Berlin to Odessa Day 13: Cherche (черче)
From L'Viv to Kolomyia there were no Couchsurfers and the trip was more than 120 miles so we decided that we would be able to find some forest along the way and pitch our tent there to avoid cycling too much at night.
Well that's not quite what happened, but let me back up a few hours.
We had a pretty slow start to the morning, mostly due to the normal attachment we feel towards our wonderful hosts. We had a leisurely breakfast and chatted a bit. Then Olga brought us to a souvenir shop run by her mother because we had seen some formal Ukrainian shirts while passing by a wedding the day before and were quite taken by them.
Although we were recommended white ones because they are for more celebratory formal occasions (i.e. weddings), I was sure I couldn't keep something like that clean.
We said our goodbyes and headed off.
The countryside is vast and beautiful. It extends further into the horizon than in Poland, which was dotted with little towns. Some of the fields here are enormous, and the hills are still rolling.
We did come across one scene while passing through a village and stopping to buy phone credit. Two extremely drunk men who were falling down into the grass (one looked like he had messed up his nose, probably by falling) decided to amble over to their car and get in. The one who did not have a broken nose (we'll just assume he was less drunk) tried, unsuccessfully, for about 5 minutes to get into his car. I told Graham we should probably wait since if this guy was about to drive, we should be behind him.
He then calls to a little girl who is sitting in the back seat for help. She was maybe 5 or 6. She had to roll down the window so he could fiddle around inside to find out how to open the door. He then proceeded to get in, take the girl on his lap, and have her steer as they went off into the rolling landscape. They only seemed to stall twice and swerve off to the side of the road while going down the first hill. All we could do was stare in shock, and then congratulate ourselves for having enough common sense to have stayed back. We did not see the car for the rest of the 25 or so miles we bikes during the rest of the day.
To preface this next part, I want to be clear that while my Ukrainian has infinitely improved (from 0) in the two days since I've been here - due fully in part to Marta, Olga, and Andrie - it is still almost as far away as you can get from comprehensive.
Before leaving L'Viv, I had our couchsurfers write down something for me in Ukrainian to help us for a night without our dear couchsurfers that we have come to rely on:
Дай боже. ми подорожуємо на ровері. можна зупинитися з наметом (полатка) у вашому подвірі?
Which translates to: "Hello and may God bless you. We are traveling by bike, would it be alright if we put up our tent in your yard?"
This was more of a security idea since camping by the side of the road is not unheard of, but carries certain risks like being accosted by Ukrainian gangsters (this didn't seem likely but we can stay on the safe side for now).
Aside from that, Here is a list of everything I know (sorry in advance for any misspellings):
As the sun was going down, we decided to call it a day and try to see if someone would let us stay in their yard. I stammered through the text written above by our hosts in L'Viv to try to ask someone sitting by the side of the road if we could put our tent in her yard. Fortunately (even in cyrillic) I made myself understood, but the woman said no and told us to go to the next village, 6 kilometers away. She also said about 2 minutes worth of stuff in between of which the only thing I understood was "Jesus statue" and "school."
So we biked along until we found the Jesus statue and I decided to go into a store to try and buy some food for the evening. I think I make a pretty big scene when I go in anywhere after having been on my bike. Everyone who was in the process of taking shots of vodka turned and started asking me questions. None of which I understood but I thought of trying to take advantage of this drunken forthrightness by rattling off my tent-in-your-yard spiel. Two men immediately said no, and one immediately said yes, drank a large glass full of vodka, and motioned for me to follow him. From this moment on, I understood close to nothing for the rest of the evening. Here is what happened:
I went through all of my Ukrainian vocabulary in roughly 15 seconds, although he was happy that I thought he had nice eyes. When he found out I was American, he pulled out his cell phone and called someone, all while speaking to me in Ukrainian. I thought it was clear and we could sleep in his yard but he kept asking me questions, to which I simply answered in the affirmative without knowing what it was. There seemed to be some confusion over where we would sleep. He handed me the phone and I said "Hello?"
"Hello? Yes?"
I said, "Um, can I help you? Or...can you help me?"
The voice said "You are American?"
Me: "Yes"
Voice: "I come there"
-click
We were shown to a garden behind a house - really an ideal place to put a tent, it was perfect. The man however, was quite drunk and continued to ask us questions. Despite both of us shrugging our shoulders, we still answered yes to all of his questions. Every time we did so he would either hug is close to him, shake our hands or kiss the top of our heads in an outpouring of emotion possibly due to the fact that we seemed to be aligning with him on every issue he raised with us.
During this line of questioning, a man came into the yard dressed in a suit and introduced himself in extremely broken but understandable English as the mayor. He then pulled out an American passport and showed me how he too was American. This was the voice on the other end of the phone, although it arose many questions, not least of which was where he got the passport (it looked quite new). He didn't seem to understand when I asked him what the first man had wanted and told us we could sleep in his house instead of the yard if we wanted. We said this would be ok but we didn't want to disrespect the man who said he would host us first and that we could stay in the yard, it was comfortable enough. This seemed to ignite some competition over who would host us because the next thing we knew, we were being ushered inside the first man's house into a room and given soup, dinner, and a bed.
There are 6 people in this house, him, his wife, their daughter and her husband, and two grandchildren who are extremely cute and cried when told they could not stay in our room with us overnight (at least I'm pretty sure that's what was said, but 3 and 4 year olds are easier to understand than drunken ramblings).
Tomorrow we should be back to normal Couchsurfing, but never without stories to tell.
Well that's not quite what happened, but let me back up a few hours.
We had a pretty slow start to the morning, mostly due to the normal attachment we feel towards our wonderful hosts. We had a leisurely breakfast and chatted a bit. Then Olga brought us to a souvenir shop run by her mother because we had seen some formal Ukrainian shirts while passing by a wedding the day before and were quite taken by them.
Although we were recommended white ones because they are for more celebratory formal occasions (i.e. weddings), I was sure I couldn't keep something like that clean.
We said our goodbyes and headed off.
 |
| Green and expansive Ukrainian landscape |
We did come across one scene while passing through a village and stopping to buy phone credit. Two extremely drunk men who were falling down into the grass (one looked like he had messed up his nose, probably by falling) decided to amble over to their car and get in. The one who did not have a broken nose (we'll just assume he was less drunk) tried, unsuccessfully, for about 5 minutes to get into his car. I told Graham we should probably wait since if this guy was about to drive, we should be behind him.
He then calls to a little girl who is sitting in the back seat for help. She was maybe 5 or 6. She had to roll down the window so he could fiddle around inside to find out how to open the door. He then proceeded to get in, take the girl on his lap, and have her steer as they went off into the rolling landscape. They only seemed to stall twice and swerve off to the side of the road while going down the first hill. All we could do was stare in shock, and then congratulate ourselves for having enough common sense to have stayed back. We did not see the car for the rest of the 25 or so miles we bikes during the rest of the day.
To preface this next part, I want to be clear that while my Ukrainian has infinitely improved (from 0) in the two days since I've been here - due fully in part to Marta, Olga, and Andrie - it is still almost as far away as you can get from comprehensive.
Before leaving L'Viv, I had our couchsurfers write down something for me in Ukrainian to help us for a night without our dear couchsurfers that we have come to rely on:
Дай боже. ми подорожуємо на ровері. можна зупинитися з наметом (полатка) у вашому подвірі?
Which translates to: "Hello and may God bless you. We are traveling by bike, would it be alright if we put up our tent in your yard?"
This was more of a security idea since camping by the side of the road is not unheard of, but carries certain risks like being accosted by Ukrainian gangsters (this didn't seem likely but we can stay on the safe side for now).
Aside from that, Here is a list of everything I know (sorry in advance for any misspellings):
- Hello - пре вийт (pre viet)
- Thank you - діако ио (dyakoo yo)
- You're welcome - прошо (prosho)
- Excuse me - ве бач (ve batch)
- You have nice eyes (this is a continuation from Poland) - те маіш гарний оче (te maish harnnye oche)
- Nice to meet you - пре іемно позна иометіс (pre yemno pozna yometis)
- Good - добре (Dobre)
As the sun was going down, we decided to call it a day and try to see if someone would let us stay in their yard. I stammered through the text written above by our hosts in L'Viv to try to ask someone sitting by the side of the road if we could put our tent in her yard. Fortunately (even in cyrillic) I made myself understood, but the woman said no and told us to go to the next village, 6 kilometers away. She also said about 2 minutes worth of stuff in between of which the only thing I understood was "Jesus statue" and "school."
So we biked along until we found the Jesus statue and I decided to go into a store to try and buy some food for the evening. I think I make a pretty big scene when I go in anywhere after having been on my bike. Everyone who was in the process of taking shots of vodka turned and started asking me questions. None of which I understood but I thought of trying to take advantage of this drunken forthrightness by rattling off my tent-in-your-yard spiel. Two men immediately said no, and one immediately said yes, drank a large glass full of vodka, and motioned for me to follow him. From this moment on, I understood close to nothing for the rest of the evening. Here is what happened:
I went through all of my Ukrainian vocabulary in roughly 15 seconds, although he was happy that I thought he had nice eyes. When he found out I was American, he pulled out his cell phone and called someone, all while speaking to me in Ukrainian. I thought it was clear and we could sleep in his yard but he kept asking me questions, to which I simply answered in the affirmative without knowing what it was. There seemed to be some confusion over where we would sleep. He handed me the phone and I said "Hello?"
"Hello? Yes?"
I said, "Um, can I help you? Or...can you help me?"
The voice said "You are American?"
Me: "Yes"
Voice: "I come there"
-click
We were shown to a garden behind a house - really an ideal place to put a tent, it was perfect. The man however, was quite drunk and continued to ask us questions. Despite both of us shrugging our shoulders, we still answered yes to all of his questions. Every time we did so he would either hug is close to him, shake our hands or kiss the top of our heads in an outpouring of emotion possibly due to the fact that we seemed to be aligning with him on every issue he raised with us.
During this line of questioning, a man came into the yard dressed in a suit and introduced himself in extremely broken but understandable English as the mayor. He then pulled out an American passport and showed me how he too was American. This was the voice on the other end of the phone, although it arose many questions, not least of which was where he got the passport (it looked quite new). He didn't seem to understand when I asked him what the first man had wanted and told us we could sleep in his house instead of the yard if we wanted. We said this would be ok but we didn't want to disrespect the man who said he would host us first and that we could stay in the yard, it was comfortable enough. This seemed to ignite some competition over who would host us because the next thing we knew, we were being ushered inside the first man's house into a room and given soup, dinner, and a bed.
There are 6 people in this house, him, his wife, their daughter and her husband, and two grandchildren who are extremely cute and cried when told they could not stay in our room with us overnight (at least I'm pretty sure that's what was said, but 3 and 4 year olds are easier to understand than drunken ramblings).
Tomorrow we should be back to normal Couchsurfing, but never without stories to tell.
Position:Ukraine
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