Something I’ve been asked — both directly and tacitly — is how I can manage to get around in a country where I don’t know the language.  (Actually, I don’t know either language, which isn’t necessarily doubly hard, but it’s not half as easy either.)  The truth is that it is really not as bad as you would think.

A little dab will do ya
While I would love to have a full command of the Russian language — and if I get a little more diligent about using my Rosetta Stone software, that may someday be the case — knowing a few of the basics really helps a lot.  One of the most helpful things I did was to learn the Russian alphabet.  Even though we learn to speak English before we learn the alphabet, I wanted to be able to “read” (or at least sound out) the words being presented in my various learning tools.  I could have just stuck with learning things by ear, but I’m really glad I took the time upfront to learn the alphabet.

You’d be surprised how many similar words exist between English and Russian.  For example, “salad,” which in Russian is spelled “салат.”  This looks funny, but actually sounds like “shallot,” but with an “s” instead of an “sh.”  In other words, it almost sounds like “salad.”  Same thing for “soup” – “суп,” which is pronounced exactly the same way.  Moon is луна (“luna”), and just like everywhere else in the world, OK is “OK.”  So being able to read (however slowly) words often helped out a lot.

What helped even more, though, is knowing some key words and phrases, namely “please” and “thank you.”  A few others don’t hurt either, like “hello,” “good-bye” and “excuse me.”  I think it’s a truism for everywhere, but being polite can help defuse many a situation.  Plus I’ve heard — and this seems to be true — that people are more accepting of you and your failings if they at least see that you are trying to use their language, follow their customs, etc.  A huge goal for both of my trips was not to come off an an “ugly American,” and I think I did pretty well in that regard.

It also really helped that nearly everyone in Ukraine knows a little English; it is actually a required subject in schools these days.  Even so, you can’t expect a lot.  Imagine if you took a half-year of Spanish in the fourth or fifth grade, and then fifteen years later you were trying to communicate with a Spanish speaker.  How well do you think you’d fare?  Well, it’s about the same for most Ukrainians.  Plus with out of the way places like Mariupol, there just isn’t a lot of English-speaking traffic coming through, so people are definitely a little rusty but they are willing to try.

It’s in there somewhere
Something I noticed last year is that all my foreign language learning appears to get crammed into one part of my brain.  I came to this conclusion after, time and again, needing to say something and having the wrong language pop out of my mouth.  You’d think that language would be English, but as often as not it was Italian or German — and I don’t even speak those languages.  Apparently a little learning truly is a dangerous thing.  Still, it was rather amusing to be in a situation where I needed to say “excuse me” (in Russian, “извините”) and having the Italian “scusi” pop out.  Or when asking for water (“вода”) and saying “wasser” instead.  I’m really surprised I didn’t dredge up more Spanish; I think I know a little more of than and I hear it a lot more often.

This year was a lot better.  Maybe I’ve learned enough Russian to make my brain set up a foreign language annex.  This year, when I needed to say извините, I actually said извините.  For some of these basic words, I don’t believe I even had to think of what I wanted to say in English first and then come up with the Russian word.  Of course, “excuse me” (извините) is something I tended to say a lot, so maybe that’s not a good example.  Even so, things were definitely a bit easier this time around.

There were some times when I screwed up, of course.  I know there were a couple times when I said “I know” (Я знаю – “ya znaiyoo”) when I actually meant “I understand” (Я понимаю – “ya panamaiyoo”).  Sure, a simple and understandable mistake, but still two different meanings.  I don’t think I screwed up at any critical point — saying “I know” and coming across like a know-it-all — but I’d prefer not to make those silly mistakes.  (In case you’re wondering, the backwards R is pronounced “ya,” and when it’s all alone like it is above, it means “I” or “I am.”  Here endth the lesson.)

“My hovercraft is full of eels”
(Bonus points for anyone who gets the witty and clever reference of this subtitle.)

Phrasebooks are useless.  There; I’ve said it.  Oh sure, they can help you learn a phrase, but what happens then?  Unless it’s a declarative statement (“I don’t speak Russian”), more than likely you’re going to get a response and your guidebook is not going to help you with that, now is it?

This occurred to me when I was using this nifty little app I had picked up for my iPod.  Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great app.  Lots of words and phrases, and if you select one, it will be spoken by a native speaker.  (If you hold your finger down, it will be spoken slowly.)  So it is useful for learning phrases, but unless you know what is being said in response, you’re still out of luck.  It’s great to be able to ask — either by myself or through my app — “Where’s the park?,” but if the respondent says “север” instead of pointing or taking me to the park, I’m just going to be wandering around.  (“север” means north.)

Avast, ye!  A squall!
The main thing that helps with getting around in a foreign country where you don’t know the language, is going to a foreign country where people are generally nice and want to be helpful.  I mentioned elsewhere about the two ladies on the bus who wanted to make sure I didn’t lose anything from my bag; that’s a good example of how people are.  In restaurants, the staff was often quite apologetic when they didn’t have an English version of their menu.  I think it helped that I would ask about the menu in Russian; they could see I was trying, and I really think they wanted to help if they could.

The only time I had any real trouble was one day in a park.  I was sitting on bench with my book and an old man came by begging for “spare change.”  (That’s such a curious phrase.) (Also, I don’t think I saw anyone begging last year, but this time, I saw about one person each day.  Maybe the economy is getting worse over there.)  I used my usual phrases — “Sorry/excuse me,” “I don’t understand” and “I don’t speak Russian” — but I think my accent was confusing him; I had to repeat my self a couple times.  Then I made the mistake of saying “Я американец” — “I am an American” — and this seemed to set him off.  He wasn’t yelling or anything, but he seemed really pissed.  I wish I’d said “I’m a tourist” (“Я турист”) instead, although I don’t know if that would have helped.  It seemed the situation wasn’t getting any better, so I got up, said (in English) “I’m sorry, I’ve clearly upset you, so I’m going to leave now” and I left.

That was really the only bad encounter; most of the time things went much better, even when there was a little difficulty.  On my last day there, I went to the supermarket to get some candy to bring back, and the clerk at the checkout seemed amused by my attempts at Russian.  (Again, it was probably the accent.  And, like I said, Mariupol doesn’t see a lot of English speakers.)  Most encounters were more like that:  a little rough around the edges, but overall fine for everyone.

Repeat after me

• I met with a translator a couple of times during my first days there — just a few bucks and definitely worth it — and one of the things I did was “try out” some of the phrases I expected to be using while I was there.  One of the hard things in Russian (OK, one of the MANY hard things) is knowing which syllable in a word gets the stress, but to be fair, English isn’t that much better.  Mostly, I wanted to make sure that, even with my American accent (and yes, there is such a thing), I was pronouncing things correctly and would be understood.  One of the phrases I was using was “I do not speak Russian.”  (I had cobbled it together last year, but I had the wrong form of “to speak,” so I probably sounded like a moron.)  Apparently I can say that phrase quite well (yea for me!), and my translator found it very funny that I was saying that I couldn’t speak Russian in relatively good Russian.  Kind of like saying “I’m not an actor, but I play one on TV.”
• Something else I’m glad I learned before this trip was numbers; I wish I’d know them last year.  I think in the 2011 blog I mentioned one encounter with a cashier who was a little perturbed at me for not understanding her when she was telling me the amount owed.  (After a couple tries, she keyed the amount into a calculator and showed me.  After that I tended to go to places with cash registers.)  I’m still a little hazy on 50 and above (though eventually I get it), but I can easily count up to 49.  In fact, when I would walk from the Port of Portland office to the terminal to get lunch, I would count my steps in Russian.  That repetition really helped, although it took a little while to get the cadence quite right; Russian numbers have a different number of syllables.

So I’ve got pages about the air travel, the hotel, the restaurants and transit system in Mariupol. What else is there to talk about? Well, not much, I guess, but since my other pages are essentially disjointed, I thought it might be nice to give a little cohesion to things.

If you’re curious about the title for this page, 144 feet (or 44 meters) is the average elevation above sea level of Mariupol. See there’s always madness to my methods…

Oh, the things I’ve seen…
Travel broadens the mind, of course, and for me the real pleasure of visiting other places is not to see the things that get into the guidebooks. Sure, it’s nice to hit a museum or see some landmark — those are always great photo ops — but for me the real fun is in seeing how people live. I like to imagine what my life would be like if I lived in the place I’m visiting. Yes, doing such is a little harder when you don’t speak the language, but you can still get a good sense of what life is like observing people, walking around the busy commercial areas and the not-so-busy neighborhoods, and just experiencing all the sights, sounds, smells and whatnot that are around you.

Most of the pictures I took were along these lines. Nothing special; just shots of things I found to be interesting, especially when compared to the life and world I know. Be sure to check out those photo pages; naturally I could write a thousand words, but it’s nice when the pictures can do it themselves. Or at least mostly themselves; the photos all have some captions and descriptions, so be sure to read those too.

View the Mariupol pictures

One thing I promised in one of those captions was a link to a good picture of the mosque in Mariupol. This is a place of local pride, even though most of the people in Mariupol are Russian Orthodox. My friend Anna, as well as the translator and guide I was working with on this trip, all advised me to definitely see the mosque. Unfortunately, the day I visited was rather rainy and overcast, so the mosque didn’t have the stunning appearance that you see in the linked picture. I took a couple so-so shots, but they aren’t anything to brag about. Also, the mosque isn’t open to the public, so no pictures from the inside. Oh well, perhaps the next time I’m in Mariupol I can try again.

Going native
I had the opportunity to go through a couple open air markets; I’m sure there are more around than the two I saw. Mariupol does have supermarkets, which are very similar to Safeways and Krogers; the open air markets seem to be more like really big farmers markets. Although there were some vendors selling clothing, jewelry and other non-edible goods, most of the spaces were people selling fruits, vegetables, breads and spices. One of the markets has a butcher’s area too; it was in a large, warehouse like structure, with wide open doors (so people could come and go) and no obvious means of refrigeration. It seemed fine — I mean, for a place where all sorts of animal parts that are just laid out on metal tables — but I doubt I would be comfortable buying meat like that. I didn’t spend a lot of time in there.

The other open air market was quite similar, although here the warehouse building was more for permanent retailers. (There may have been a meat section, but I didn’t see it.) These retailers had a lot more in the way of clothing and shoes, as well as other sundry items like perfumes, toys and small electronics. I’m not sure if this is indicative of Mariupol or Ukrainian society, but there seemed to be a lot of dark clothing and shoes available.

The only real shopping I did was at the grocery store a block from the hotel. Although I’m getting better with numbers in Russian, the thought of buying on the street and possibly needing to haggle didn’t appeal to me; I wanted to see a price. (I didn’t actually see anything I would consider as haggling, so my fears there may have been baseless.) The big thing I bought? Water. As I’ve said in the past, you don’t drink the water from the taps there; you have to buy bottled. You know how it is recommended that we drink 8 glasses of water a day? I don’t think the people in Mariupol got that recommendation. I drank plenty and usually had a bottle of water with me, but that wasn’t the case for the translator and guide I worked with, nor most of the people I saw on the street. I would have been super-thirsty if I followed those people’s examples, but I suppose you get used to it. (I did have some melon while I was there — it was like a white honeydew melon; I haven’t seen it in the US — and it was really juicy, so maybe people get most of the moisture their bodies’ need from the foods they eat. At least, that’s the theory I’m going with.)

Off the beaten path
One of the more interesting and unusual places I visited this time was the Mariupol cemetery. I’m not the sort of person who typically goes to such places, even when on vacation, but it was suggested to me and I had a guide to help me find it. So I went.

[slideshow id=4] (Click here for a larger view of these pictures)

The Mariupol cemetery has been around for ages (probably not quite since the city’s founding in the 17th century, but still a long time) and it is huge. I haven’t been the Arlington National Cemetery but I’ve seen pictures, and like those pictures Mariupol’s cemetery seems to be very large, covers the surrounding hillsides and everything. My guide (who didn’t speak a lot of English, but was still able to communicate quite well) told me that Ukrainians don’t “believe” in cremation; as a result, the cemetery just keeps on growing.

The cemetery has a nice little Russian Orthodox chapel by the entrance, and the primo sites are right up there too. Although you can’t take it with you, if you had the money, you can make sure that people will always remember you for that. Some of the monuments were very impressive; some even had seats and tables so visitors could really spend some time there. However, as you moved farther from the entrance, things became far less impressive. Headstones became simpler and then virtually non-existent. Sites upfront are well-tended, but those farther away become more and more overgrown with weeds. It’s really rather sad and sobering.

The place is divided into many sections (or sectors, as the signs are labeled), and certain sections are used for specific types of internments. There was a place for orphans, another for John and Jane Does, and so on; there was even one for drug overdoses, although I’m guessing that’s only used if the family doesn’t go with a more “normal” section. Bodies are laid to rest facing eastward (toward the rising sun), which leaves the feet where the headstone is. There is a separate section for Muslim burials, and here the graves face south-east. I asked my guide if this was in order to face Mecca, which makes sense to me, but she didn’t know.

A day at the beach
Mariupol is right long the coast of the Azov Sea (which is a piece of the Black Sea that was been sectioned off by the Crimean Peninsula and a jutting piece of Russia), and at one time was a seaside vacation resort. However, as industry has increased, the resort status has definitely fallen, especially in light of Ukraine’s poor environmental regulations. However, you just need to go a little bit up or down the coast and you’ll find plenty of seaside places that have expanded because of Mariupol’s fall. My guide took me to one of the oldest and largest of these seaside locations — Berdyansk.

Berdyansk is about 90 minutes (by bus) west of Mariupol. It had been a long-time fishing city and still has a working port; however, it seems that most of their business these days comes from tourists, and not just out-of-country tourists like me. Berdyansk also has some mineral springs and during the Soviet times, especially around the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, some large spas were built in Berdyansk. These were similar to the santitoria built in the US from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, like Kellogg’s famous Battle Creek Sanitarium. The Berdyansk sanitoria still exit and are quite popular; people from all over Ukraine and parts of Russia come to these places for family vacations.

Berdyansk definitely knows how to cater to its visitors, and has built a large pedestrian mall that joins up with a well-developed seaside/boardwalk area. I took several pictures while in Berdyansk, although about a third of them came out too blurry to use. (Stupid camera; it can take pictures from a moving car, but stationary pictures confuse it.) The pictures and captions should tell you how I spent a sunny and tiring day in Berdyansk.

View the Berdyansk pictures

Hard truth for you: no matter how good you think your local, public mass transit system is, it still pales to what they’ve got in Mariupol. And Mariupol is the 10th largest city in Ukraine; the top nine might even put Mariupol to shame. Granted, our buses and trains are probably a bit cleaner, a bit better for the environment, and generally a nicer ride (OK, that’s how it is for Portland, and Boulder a bit too; I don’t really know about the rest of the country), but the system there is cheap, has plentiful buses, and runs nearly around the clock.

Alternatives to hoofing it
Last time in Ukraine, I got around solely by foot power (unless you could the four airplane flights, and four car trips to and from the airports). Given that I wasn’t interested in hopping on a bus and ending up miles away from my apartments with no good idea on how I’d get back, walking the nearby neighborhoods seemed the best way to go. This time around, that was generally going to be my plan again, but as it happens I got a good initiation into bus travel in and around Mariupol.

There are actually several ways of getting around town. There is walking, of course, and if you have the cash, cars are available. (Sorry, I really couldn’t tell if there were more cars this year than last.) By and large, though, people get around by bus… or by electric bus, or by trolley. Or, if you happened to work for Illyich Steel, possibly by electric light rail train. (Yes, the second largest steelmaker in Mariupol actually has their own light rail system to move people around town and between their different locations.)

Buses are the big thing, although I mean big only in the sense of quantity, not size. You know the “short” school bus? Well, imagine a city filled with hundreds of those — and none of the big, “regular” buses. That’s what Mariupol is like. These yellow buses have seats for 25-30 people, and are usually filled to capacity and then some. Fortunately, there are lots of buses, so if you miss one, or it’s just too full, another one will be by in just a couple minutes.

Riding the bus is interesting (and even more so when you’re not sure where you will end up). On buses here in Portland, you board at the front, put your fare into the fare box and get a transfer/receipt from the bus driver, or you show a bus pass. Once everyone is on and their fares have been paid or checked, off you go. That’s not quite how it works in Mariupol. You board through either the front or back doors, and there is often a “bus monitor” (for want of a better description) who keeps visual track of who as boarded the bus. This bus monitor is the person who collects the fares and checks passes. There are no transfers, and only about half of the buses I was on gave a receipt for your fare. On some smaller buses, there isn’t a bus monitor and you pay your fare directly to the driver.

Here in the US, there seem to be plenty of people who will try to ride the bus for free (by sneaking in the back door, jumping a turnstile, using a slug or whatever). Because of this, I was stunned by the honestly of Mariupol’s bus riders. I never saw anyone trying to skip out of a fare, and it would have been easy on some of those buses without a monitor. It’s like they use the honor system, and everyone honors it. In fact, on some of the more crowded trips, passengers would help people in the back by passing fare money up to the bus monitor, and even more impressive, passing the change back.

I think there is one big reason why the bus system doesn’t do transfers, and why people aren’t always trying to scam a free ride: it’s freakishly cheap to ride the bus. The fares around town are 2, 2.50 or 3 UAH; this equates to between 25 and 45 cents, and that’s with rounding up. I know people don’t earn a ton of money there, but with an average monthly salary of between $300 and $350 (2400 – 2800 UAH), it seems most everybody can swing a couple hryvnia for a ride.

E-buses and trolleys and trams… oh my!
As I said above, the public transportation system in Mariupol has a few different flavors. Buses — gas-powered ones — are the main thing, and the only thing I added to my travel experiences in this visit. There are also some electric buses, mostly on the main thoroughfares. These were more of the “standard” bus-sized buses. They have a couple poles that stick up from the top and ride along power wires that are strung over the streets. They seem to work pretty well, although the buses didn’t seem to have a lot of power to them. Also, the power poles would sometimes come off the wires, so the bus driver would have to get out and re-connect them.

The trolley cars were interesting — kind of like Portland’s MAX light rail system, only older. Like the electric buses, these too drew their power from overhead lines, and they ran on rail tracks down the middle of the street. This middle of the street thing made for some interest scenes. One of the streets where the trolley ran was fairly busy and had a lot of car traffic. Since the trolley stops in the middle of the street, people getting on and off basically have to dodge traffic. All the excitement of crossing a busy street without the benefit of a crosswalk. It seems to me that wouldn’t be a big selling point for mass transit systems.

While I may have an opportunity to try the trolley or an electric bus on a future visit, it seems like that private light rail system would be off limits to me. To be honest, I’m not sure I have the story completely right — I still suffer from a bit of language gap — but I suppose that any company with enough clout could get most any government to help them build something, even if it impacts the public right-of-way. But private or not, the one rail car I saw using those tracks was not at all zippy. Speed-wise, it looked like it could have been for tourists.

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The agony of the feet
Even with a fairly extensive transit system, lots of people just walked. People would be walking everywhere, even along the highway to Donetsk. (On the trip back to the airport, there was a nicely dressed woman in heels walking along the left side of highway; that just seemed wrong all over.) But most of the pedestrian traffic was there in Mariupol.

Crosswalks in Ukraine seem to come in three flavors: the signaled crosswalk, the two-color crosswalk, and the single-color “I dare you to cross” cross-walk. The signaled crosswalk is at intersections with traffic signals, and drivers are usually quite good about stopping and letting pedestrians cross. However, they get as close as absolutely possible to the crosswalk, without actually crossing the plane that would put them in the crosswalk. They won’t hit you in the crosswalk, but I think they want to make it perfectly clear that they could have if they had wanted to.

As relatively safe and secure as the signaled crosswalk is, two-color crosswalk might even be safer. I’ve only seen two of these — one in Donetsk and one in Mariupol — and I’m not completely sure about all the rules about them. The one in Donetsk was at a signal, but the one in Mariupol is just across some street. For both of them, though, traffic would absolutely stop whenever anyone was in the crosswalk. Even better, unlike the signaled crosswalk, cars didn’t crowd up against it. These must be special in some way, and it’s probably something that everyone (except a tourist like me) knows.

Lastly, there’s the “cross if you dare” crosswalk. These are the common crosswalks you’ll find just about everywhere, neighborhoods as well as busy streets. Technically cars are supposed to yield — and to be fair, they almost always do. However, these are more like US crosswalks: although you may legally have the right-of-way, the laws of physics suggest that the car would have the advantage if push came to shove. Still, as long as you use some common sense — and whenever possible, stare down a driver who is coming your way (but do it without actually stopping in the crosswalk) — you’ll get to the other side just fine.

Short Hops

• Like I said, if you have the cash, you can probably get a car. It seemed like there were only nicer, new cars or beat up older ones on the roads, and most of the older ones tended to be Russian Ladas. There are newer Ladas too (still made in Russia and actually looking pretty nice), plus a lot of Renaults and Toyotas. I did see a couple Fords, but the American auto makers are definitely not well represented in Mariupol.
• I got to watching the traffic during my rides to and from the airport in Donetsk (there wasn’t much else to do since my driver didn’t speak much English). I wasn’t playing full attention for 90+ minutes, but when I was, I noticed that I didn’t see any cars with just one occupant. Some of the trucks, sure, but for the personal cars — there were always two or more people. I don’t think it’s a carpooling kick.
• In case you were wondering, the price of gas is a bit higher than here in the US — but surprisingly, not by much. Prices in Portland have been running around $4 per gallon for a while; it may be a little higher or lower where you are. Most of the prices I saw in Ukraine were around 10 UAH per liter. Now for some conversion math, which will be rough and rounded: there are about 4 liters in a gallon, so a gallon of gas is 40 UAH. Since it’s about 8 UAH to 1 USD, their gas prices are around $5/gallon. Although that’s a sucky price anywhere, when you consider that the average monthly income in Mariupol is around $300-350, we’re talking some pretty pricey fuel.
• The buses in Mariupol are not air conditioned; this may also be true elsewhere, although in Donetsk I did see a bus very much like the ones we have in Portland, so who knows? To help make the ride a little more tolerable on those hot, sunny summer days, the buses have curtains. I thought this was very cute.
• Of course there is some etiquette to riding a bus, and while I didn’t make a complete fool of myself, I did discover that I wasn’t doing a couple things right. If you’re standing on a bus, you are probably going to be facing forward, right? So you can see where you need to get off? That’s what I did, and I was the only one. Most people, if they have to stand in the aisle, face the side windows. Maybe this lets more people ride or makes it easier to get on and off. So I have that to learn, and apparently I need to be more aware of my possessions on the bus. Two nice ladies told me (mostly through pointing and gestures) that I should keep my messenger bag zipped up, and instead of slinging it across my back or at my side, keep it on my lap. I didn’t have any trouble during any of my rides, but since I’m sure I looked out of place, I know they were just being to be helpful. It was very nice of them.

Four down, 192 to go…

By which I mean that I can definitely state that I have stayed in hotels in four different countries: the US (of course), Canada (Victoria, Timmins and Hearst), England (London) and Ukraine (Mariupol). I couldn’t make that claim last year because I rented apartments for that visit (which you can read about in my blog posts from last year).

When I had looked last year, hotel rooms — at least those hotels in Odessa and Mariupol that I could find online — ran about twice the price of the rental apartments I was finding. This kind of makes sense; no hotel staff means lower overhead, so a prospective landlord could charge far less. While the apartment route was fine and I actually had some nice places to stay on my last trip, I still really wanted to see what a hotel in Ukraine would be like. (My travel guides gave mixed opinions, but as I found out last year, their advice was only half-right anyway.)

You’ve no doubt heard of Hyatt and Marriott and even Motel 6, but I’ll bet cash money you haven’t heard of Reikartz. To be fair, until this year I hadn’t either, but they are the largest hotel chain in Ukraine. By chance, this past spring they opened a new hotel in Mariupol — in fact, I remember walking by the construction site when I was there last year and wondering what was being built. Now I know. I checked them out online, and the prices were right in line with apartments, so I figured why not?

The next obvious question is, “how was it?”, which I will take in the context of “how was it in comparison to American hotels?” Actually, it was pretty good. The staff was really nice, and most of them spoke English to some degree — at least enough to say hi and such. Room-wise (I think I have a picture or two, which I will add if I can find), it was pretty much like a normal hotel room. Not huge, but certainly enough space for me to stretch out. I’ve stayed in somewhat better and/or larger rooms, sure, but this was pretty comparable to most any lower-cost US hotel. Perhaps a slight step above a Motel 6, and actually a bit better than a “nice” place I had stayed one time when in Boulder.

Reikartz, being the largest hotel chain over there, obviously has a bit of pull. Just about everything in the room was branded with the Reikartz name — the TV, the mini-fridge/honor bar, even the air conditioning unit. I guess when you order a hundred of anything, the manufacturer will usually throw in a perk or two. They even have their own line of wines, although sadly they weren’t available in Mariupol.

The only real down side is that the elevator wasn’t working, but that wasn’t an issue for me since I was only on the 2nd floor. Other than that, it’s a great hotel. Right near downtown, but on a quiet street (not that Mariupol is that noisy after dark anyway). It was a very nice stay.

If life happens to take me back to Mariupol, I will definitely look into staying there again. But honestly, I wouldn’t mind going to Crimea as a next trip, and by chance there’s a Reikartz hotel down thataway too.

Cat Naps
Just a couple quick notes:

• While I was there, I met or interacted with three different women named Olga and two named Anna. I don’t have any real facts to back this up, but those two names (plus Natalia) seem to be really common, way more than the traditional Slavic names of Lyudmila or Svetlana.
• One of the Olgas (the was who was a server – “официантка” – in the restaurant) was originally from Russia, but grew up in Mariupol, was now going to school in Russia, and spending the summers down in Mariupol. English has been one of her study subjects and, although she stumbled a couple of times, did really well. It took almost 25 minutes to order lunch because we were just talking. I think she liked the practice, but I also think she got into a little trouble with her boss for talking to me for so long. (There wasn’t anyone else in the restaurant at the time, so Olga said she wasn’t really in trouble.)
• I give the Reikartz high marks for their pillows. I know, kind of crazy thing to notice, right? Well, given the number of places I’ve stayed where the pillows were ridiculously thin affairs — not much thicker than a sheet folded three or four times — it was a real treat to lay my head on some thick, fluffy and yet still appropriately resistant pillows. Not quite as good as home, but darn close.

I tell you, coming up with these clever page names is absolutely exhausting. I mean, who’s going to know this page’s title is a pun of a movie from 1985, which itself was based on a 1984 novel, or that it was a song by Wang Chung from that movie, or another song by Tupac from 1996? Why do I even bother? I’ll tell you why — because it amuses me, and isn’t that what a personal website and blog is really all about? Self-amusement? In any case, here are a few thoughts about the meals and foods I had while in Ukraine.

Restaurants / Рестораны
It’s sometimes a little hard to know where a cafe ends and a restaurant begins, because there really seems to be a lot of overlap in Ukraine. For instance, I was meeting my friend, Anna the English teacher, at a Greek cafe named Ellada, but the place was freaking big. Definitely a restaurant, definitely. Anna and I didn’t stay there — it was Sunday and it looked like there were doing a private party, so we went next door to a place called “Picnic.” Really, that was the name, just like the English word, only in Russian letters.

Whenever possible I would ask for the menu in English, and I was usually told there wasn’t an English version. As I result my dining choices tended to be a little limited, unless there were pictures, or there was someone like Anna who could help translate, or I was able to recognize some of the words, like суп (soup), салат (salad) or Фокачча (focaccia). Actually those were the easy ones; when you sound out the Russian letters, its actually the same word in English. Of course, that didn’t help me with a lot of the ingredients, but I did reasonably well.

I’ve been trying to remember, and I think my cafe/restaurant count for this trip is five. There was a restaurant at the hotel that I made use of a couple times, and that menu had both Russian and English on it. Then the was the alligator restaurant (more on that in a moment), Picnic, some place in eastern Mariupol, and a sidewalk place in Berdyansk. That’s 5, plus there was a street market, but no one would call that place a restaurant. The McDonalds is still there, but they were a little busy the one time I considered going, so I gave that place a pass. (I made up for that by going to the McDonalds at the Munich airport.)

The “alligator” restaurant was a place down by the Azov Sea which has a little statue of an alligator in the front. (The place has a real name, but I’ve totally forgotten what it was.) Apparently, a few years ago (only five or six years) a traveling circus came to Mariupol, and they had — wait for it — an alligator in one of their acts. At some point the alligator escaped and was the terror of Mariupol because no one knew where it was. People weren’t going to the seashore for fear that the alligator would be there, and apparently that hurt this restaurant’s business quite a bit. After about six weeks they finally caught the alligator (which had gotten to a rather distant part of Mariupol, probably by way of the Kalmius River) and the hysteria finally died down. As a memento of that event, the restaurant had the alligator statue made, and now it sits out front to welcome visitors.

Oh, what foods these morsels be…
So what did I have while I was there? Good question. I can’t say it was anything overly exotic, unless you count the fact that it was all Ukrainian food. I had borsch again — who can go to Ukraine and not have borsch? — but it was the red borsch; I had hoped to try the green borsch, but that wasn’t on the menu. Something I missed on my last trip was vareniki, but I made up for it this time around. Vareniki are kind of like Chinese potstickers; they come steamed in a nice little urn, with a little sour cream and dill. All in all they weren’t too bad.

I had a couple salads, but they weren’t really salads as we typically think of salads. I had a German sausage salad, which was a mix of cucumbers, onions and other root-type vegetables with some chopped salami-type sausage. A little mayonnaise type dressing as a binder and then served on a single leaf of Romaine. Another salad was a Greek salad, which probably was very much like you think: olives, tomatoes, feta cheese and so on. It wasn’t really my cup of tea. There were also a couple others, one with chicken and the other with ham and beef; always cold and mixed with assorted chopped vegetables. That’s pretty much what salads are to Ukrainians; they probably wouldn’t recognize our Cobb or simple lettuce salads.

In emails with my friend Anna, she would occasionally tell me about picnics with friends where they had “shishlak.” I looked it up once, and the definition defined it as a shish kebab prepared over a barbeque. Shishlak, shish kebab… sure, that makes sense. So, when I tried it one night I was expected a shish kebab — meat and veggies on a skewer that had been barbecued — but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Instead of nice, bite-sized pieces of meat, it came as these big honking chunks, kind of like a piece of steak that was 4″ long and 1½” square on the other sides. Like I said, a chunk. It did seem to have been grilled, and there did seem to be a skewer hole, but it was definitely not a shish kebab. Still very tasty. (Oddly, the restaurant didn’t have any chicken shishlak; beef, lamb, pork, even fish, but not chicken. I need to try and figure out if that’s just not done, if that restaurant just didn’t have that.)

There were some other native dishes as well, but the only other one I’ll mention was this greasy deep-fried thing that, if I’m not mistaken, was what Anna had suggested last year that I try. (I don’t recall the name, but I think it begins with a “ch”.) It was a ground meat mixture with onions and spices, folded into a half-moon pastry (think quesadilla) and then deep-fried. Very tasty when warm (it lost a little luster when it cooled), but very greasy; I really needed more napkins than I had. This is a pretty common street food, and I saw it at several vendors around downtown.

Oh, and you know what else I saw everywhere: shawarma. I mean everywhere. I may have seen this before (I’m not sure) but I didn’t really know the name of it until the end of “The Avengers.” But seriously, you almost couldn’t go a block without seeing a shawarma sign, vendor or restaurant. Also, more than last year, I was seeing lots of sushi (or in Russian, суши). Sushi makes a little more sense; people in Mariupol do like fish. But shawarma?

My first page (There And Back Again) was about the coming and going of my trip, but I didn’t actually mention the flights, airlines or airports involved. I could have, but I think there’s enough on this subject to warrant its own page.

Tray Tables Up
Business class or better — that’s my motto when it comes to international travel. At least, that’s the motto I want to start following, because spending hours and hours in a flying tube in coach is really awful. Sure, it would double or triple the price of the ticket — but it would be soooo worth it. But that’s not to say all my flights were bad.

My Air Canada flights from and to Portland were actually fairly nice. I was on a smaller jet with a 2-2 seat configuration for the coach rows, and there was actually a good amount of leg room. Sadly, I did have a seat-mate for both flights, so I couldn’t really stretch out, but it wasn’t too bad. No meals on these flights, despite their 4+ hour duration, but you could purchase from the “Cafe” selections. Even so, these flights weren’t too bad.

I was on a similarly sized jet for my flights between Munich and Donetsk, and again was in a 2-2 seat configuration. Not as much leg room and the seats seemed narrower as well. Plus German men wear a ton of cologne… Lufthansa did want to feed us for these 3-hour flights, which was nice of them. Although the flight to Donetsk was a tad cramped, the flight back to Munich was pretty nice. No seat-mate, and I since I hadn’t eaten that day, I took advantage of the in-flight meal of spinach and ricotta tortellini. It was actually a very nice flight… but still not enough to make up for the 18-hour layover awaiting me when it ended.

Of course, the big flight was the one from Toronto to Munich — 8 hours each direction. Going over, not too bad. Although I was in steerage — sorry, I mean “coach” class — I had a window seat which gave me a little extra room. I tried to sleep without much success, but between reading, dozing when I could and re-watching “The Avengers,” the time went by easily enough.

Sadly, no such luck on my way back. I had dreaded it and it happened: I had a middle seat. The coach rows on the plane are in 2-4-2 seat configuration, and I was stuck in a ‘4’ block. Again, I dozed a little bit and I’m sure I watched something (though I don’t remember what), but the bulk of the time was reading. Unlike my flight over, I felt every minute of that flight back. Nevertheless, props where props are due: the landing we had in Toronto was perhaps the smoothest I had ever felt. You almost couldn’t tell when the wheels hit the runway, you just suddenly felt the braking. That was smooth.

Terminality
As I become a more and more seasoned traveler, I feel better about making airport comparisons. Of the four airports on this trip — and out of all the airports I can recall — Portland still has the nicest facilities in terms of comfort, visuals and shops/dining.

Toronto Pearson is a big airport, but I only saw a small portion of it. Lots of long corridors; I’d get off a flight and have to walk 10 minutes, where I would pass through some checkpoint and then seem to walk back the direction I’d just come, only on a different level. I’m sure it would make sense if I saw a map. OK food courts, both coming and going, although a little limited on the outgoing international side. A couple sit-down bars/restaurants, but only two fast(er) food places, which meant long lines if you wanted a burger from Cactus Jack’s Grill or a muffin from Tim Horton’s. I went with the burger. On the plus side, Toronto does take US currency as payment for goods and services, although as the clerks will explain, your change will be in Canadian. (There’s also a bit of a fee bundled into the conversion, but they don’t really tell you that.)

Munich airport is bigger than Toronto, and during my time there I became fairly familiar with the the location of everything in the public section of Terminal 2. There’s a huge, covered courtyard area between Terminals 1 and 2, so it’s easy enough to step outside and get a breath of fresh air (although you have to wander off a bit to get away from the smokers). Oddly, there are no benches or seating — other than that for some of the business — in the courtyard; that kind of sucked, because it was a lot less stuffy outside than in the terminal. I had a late dinner at the McDonalds there and used a self-serve kiosk to place my order; that was kind of fun. Two things to note if you’re trapped in Munich: things basically shut down between midnight and 5 am (although McDonalds was open all night), and you probably won’t be able to get much sleep on the infrequent and not-very-comfortable wooden seats in the terminal.

Donetsk airport has changed a lot since last year, but that wasn’t surprising. Given that Donetsk was one of the host cities for the Euro 2012 soccer championship games, Ukraine had spent a ton of cash upgrading the airports in Kiev and Donetsk to support all the travelers that were expected. So the tiny terminal I flew into last year is now closed, and all flights go in and out of the new terminal. The new terminal is big and airy and can support a lot of passenger traffic — which makes it all seem a bit sad and empty because it doesn’t really get that much traffic. I didn’t see much when I came in, but I was there for a couple hours going out, and I think there was one other flight at the same time. Lots of space and so few people; like I said, a bit sad. I think Donetsk was hoping that the airlines would keep their expanded schedules after the games, but I don’t think that happened.

(Still, it is a little better off than Mariupol, which has an airport but no commercial service. In fact, I was told that the only thing coming and going from Mariupol airport was a company charter, and even that was expected to end once the summer was over. Pity.)

When In…
In Portland, Denver, Toronto, Sea-Tac, Vancouver, Dulles, JFK, Gatwick — virtually every airport I’ve flown to — the airplane is at the terminal building, and that’s where you get on and off (plane and deplane? board and unboard?). Last year, in Ukraine, that was the case for only one of my flights (the one from Kiev to JFK). For all my other flights in Ukraine, both last year and this year, the plane actually stops out in an “airplane parking lot” and the passengers are shuttled to and from the terminal in buses.

And Ukraine isn’t alone in this: my Munich-Donetsk flight was handled the same way in Munich. I suspect that other places might do this as well, but I haven’t been to those places yet. It really struck me as odd the first time or two, but I think I’m pretty used to it now.

Another curious thing in Ukraine is how the airplanes themselves taxi around the airports. I first noticed this last year, and saw it again this trip. At most US airports, there are actually two air traffic systems: one for going between airports, and one for moving around on the ground at the airport. A plane will come in, get instructions from the “local” tower and taxi the plane to where they need to go. In Ukraine, though, there are actually guide cars to help the planes move around the airfield. A car will meet a just landed plane and drive ahead of the plane, leading it to where it will park. If you’re flying out, the guide car will lead you over to the runway. It’s really kind of interesting. I see the drivers talking on walkie-talkies, and that must be how their “local” air traffic control system works.

Fly-bys
Just a couple more quick notes:

• My first flight (out of Portland) was momentarily delayed when we were taxiing away from the gate. The message from the crew was that they needed to move a passenger for weight balance in the plane. I was thinking that no matter who you are and no matter what you weigh, if you were the person being moved, that’s got to make you feel bad. The plane can’t take off because one person — because of their weight — is throwing the plane off? Oh yeah, that’ll need some therapy.
• My flight out of Donetsk coming home could have been a problem, because Lufthansa cabin crews were staging wildcat strikes. On the first day of their strike, Lufthansa had to cancel nearly half of their flights. The strikes weren’t happening every day, but had the struck on the day of my flight, it could have been real trouble.
• The Lufthansa strike did cause a slight delay on my flight out of Munich on Air Canada. Take-offs were delayed by about 30 minutes (which we found out after we got into the queue for the runway), because air traffic control wanted to space things out a little more. Exactly why things had to be spaced out more when fewer airplanes were in the air remains a mystery.
• Lastly, I found out about the Lufthansa strike almost by accident. I was flipping through the channels one evening (there was only 1 English language channel in the hotel’s line-up), and I happened to be on a French-language channel that was rebroadcasting a BBC (English) report on the possibility of a strike. The French anchors were talking over the report, but the captions were still there, and that’s how I first learned that trouble was a-brewin’.

I learn a little more with each trip — things to do, things not to do, places where you should or should not put your finger — or so I like to believe. When it comes to traveling overseas, to far off places like Ukraine, I think I still have a good deal of learning, but hopefully I’m slowly getting better.

Baggage Handling
I had thought my travel plans from last year were a bit of an anomaly, but perhaps that’s not so. Last year I was traveling on two separately purchased tickets: the first was to get me from Portland to New York/JFK, where I would then meet the tour group and they would take care of the rest. (Then I’d have my return trip from JFK, of course, but all on the one round-trip ticket.) After the tour got canceled, I purchased my second ticket to take me from JFK to Ukraine and back. Because of the situation, I had attributed some of the annoyances in last year’s travel to this dual-ticket set up.

I was being too generous.

This year I thought I was doing it smarter by getting a ticket that took me from Portland to Ukraine on one airline — though it was actually one airline and it’s affiliated partner. So my 2012 travel plan had me going Air Canada from Portland to Toronto to Munich, and then on Lufthansa from Munich to Donetsk. My return trip was just the reverse — Lufthansa back to Munich, and then Air Canada to Portland via Toronto. As it turns out, this wasn’t that much better than 2011 after all.

It seemed to start out pretty well: when I checked in at PDX, they were able to tag my bag all the way through to Donetsk. I wouldn’t have to claim and recheck it in either Toronto or Munich; because I was on two tickets before, I had to claim my bags at JFK and then check my bag for my next connection. (I also had to do that in Kiev, which I chalked up to switching from an international flight to a domestic one.)

Being able to hang out at the airports without worrying about my bag was definitely a good sign; sadly, it was a one-way sign only. Coming back, I had to handle my bag at every airport. Ugh, just what I had hoped to avoid! (After lugging my checked back around for hours at JFK and Boryspil last year, I really didn’t want to do it again.) Lufthansa wasn’t able to check my bag any further than Munich, but they didn’t offer any good explanation as to why. So I had to hang onto my bag during my layover in Munich, and then check it with Air Canada when it was time to go. In Toronto I also had to grab and re-check my bag, but at least this time I knew the reason: US Customs. International travelers going on to the US have to claim their bag, go through US Customs (where your bag could be searched), and then you drop it off to be routed to your flight to the US. It’s not terrible, but you still have to handle your baggage. (Fortunately, I travel fairly light, so I wasn’t having to claim or cart around a ton of bags, like some people did.)

So, baggage-wise, this trip might have been a little better than last time, but only by a bit. If I could get down to a single carry-on for an overseas trip, that would be awesome.

Layovers
Last year, I had about a 12-hour layover at JFK… and this was after a red-eye flight from Portland. Fortunately, JFK has a public lounge that you can buy a day pass for, so it really wasn’t all that bad. Longer than you want to be in an airport, but the lounge chairs were more comfy than those in the terminal. On the flight back, I had about an 8 hour layover, up from an originally scheduled 5 hour wait because, as I noted last year, JetBlue hates me. In Kiev I had three different waits, two layovers for domestic flights (about 9 and 4 hours) and the wait for my international flight home (about 3 hours).

So that adds up to about a day and a half, both coming and going. Let’s see how that stacks up to this year’s trip.

As with my bags, getting to Ukraine was far smoother than getting home. I had a 4 hour wait in Toronto, and just under 2 hours in Munich. All in all, not too bad. Coming back, though, was not nearly as fun. I was in Munich for 18 hours. (For some reason, I had it mind and had been telling people it was 12 hours; maybe I couldn’t face the truth.) Toronto wasn’t bad – only three hours, with most of that taken up by Customs. So, airport layovers out: 6 hours; airport layovers back, 15 hours.

Lessons Learned
Although I only have two trips (so far?) to base this on, it seems that going to Ukraine will never be too difficult. Even with the dual ticket stuff from last year, it was a relatively smooth journey. And this year was a breeze. It’s coming back that will always have challenges.

One big reason for the travel path I took this year was arrival and departure times in Donetsk. Although I was staying in Mariupol, their airport doesn’t have any commercial airline service. That means traveling from Donetsk to Mariupol (and back) by some other means — usually car, if you can arrange it, or bus, if you speak enough Russian to get around easily. The drive to/from Donetsk is about 2 hours, and most of the flights into Donetsk arrived late at night (i.e., 9 pm), and flights out left early in the morning (6 am).

The flights I had actually got me in at very reasonable hours — arriving at 4pm, and leaving at 6pm. This made getting to the airport much easier. I really didn’t relish the idea of leaving Mariupol at 2 am, so I could get to Donetsk by 4 am, in order to check in for a 6 am flight. So the times were good, but as I’ve noted above, the travel wasn’t as smooth as I would have wished.

The other issue I think I would try to avoid next time is passing through so many countries. Last year it was US to Ukraine, period. This year it was US to Canada to Germany to Ukraine. Going over I had to pass through Canadian Customs but not German. Coming back I had to go through German Customs but not Canadian. (I think that if I hadn’t had a huge layover and/or didn’t have to reclaim my bag in Germany, I might have avoided German Customs.)

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have any trouble at any customs point, and I think it’s kind of neat to know that US citizens don’t need visas for so many countries. Even so, I think I would try to avoid the extra-country stops on future trips. It would just make it easier.