The day before coming to camp I had the privilege of going to Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine. The purpose of my excursion was to draw money from the bank because the bank that Peace Corps uses doesn’t have any branches in my town. I took the liberty to explore and enjoy the city. By the way, I did this all by myself. I was so proud of myself for pulling this off without any major problems.
Like Kiev, it has a metro system and the stations are beautiful. Here are some pictures:
I walked around the park near the University station for a bit and then went on a mission to find some shwarma. For my Philadelphian readers, shwarma here is not what you would find at Saad’s on 45th and Walnut. It’s not nearly as good or authentic. It’s simply a shwarma wrap and it’s usually just seasoned chicken with some assortment of vegetables topped with a garlic aioli. It’s about as ubiquitous in Ukrainian cities as funnel cake at an amusement park or boardwalk in America and just as rare to find outside of them. And it’s got the same kind of feel to it. When you’re there, you gotta have one. You just gotta. So with that in mind, you can understand, while I was walking around the city all I wanted was a shwarma and some beer afterwards to wash it down. And when I found it, oh it was heavenly. I almost got two. Actually, later I got another one.
At the metro station I was stopped by a cop. This was the second time that this has happened to me in Ukraine. We’d been warned that minority volunteers tend to get harassed more by the cops here. Luckily I had my ID card and things went smoothly. Here’s how it happened: I went to put my subway token in the slot and the one I happened to pick didn’t work so I stalled for a moment and went to the next one. In that short period when I was dumfounded I caught the attention of the cop on duty at that station and he pulled me to the side. I showed him my ID and he let me continue.
But before when I was in Kiev during training, I was stopped by a cop and didn’t have an ID (we weren’t issued our ID’s at that time and for one reason or another Peace Corps held onto our passports). But we had copies of our passports and so I showed him that. Of course he interrogated me and gave me a hard time for not having proper ID. I happened to be with Mike and Maggie, two of my cluster mates, who were ahead of me. When they saw that the cop was giving me trouble they came back to vouch for me that I was indeed a Peace Corps volunteer and had the right to be in Ukraine. The cop asked for their ID’s too. I think in this case we had power in numbers. I’m sure he didn’t want to cuff three of us. After a long and dramatic pause he let us go. If I’d been by myself it could’ve been a different story.
Walking in the city is fun but not as fun alone. After a couple hours and a couple beers later I decided to go back to Shevchenkove. At the bus station, I bought my ticket but thought the clerk said it was 16.50 gryven. So I sat waiting for change because I thought she was shorting me 3.50 gryvnia for I’d given her a 20. After a few seconds of an awkward staredown I let it go and walked away. I looked at the ticket and found that she meant 16:50 in time. I ended up waiting 2 hours at the station for my bus. There was a bus loading en route to Shevchenkove and I asked some of the people waiting in line if I was allowed to just go on it even though my ticket was for a later bus. They said that my ticket was for the latter and that I couldn’t go on the current bus. Now I realize they said that because of a conflict of interest. They wanted themselves to go on the bus. For you don’t have to have bought a ticket beforehand. It only guarantees a seat. I found this out when my bus had come that there were people paying for tickets right on the bus. It was yet another misunderstanding for the foreigner but at least I got home safely.
interesting... have you experienced any racism?
ReplyDelete