name of the town in the Roman alphabet. It looks very different in the Cyrilic alphabet!
The village had about 20 houses. Most seemed to have small plots of land behind them where people grow crops and raise animals. We stopped and the driver got out and spoke to one of the villagers for a while. He confirmed that the town was definitely called Heimtal previously. He told us about an old seminary down the road and also about another family down the road that might have more information.
We went and saw the ruins of the old Lutheran school and seminary. I took a few pictures.
Next we went to speak with the family that the villager had mentioned. We got very lucky! The man and his wife in their early 40's invited us into his house where he pulled out a newspaper article from 2002 that talked about the history of the town and how it had three different names over time. My guide translated the article which was in Ukranian. It confirmed what Grandma had told us.
In the late 1800's, Catherine the Great had given plots of land to Germans free of charge and without taxes for 50 years as she wanted more of her own to settle there in the Russian empire as she was German by birth. Later sometime around 1915 (can't remember the exact date), Tsar Nicholas II decided he didn't want the Germans there any more, so he plunderd the area, killed many, and exiled many more to Siberia. Then in 1917, Tsar Nicholas was overthrown and people were allowed to return home and Ukraine was a free country for almost a year with its own president until the Bolshevic revolution in 1918.
The dates really seemed to match up with Grandma's experience and it also helps to explain why Germans were in the Ukraine and why they got shipped to Siberia.
I took a photograph of the article. I don't think there was a photocopier anywhere nearby!
We then drove back to Kiev amd stopped at a roadside restaurant on the way back. I had a nice soup and some really good potato pancakes. The food was good and cost a total of $7 for soup, salad, a main course, and a glass of wine for two people! The only downside was they didn't have a restroom, only an outhouse with a hole in the floor out back! It was a little scarey!
We got back to the hotel at 6pm. It was a long day of lots of driving, but was well worth it! I was so glad that we actually found the village.
Tomorrow is sightseeing and shopping in Kiev.

Day 4 (not sure what happened to day 3)
My last morning in the Kiev was fairly uneventful. I took the subway into the city centre again to look for some souvenirs. I went to the State Department store which had lots of everyday items, but still looked like what you would expect of a communist era department store--dark and outdated looking inside with old creaky escalators. For some reason only the up escalators were working. The down escalators were blocked off and there were ladies sitting on chairs in front of the down escalators on each floor to make sure that no one went down them. Very strange. I couldn't find anything interesting there to buy so I went back to one of the churches I visited on Sunday and found a small watercolour print and some Ukrainian painted eggs. That was pretty much the extent of my shopping--not too much to buy there.
My trip home was a bit of a nightmare. I didn't think I was going to get out of the country! I arrived at the airport 2 hours ahead of my flight. There was an unruly queue at the main door to the airport. Everyone going in to the airport itself had to go through and metal detector and have their bags x-rayed. Inside the airport, it was chaos. I found a lane that I needed to be in for the 'nothing to declare' group. The line didn't move for 1/2 hour as the single customs official scrutinised documents, let others go through freely, and then walked away from the desk when he felt like it. Added to that there were four lines of people trying to merge into this one official. It was really like what you would expect in a third-world African country. It took over an hour to get through that line. Then I got in another to have my luggage x-rayed again before I went to the check-in counter. When I finally got to the check-in counter the queue there was at a standstill. I finally found out that their computers had crashed and they couldn't check anyone in. After waiting another 1/2 hour, they finally started to manually check people in with paper boarding passes and handwritten luggage tags--I wasn't too sure my luggage would make it. Next was another metal detector and x-ray of hand luggage. When I made it upstairs to the gates, they were just starting to board my plane! The plane ride home was uneventful and I was thankful to be back on British soil!
Overall, I was really thrilled that I could find where Grandma was born. That was definitely the highlight of the trip. Kiev itself is a beautiful city with lots of lovely churches to see. But, the constant fear of petty crime, the senseless bureaucracy, and the seemingly corrupt police/officials made it one of the more difficult places that I have ever visited. The Ukraine has quite a ways to go before being a hospitable tourist destination.