This trip I packed a lot. Most of the stuff I brought wasn’t really for me, per se. Natch there were clothes and things, but I think the bulk of the weight was from the gifts, mostly the liquid stuff — beer, wine and American whiskey. It’s ok; I wanted to get in good with my wife’s family, most of whom I hadn’t met previously. So my bag coming over was right at the limit. I was probably holding my breath when it was weighed at the airport, but it was just a shade under some outrageous over-weight fees. Given how it was coming over, I was looking forward to going home with a lighter bag.

My plan was going along just fine, until I got married and inherited a family. For some reason they think that a wedding is a time for celebration and gifts. Or maybe they feel that, as a bachelor, I simply never acquired the basics for setting up a home. I’ve read stories in the past about how two older people (I.e., not in their twenties) felt the need to point out that at this stage in their lives they have all the household items they needed, and all they really wanted from their friends and family were their wishes for a happy and successful marriage. That would have been nice here, I think, but that would definitely be going against tradition.

As a result, I now have more stuff coming home than I did coming here. It’s all very nice of them, but I’m guessing that they haven’t really traveled internationally before. My wife would just keep showing up with these bags of things for us, and telling me I can just put it in my baggage. (Warning: the next sentence contains a Doctor Who reference.). Unfortunately, I left my TARDIS-style bag at home, so yesterday I had to buy another piece of luggage. (The previous Doctor Who reference was in honor of the 50 year anniversary of the show. We now return to our regularly scheduled post.) while the bag I brought might actually end up being light, that isn’t much of a victory considering that I picked up a second bag.

The gifts are, of course, all very thoughtful. There are some household items, such as a fry pan and a multipiece set of cookware, some more decorative than functional dinner plates, and two mugs from my wife’s mother’s dinnerware collection. (I think there’s some symbolism there, but I’m not completely sure.) I also have an item from Victoria’s mother to my mother, as well as one other “targeted” gift. My wife also gave me a couple things: a Bible in Russian (kind of neat, even if I can’t read it), and a novelty lightbulb that I think will make for a good Christmas display. The big thing is a new comforter from her son; it was this that really prompted the need for a second bag.

Although my wife was insistent that I take the items with me on the plane (because otherwise they would just be stolen), I did take a quick look at maybe using Fedex or UPS. I had to guess on some info, but given what I thought were some reasonable values, the resulting costs seem pretty outrageous. I had to verify that I was actually looking at the quote in dollars. So even with buying a bag and needing to pay extra baggage fees for three flights, it will still be cheaper to take these items home with me. (Of course, there is always the convenience factor of not needing to schlep around two suitcases. Once I get home, I’ll know for certain if I really came out ahead.)

You might think it would be somewhat comforting to know that government bureaucracies work pretty consistently around the world. Any such comfort disappears, however, when you’re running around a strange city in below 0 temperatures (that’s 0 Celcius, and below with the windchill). Decidedly uncomfortable.

The started a little late because my wife had to first run to her apartment to grab some documents, and to her mother’s to do the same. She was in such a rush, she grabbed more than was needed. But better too much than too little. We then caught a city bus over to the bus station for the trip to Donetsk.

Because of our slightly late start, we actually considered taking a taxi. It’s quite common and generally very easy to hire a taxi to take you between different cities in Ukraine. As in the US, it’s usually quicker to grab a taxi than to rely on mass transit options, and over here it is usually quite a bargain. (It’s also way cheaper than renting a car, but I still would like to try that one of these days.) We didn’t get a taxi, though, but that is only because the guy who usually goes to Donetsk (I guess that in Mariupol at least, they divide up the different destinations) had wandered away, didn’t seem about to return, and, I’m told, was waiting to go until he filled his car (4 people). So we were stuck on the bus. It’s not a horrible way to get around — only about 5 bucks (40 UAH) to get you to a city 100 km away — but is not by any means the fastest or most comfortable way to travel. I survived it pretty well, but my wife felt like she was going to throw up for about half the ride.

Anyway, we got to Donetsk, and boy, are my arms tired. No wait, that’s not how that joke goes… We got to Donetsk, and it was freezing. Mariupol had been sunny and a comparatively balmy 1-2 C; Donetsk had gotten some rain earlier, was still overcast, and with the wind, was easily a couple degrees below freezing. There were some patches of ice here and there on the side streets and walkways.

We had a short walk across a couple streets and caught a city bus to take us to our presumed destination. We were kind of in a rush at this point, because according to whomever my wife had asked, government offices shut down for lunch at 1, and were already looking at 12:30 in the rear view mirror. (Of the bus we were on, of course.) But this is where the info starts to get a little faulty. First, lunch actually started at noon, with most places back to answering the phones by 12:45. As errors go, that wasn’t a bad one and it actually would have been in our favor… if we had been at the right place. We had gotten to where we needed to go, but that wasn’t where we needed to be. Still, it only took a couple phone calls and some information desk answers, and we found the department we actually wanted was back where we came from, nearly by the bus station.

So, back on a city bus, find the new address we need, check at the reception desk, head up to the office they tell us… and it’s the wrong office. But we’re only a floor off, so it’s down a flight of stairs, over to another office… and it’s the wrong office. But we office we actually did want was just a couple doors down. So we head in there, my wife plops down the documents, explains what we need, sweet talks the clerk with a little bribe of some chocolates we’d picked up, and we’re asked to return in a couple hours for the completed documents.

So we walk around a bit, find a cafe and have some lunch, finally. Get back to the office, wait about a half an hour more (we are talking a government business after all), but finally do get our documents. It’s a good thing they were done when they were, because we had just enough time to get back to the bus station and catch the next bus back to Mariupol. My wife did much better on the ride back, but it was too hot for my tastes.

So why’d we go through all this? It’s all for the immigration paperwork, which needs to apostilled so I can submit it to the US government. Ukraine makes it a little hard, because before you can get the apostille stamp in Kiev, the documents have to certified/stamped by the regional office. Mariupol is in the Donetsk region, so I got to spend a few hours on busses today. But we got this piece done.

I don’t know if it’s made it to US news reports, but there’s a bit of civil unrest afoot here in Ukraine. Most of it is centered in Kiev (just a few blocks from where I was last week), but there’s a little grumbling in other cities as well. Just wanted to say that there no reason for concern. Mariupol is pretty far removed from all this; yesterday when there were sizable gatherings elsewhere, only about a dozen people showed up for a similar event here.

In any event, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m nowhere near the newsworthy violence, and I’ll be on my way out in just a couple days anyway.

One of my problems with Russian (and I am sure I have many, many problems) is that there are words that sound very similar to my Western ear. In fact, one of my first frustrations with the Rosetta Stone language software I’d purchased was it’s inability to distinguish my pronunciation of “mushina” (man) and “mashina” (car), even when overemphasing the differences. But it’s not just the pronunciation of the words that is at issue; it’s the fact that they are so similar that I will often get them confused.

Colors is a good example. In English, green, gold and yellow all sound quite different. But in Russian, they are close enough to always screw me up. Green is “zeloni,” gold is “zoloti,” and yellow is “zholti.” It does not seem so bad at the moment, when I’m just sitting here typing things out, but trying to get the right color when I’m also fumbling around for a half dozen other words is a recipe for disaster.

I’ve even got one of these potential mix-ups now that I’m married. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my wife’s son is named Zhenya (Женя), and I’ve been hearing and/or saying “Zhenya” for the past couple years. Now that I’m married I have a wife, or in Russian, “gena” (гена). It’s basically the same word, just with the first and last sounds softened in one of them. But given that my mouth has gotten somewhat used to one of them, I always need to think and/or pause a moment before I try whisper some sweet nothing into my wife’s ear.

And it’s one of those sweet nothings that prompts this post. The words for “beautiful” and “red” are pretty close to each other — “krasnaya” versus “krasni.” I’m pretty sure that more than once I’ve been waiting on the corner for the beautiful light to turn green (zholti? zoloti? nyet, zeloni). But this red/beautiful slip of the tongue actually has a funny meaning this week. The apartment owner had obviously just purchased some new bed sheets before we moved in. They are nice sheets in a red, floral design… and apparently not color-fast. They also hadn’t been washed before being set out for our use. As a result after a couple days, we started to notice red on our clothes and hands and elsewhere. It washes off pretty easily, but it’s still a hassle. So for the moment at least, if I accidentally say my wife is red, I’ve got some cover beyond just being a doofus.

It’s official: I am a trophy husband.

OK, I’m being a bit glib, but that’s kind of how it was tonight. The only other woman on my wife’s work brigade/team is named Angela, and naturally they have become friends. In fact, Angela was the only one of the team who knew about me at all. (Apparently the men on the team would frequently tell her she needed to get married, and maybe even suggested possible dates.). So, when my wife returns to work (she’s currently on her official work holiday), it will be something of a shock to everyone that she now has a husband. To everyone, except Angela.

Tonight my wife’s hostess skills were on full power, as she had invited Angela and her husband Victor over for dinner… and to show me off, it would seem. It won’t say it was a bad evening — it was actually rather fun at times — but I was definitely the odd man out when it came to language. Angela knew a little English from her school days, but a few words does not a conversation make. And I probably didn’t help things by understanding about 2% of what was being said. I’m getting pretty good at knowing when to nod or laugh, and that often conveys the sense that I know what’s going on around me.

Of course, I can easily recognize my name in Russian — it’s still “James,” just with some “zh” where the “j” would be — so I knew that I was the subject of conversation. That happened quite a bit this evening, which is why I’m pretty sure that my wife was showing me off a bit. I hope I did OK.

I’ve also discovered the limit of when I will consider myself to be drunk: two glasses of champagne and three shots of vodka. Prior to this trip, I don’t think I’ve ever had vodka before. Maybe once, as a mixed drink, but it certainly didn’t make an impression. My hits of vodka on this trip will definitely be remembered. My first shot was Thursday, during that Ukrainian style Thanksgiving Day dinner, when I was invited to share a shot with my wife’s mother. How could I possibly say no to that? And then there was tonight, when three shots around dinner were part of the dining/celebration experience. This was after we had consumed the bottle of champagne brought by Angela and Victor. After the third hit if vodka, I definitely had a buzz that would have been a problem if we actually gone out to a club, as someone had suggested/threatened. But by then it was a little late, so after our goodbyes, a quick walk around the block with my wife was sufficient to clear most of the head fog. But now I know.

Well, off to bed. Sleep shouldn’t be too much trouble tonight. And tomorrow should be interesting: we’re spending the day in Donetsk in order to get some paperwork stamped. Oh boy!

As I mentioned in my previous post, wedding celebrations in Ukraine can last a few days. I’m honestly not sure what happens over all those days, but maybe that’s just my culture bias showing through. American weddings — all on one incredibly full and usually stressful day; to me, that just makes sense. I guess that in some ways, that’s what we had here too.

After the ceremony — which, all told (including the sales pitch for photos), was about 45 minutes — we all walked down the street to a restaurant and took over one of the back corners. Not that we were a big “all” — it was me and my wife, her son Zhenya, my wife’s mother Svetlana, her sister Inna and Inna’s toddler Rodion. And Svetlana, our translator, of course. (Well, maybe not “of course;” my wife and I can communicate pretty well, but Svetlana was integral to our courtship and wedding, so why not?)

We ordered a bottle of wine, assorted other drinks, a couple salads, some breads and some pork and veal “shish kebab.” Curiously no pastry item, a la, a wedding cake. But it was pretty nice. I got to learn more about the traditional customs we weren’t following, I told them about a “traditional” American wedding (they actually have a hard time understanding that Americans don’t all do the same things the same way, but Ukraine is not a country of immigrants either), and really just had a nice time.

There was a little business as well. Since Svetlana the translator was there not just as a witness to the wedding, but also in her professional capacity, she helped my wife fill out her piece of the immigration paperwork I’ll need to do when I return. If I’d thought that my wife was stressed out about the wedding, that almost paled in comparison to her concern about filling out a simple biographic form. Granted, we are talking wholly different alphabets here, and that was a bit of the problem (for example, that backwards Russian R could be translated as “a,” “ia,” or “ya”), but still, I think she was waaaay more worried about making a mistake than she needed to be. But she got it all filled out, and then we all had a pretty nice time. I think we were there about 4 hours, which seemed about right for that sort of wedding reception. (I told my wife we’d probably have a couple more ceremonies and/or receptions when she gets to the US.)

So that was the wedding. Even with three posts, I’ve probably left out a bit. And of course there are pictures, but it looks like those will again need to wait until I’m back home. (If I’d planned a little better, I could have bought and brought a little attachment that would let me copy the camera photos to my iPad. And sadly I haven’t been able to find one at the Apple or computer stores here. C’est la vie!)

If you do a search for Ukrainian wedding customs and practices, you’ll find a lot of what seem to be fairly archaic practices — and they most definitely are. Bartering for the bride, or having to ransom her back after she’s been stolen, feasts and celebrations lasting two or three days, I even remember reading something about the groom and a wheelbarrow.

As it turns out, many of those things are still done in one way or another. At least they are for many weddings. Fortunately, we weren’t going to the nines on our ceremony (since it was Viktoria’s second and I was a clueless foreigner who didn’t speak the language and was leaving in less than a week), but there were still a couple of those customs that were part of it.

Getting hitched at the registrar’s is rather like being wed at city hall. The Mariupol office (the central office, where we were) is a rather run down building, but they have this area where the ceremonies are done that is in slightly better repair. Still, it was nothing like what you’d find at your local city hall.

The whole family made it down (except for Viktoria’s son’s wife and son), as well as Svetlana, the translator Viktoria and I have used from time to time. We got a couple photos on the steps leading up to the wedding hall, and then it was time to get things started.

A recorded version of Mendelssohn’s wedding march is played (a tad too loudly, if you ask me), and the bride and groom enter the hall together, followed by anyone else who is attending. There is no giving the bride away; entering together is to represent the equal partnership of the marriage. We stood at about the halfway point of the room; Svetlana was behind me to provide real time translation. At the far end of the room, up a couple steps, was a podium for the official, a table for the documents we would be signing, and a keyboard player to provide some incidental music. (Apparently, music and singing are supposed to be big parts of a traditional ceremony; she played pretty much whenever the officiant wasn’t speaking.)

The official made a couple welcoming remarks, including a statement about what we were doing. A piece of cloth, about 2′ by 8′ (provided by Viktoria’s mother) was placed on the floor before us, and the official invited us to step into it. (The cloth, called a rushnik, symbolizes the hope that the couple will never have to live on bare floors, i.e., be poor.) Then it was time for The Question. The official asked (with appropriate pauses for translation) if we were both there of our own free wills, understood the vows were making, and would do our utmost to fulfill them. Of course, at that point the only appropriate answer was “da.”

The exchange of rings was pretty much what it is here too. The rings are presented as a pair, I put her ring on her finger, she my ring on my finger. The only thing that caused a raised eyebrow was that I insisted on wearing my ring on my left hand. Over here, wedding rings go on the right hand; being on the left signifies divorce or other such separation. (Or just casual fashion; basically anything except being married.) I had told Viktoria about using my left hand awhile ago, so she wasn’t surprised, but a couple folks at the office were. But I think they realized it’s a different custom and went along with it.

Next came the legalese, as Viktoria and I went up to the dais to sign the city registration book. Actually, we had to sign in multiple places, not only for the wedding, but also for the extra immigration paperwork we had requested, a total of six or seven places. The Ukrainian signature is a very economical and illegible thing, so Viktoria’s turn at bat was pretty quick; mine was a tad longer, which I think amused the official a little. (Yet another crazy American and his name-based signature…)

After returning to our places on the rushnik, it was time for a little bubbly. We had some special goblets, again from Viktoria’s mother, and as part of the ceremony, we drink of glass champagne. I’m not sure of the significance; I just thought it was interesting as part of a civil ceremony.

We didn’t have to drink the whole thing, at least not at first. After we each had a sip, we had reached the conclusion, and were officially designed as husband and wife according to the laws of Ukraine. Mozel tov! (And then we finished our glasses of champagne — people were suggesting it would be bad luck if we didn’t.)

—-

There’s a little more to tell, but our internet has been out for the day, so I’ll just post this and get caught up with everything tomorrow.

I’ve got a little time this morning, so I thought I’d add a quick little post. Today is The Day, the day when it all happens, the day when I can finally say, “I got that Cuisinart I’ve had my eye on, and it was 54% off!” Wait, something’s off… The day is right, but I don’t see any K-marts around… Oh, that’s right… I’m getting married today.

I’m actually pretty calm about today. Excited but calm. Perhaps it’s just the calming stupor that comes over someone when he experiences a big life event in a country where virtually no one speaks his language. Who knows? In the ceremony today, I may actually be agreeing to by a fully-equipped Lada sedan, which I will keep parked 4 weeks every year outside of my timeshare in Yalta. No, I’m kidding. As the registrar made clear to Viktoria, the legal parts of the ceremony will be translated for me, so that I can knowingly enter into this commitment in the eyes of Ukraine.

Can you guess who isn’t quite as calm as me? Credit where credit is due, she isn’t completely freaking out, but she’s obviously quite anxious about things. Because of our running around and dinner yesterday, we hadn’t done a couple things (buying some candy as a thank you for the registrar, and getting some flowers for the bouquet), and because Viktoria needed to go to her apartment for her dress and then get to a salon to have her hair done, these were things that she had to leave to me. That, and a couple other things, like making sure I bring everything to the registrar’s office. So before she left this morning, there was a lot of “don’t forget” messages.

(Actually, I’m probably more concerned that I got the wring candy or flowers than I am about anything else. That, and maybe catching the wrong bus when I need to go. Lifetime commitment? Nah, I got that.)

That will be all for the moment. I need to get my tasks done and then get ready, and hopefully just be sitting around here for a couple hours. Wish me luck!

This will be a really quick post. Today was a pretty busy day, but as it was all in preparation for tomorrow, it will probably be a bit tedious to recount. But I also don’t have a lot of time, since need to get to bed to be ready for the big day. (By which I mean Friday. Oh, and the day I get married.)

This morning was all about paperwork and rings. The paperwork went fine and all my accursed English language documents got their proper counterparts. The were a couple trips to the bank to pay for things — registration services, fees for document copying and prep, etc., etc. The other big thing of the morning was getting our rings. Viktoria had already found the “perfect ring” (her words), and she had already put a deposit on it. So it was really just a matter of picking it up and finding one for me. My choice was mostly predicated on what the had in my size, which wasn’t a lot. Sadly, only yellow gold, which wasn’t my first choice, but there was one with a pleasantly subtle pattern, not too wide or too thick (things I found I didn’t like from my “practice rings”) and, most importantly, a pretty good fit. The only trouble with the ring-getting was that the store had signs up saying they took credit cards (which is not a given over here), but on this particular day they didn’t/couldn’t. No problem, I thought, I’ll just hit the ATM, except that I needed more than the daily limit. I was just going to use my credit card anyway, but natch I couldn’t remember my pin. Resourcefulness won out, though, by means of a cash advance at a bank and I was able to purchase our rings.

The other big activity of the day was a special family dinner. Special for two reasons really: this was my first time meeting everyone, and in honor of my American holiday, they had put together a Thanksgiving-like meal. It was really very sweet of them. I won’t go into details, but I feel that everything went well. Viktoria’s mother insisted on giving us a blessing, so I’m going to take that as a good sign. (I did have to say “da” to something I didn’t understand, but I don’t think will come back to haunt me.)

I won’t go into the other details of the meeting — again, it’s bedtime — but I think it was a fine evening, even if it was me against four people where we didn’t have a working single language.

Since this is short, here’s a link to a music video that I think is hilarious. It’s in Russian, but I think the visual humor stands by itself.
https://showyou.com/v/h-jIW2VN5Mgwr1GL1q/russian-batman-vs-the-penguin

I failed to mention this in my previous post, but guess what I found in my luggage once I got to Mariupol and unpacked things? Extra points for you if you knew that my missing umbrella would show up… Especially now that it doesn’t seem I’ll need it…