The Borderland Chronicles

If there’s something Ukrainians born in the U.S.S.R. pride themselves on more than their mosaics, it’s their cosmonauts. So I wasn’t so shocked during a visit to Konstantinovka to find the sides of bloc apartments along aptly named Cosmonaut Blvd. adorned with mosaic images of Soviet cosmonauts, including the renowned Yury Gagarin – the first human in space.

The buildings, built sometime during the 1960s, have seen better days. Many of the tiles surrounding the mosaic images have fallen off, leaving the building with a sort of scarred look. But the mosaics themselves remain mostly intact, if a bit faded.

After nearly two years here, I’m afraid a lot of the novelty I felt upon my arrival has worn off. Few things surprise me anymore. I’ve slipped into a life of routine similar to the life I had back in Portland. I think this would happen if you stayed anywhere long enough. But when I come across things like these images, remnants of a strange past – in this case, a Soviet past – that sleeping part of my mind that was once awed by everything around him is awakened.

“I live in the former Soviet Union,” I thought to myself when I saw the mosaics. “Wild.”

Posted in Art, Culture, History, Konstantinovka, Russia, Soviet Union, Travel, Ukraine |

In Ukraine, sometimes arriving to your flat in one piece is the ultimate survival.

I’ve dabbled in off-roading, tried my hand at cliff jumping and grew up attempting an array of precarious tricks behind a speed boat on multiple apparatuses. But none of these things have raised my anxiety level and forced me to clench my teeth like riding in a Ukrainian taxi during winter has. Why I still opt to do it, I have no idea. I guess they still get me from point A to point B quicker than a bus, and I value my time more than my safety.

Winter in Ukraine means tremendous amounts of ice and snow, much more than this Pacific Northwesterner is used to experiencing. But it’s still not enough to halt traffic. Back in Portland, with any amount of snow on the ground, cars cease to move, sometimes right in the middle of the road. People opt to stay home, working remotely, or they call in sick. The media labels a storm that brings two inches Snowpocalypse.  School is cancelled and the fun begins. Here, though, life continues on as normal. Children go to school, people commute to work and taxis rage on the pockmarked streets, despite the facts that the roads aren’t visible and that they’re covered in ice and snow.

After spending a weekend away, tired, hungry and with a large pack strapped to my back, I chose not to wait an hour and a half to cram into a small bus that would take another hour and a half to get me home, and instead asked a taxi driver if he’d mind giving me a lift. “Of course,” he said. “No problem. This is my job.”

My first indication that this might have been a bad idea came just moments after we pulled out of the bus station parking lot, when slowing for a red light our breaks locked up and we nearly slid into the gas truck in front of us. As the light turned green I took a deep breath and wrapped my hand tightly around what a friend of mine likes to call the “oh shit” bar, or that handle just about the window of the front passenger seat.

We turned onto the highway, slightly fish-tailing, and the Lada began to make a chugging sound. Had this been my first cab ride in a Lada, I would have asked, “Is this normal?” But I knew that it was. A series of hills, dips and turns followed, each one more frightening than the last. At one point the snow was coming down so hard I couldn’t make out anything more than a few meters in front of us. I wondered how my driver could see where he was going. Was it simply reflex? Had he ridden these roads so many times he could navigate them in his sleep – in this? I hoped so.

The wind didn’t help. It blew like it would be the last time it would blow, with ferocity. My passenger side window kept getting smacked with drifts of snow and every so often the car would swerve, not because of the ice – though it did that, too – but because of the gusts.

I ran possible scenarios in my mind. We spin out, lose control and smack into a tree. I’d be OK, because I opted to wear my seatbelt. The driver, however, would go straight through the windshield. In another, I imagined an oncoming car losing control and crashing head on into the Lada, sending us flipping and rolling into an embankment. No one would have lived.

As we came over the last hill there was a small break in the storm, enough to make out the lights of a small village, which I recognized as Krasne. I knew that if we could make it to Krasne we’d make it home, to Artemovsk. We were just about there when another Lada pulled out in front of us.

There wasn’t much the driver could have done. If he’d have hit the brakes, we’d spin out and lose control, like in the first scenario. There would also have been a good chance of smashing into the rear of the other Lada. So what he did do was probably the best decision, though it scared me so much my entire body stiffened, and in that moment I think my heart may have skipped a beat. Instead of the brakes, he used the gas, accelerating and riding the shoulder of a road so densely covered in snow that I was uncertain where the road ended and the field began. Nonetheless, it worked, and we zoomed on by with no problem, except for a minor fish-tail the moment he hit the gas.

With my apartment in sight, I breathed a sigh of relief. When asked how much the ride cost, he answered more than what he’d originally said. “Because of the snow,” he explained. I felt like I should have gotten a discount. But there was no talking him down.

Sometimes the ultimate survival can be making it off a sinking ship, or living to tell about a harrowing adventure to the peak of a mountain. And sometimes it can simply be a cab ride home.

Posted in Culture, It's Cold!, Konstantinovka, Public Transportation, Ukraine |

I was recently contacted by Matador Network to put together a photo essay that represented the eastern Ukrainian region that I’ve called home for the past two years.

Beautiful rubble of rural Ukraine was the result. And while you’ve seen many of the 20 photos here on The Borderland Chronicles, there might just be a few that’ll be new to you.

While you’re there, check out the other pieces I’ve published with Matador.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Donetsk, Environment, Food, History, Holidays, Journalism, Konstantinovka, Life, Media, Peace Corps, Travel, Ukraine |

As I’ve recently reported, there are many Ukrainians up in arms over Tuesday’s verdict in the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko. In the west you see most of them. In Kiev you see quite a lot of them. In the east, however, there are fewer.

So, to be fair, I should say that there are plenty of Ukrainians who believe Tymoshenko was rightly convicted. Here in the hard-knuckled Donetsk oblast, home to President Viktor Yanukovich and his ruling Party of Regions, the ex-prime minister receives little sympathy.

Take Volodiya, my taxi driver yesterday morning. During our 30-minute drive from the Konstantinovka train station to my apartment in Artemovsk we spoke a bit about the recent trial verdict, as well as a politician of old (I’ll get to that in a minute).

“I’m glad,” Volodiya said about the verdict and sentence handed to Tymoshenko. “She’s a crook, and she deserved it.”

He’s right in a sense. Tymoshenko isn’t exactly squeaky clean. In fact, she’s been jailed before. Back in February of 2001, while president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine, she was arrested on charges of forging customs documents and smuggling gas between 1995 and 1997. The charges were eventually dropped. And now there’s this, from The New York Times:

Ms. Tymoshenko stands accused under the new charges of reassigning $405 million in debt owed by a private energy company she headed in the 1990s to Ukraine’s federal budget, Ivan Derevyanko, the head of the intelligence service, told reporters, according to the Interfax news agency.

Continuing our discussion, I asked Volodiya, “Do you fear Ukraine’s stepping back into dangerous territory, allowing Yanukovich to rule as a dictator?”

“No, no,” he said. “We need to return to the good old days.”

“When were the good old days?” I asked.

“When we were the USSR,” he said.

This isn’t the first time I’ve stumbled upon this nostalgia. Far from it, actually. In discussions I’ve had with many people Volodiya’s age (50s, 60s), they tell me how much better things were back then, how everyone had jobs and food on the family table. I met one taxi driver during my 19 months here that told me he was a plant manager during the Soviet days, making three times the amount of money he now makes as a taxi driver. It’s difficult to argue with that.

Also during our drive to Artemovsk we passed through the small town of Chasov Yar. I’ve been through it many times before during my summer bicycle rides to lakes that surround the place. It was on one of those rides that I noticed a statue near the city’s community center that I believed to be Stalin. If so, it’d be the first of the former Soviet leader I’ve seen here. (There are plenty of Lenin, however.) As far as I know there used to be another, until it was decapitated and then blown up earlier this year. When I asked a friend of my who was with me on that ride who he thought it might be, he said he was certain that it wasn’t Stalin, that it was merely a likeness. But Volodiya confirmed it for me; the statue was indeed of Stalin.

“You know Stalin always by the pose and the mustache,” he said. “He’s always with his hand inside his jacket, sticking his chest out.”

“And what about Stalin?” I asked. “What do people – what do you – think about Stalin as a leader?”

“We say, ‘Stalin is done.’ We don’t want to go back that far.”

To end this on a soft note, here’s a a live performance of Sir Paul doing “Back In The USSR” in Kiev’s Independence Square back in 2008. Enjoy.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Donetsk, History, Journalism, Kiev, Konstantinovka, Media, Ukraine |

A few months back, while on a tour of Konstantinovka’s dilapidated factory areas and trash heaps (“The Wonders and Horrors of Donbass”, April 13), I met a young journalist from Donetsk named Alex. Alex is the editor of the online news outfit НОВОСТИ, based in Donetsk. We chatted for a while about journalism and I promised him I’d give him an interview about what I’m doing here in Ukraine

We just wrapped up the interview this week. The interview is in Russian, but you can run it through Google translate and get the jist. Here’s the interview.

Posted in Donetsk, Encounters, Journalism, Konstantinovka, Media, Peace Corps, Russian, Teaching, Ukraine |

A few weeks back I was invited to join a group comprised of volunteers from Italy, Germany and France, journalists from an online news publication in Donetsk and Ukrainian environmental activists on an excursion through the factory town of Konstantinovka. The excursion was led by Vladimir Beresin, a well-known environmentalist in this part of Ukraine and director of Bakhmat Environmental and Cultural Center. ”The Wonders and Horrors of Donbass,” the title Beresin’s given the ecotour, took us from mayonnaise-packet-laden trash heaps on the edge of town to dilapidated Soviet-era factory buildings to currently operating plants. The idea of the excursion was to highlight the environmental impacts of the USSR industrialization process and see perhaps the most polluted area of Donetska Oblast.

In a nutshell, Konstantinovka was once home to some of the most successful factories in all of the Soviet Union. Heavy metals and glass were its specialty. I wrote about Konstantinovka after visiting for a weekend back in January (Ruins of communism, Jan. 16). Then, much of the ground remained covered in snow, the trash heaps hidden below pristine white drifts. But with spring here and the snow gone, the rubble of the collapsed communist society is now exposed.

The tour is something Beresin would like to fine-tune and offer tourists who will potentially visit the area next year during the European Championships. With Donetsk’s Donbass Arena hosting football matches, cities like Konstantinovka and Artemovsk, with its winery and salt mines, are preparing themselves – and hoping – for a small boost in tourism.

But to get people to Konstantinovka will be difficult. It’s not the cultural center of the oblast, nor is it the quaint city that Artemovsk is, lined with rose bushes and cafes. It’s those with a interests in industry, politics and fallen empires who are most likely to visit. Hopefully there’ll be a few football fans that also fit into those categories.

Ecotourists.

A tractor works to consolidate a trash heap, a makeshift city dump of sorts, which lies just 200 meters from a neighborhood on the edge of the Konstantinovka.

"Lenin's idea is immortal" is scrawled across the ruins of a factory building in Konstantinovka.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Environment, Journalism, Konstantinovka, Russia, Soviet Union, Ukraine |

Konstantinovka, a city about 30 kilometers west of my home in Artemovsk, in the Donetska Oblast, was once home to some of the most successful factories in all of the Soviet Union. Heavy metals and glass were its specialty. One factory in particular, according to a Ukrainian acquaintance of mine, is said to have been the highest-producing glass factory in all of the former communist federation. Adorned upon it’s now dilapidated administration building are the words “Наша цель – Коммунизм!” – “Our goal – Communism!”

I spent this weekend with two Peace Corps volunteer friends of mine who live in Konstantinovka. Fueled by our interest in understanding more about this strange place we currently call home, the three of us spent Saturday afternoon exploring the city’s many condemned factories.

The dozen or so factories, two of which are still in use, line the Krivoy Torets River, which splits the city in two. Trudging through the snow in an area like this, thick gray clouds overhead, you experience thoughts of an apocalyptic nature. The factory buildings are not just abandoned, they’re in rubbles. It looks as if they were bombed, their walls blown out, ceilings absent, beams jutting from their concrete shells. You could navigate your way through this area using the smoke stacks in the same way you could a city populated with church spires. At one point, more than 4,000 workers were employed at the glass factory. Now there are less than that in total working at the remaining two operational factories.

Contemplating what this industrial mecca was like when fully operational, before the fall of the Soviet Union, because of its current state, takes some imagination. But the sheer number of factories, as well as the amount of space they cover, is impressive. Ukraine may now be a democratic republic, but the scars of its communist past are still very much visible.

Posted in Culture, History, It's Cold!, Konstantinovka, Russia, Ukraine |

I left Artemovsk on a blustery Tuesday afternoon. It was Dec. 21, and the first of many legs of my journey to Prague. The last afternoon bus from the main station brought me 25 km west to konstantinovka, where I spent three hours with my PCV pal Ben, drinking beer and cooking a chicken dinner. Ben’s always willing to put me up for a few hours before my train leaves from the city’s station at 8:18 p.m. (Cheers to your hospitality, pal!).

On the train I found my wagon nearly empty, an oddity if you consider that usually people are crammed in like sardines and left to either freeze (more often than not the windows won’t be sealed shut, allowing the winter’s cold to slip in) or overheat (In the off case you find yourself in a wagon in which window seals are up to code, you’ll most certainly be wishing you hadn’t, as the thermostat seems not to have an OFF setting). My bunk partner, an older woman in her 50s, proved great company. Not only did she speak English, but Russian, Ukrainian, Swedish and some Dutch. We chatted in the morning before arriving in Kiev, and she told me about her daughter, who dances in the Imperial Russian Ballet Company, and of her expat life with her new husband in Sweden. She’d been in Donestk – her hometown – visiting her ailing father. He didn’t have much time left, she said. This would most likely be the last time she’d see him, she said. I helped carry her bags and showed her to the bus station, then I went on my way.

I spent the morning and early afternoon in Kiev, mostly warming myself inside the Peace Corps Ukraine headquarters, before I began my second leg of the journey, a trip to Obukhov to visit my former Ukrainian host family.

Two metro lines and a marshrutka ride later, I arrived in Obukhov, the place where I spent the first two months of my time in country. I really enjoy my host family, Viktor, Tanya, Lyosha and Lena. Though Lyosha has joined the Ukrainian army and wasn’t able to be home, I spent that evening with the other three. I also met the babushka – Tanya’s mother – who’d come in a month earlier from Russia. She’d made borsch and galupsi, which she nearly force-fed me the moment I walked through the door. Lovely people, these Ukrainians.

In the morning I rode the marshrutka and metro with Viktor into Kiev. We parted below ground before I made my way to the bus that would take me to Boryspil airport. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly and efficiently I passed through security and customs. The new Terminal F is great. The only setback was the captain’s news that we’d be sitting on the tarmac for an hour before we’d be able to fly to Vienna, where I’d connect to Prague. Thick fog and snow had stalled and even cancelled many flights. I was lucky to only be delayed. Two and one-half hours later, I arrived in Vienna. My connecting flight had also been delayed. There were no problems. I pushed on to Prague, where I found Bri waiting for me outside the terminal.

Bri recently moved into a new flat, which she shares with a Slovak girl and a French girl. It’s a spacious, fantastic place far enough outside the city center to avoid the rampant tourists, but close enough in to get everywhere by foot or tram in just a matter of minutes. The neighborhood is called Zizhkov.

The first full day I was here, Bri and I, along with her friend Nikki and Nikki’s boyfriend Gleb, took a train to Dresden, Germany to visit its famous Christmas Market. We were not disappointed. The traditional roast beasts and bratwurst were excellent. There was plenty of snow on the ground and even more coming down on us, but the hot wine helped keep our spirits up. We enjoyed an eight-hour jaunt around the city before returning to Prague.

Christmas Day had us preparing food for about a dozen guests – expat friends of Bri’s. They arrived in the evening and didn’t leave till about 2 a.m. We had a potluck, with every type of dish and food group represented. The wine never stopped flowing. There was dancing, singing and more.

Since then, Bri and I have been through nearly half the city’s neighborhoods, hunting for churches, gravestones, a dancing building, cubist architecture, and an array of statues. There was a night of karaoke, and there will be another next Monday. New Years Eve should be a wild time. We’re going to join the street hooligans that toss fireworks aimlessly in the streets of old town Prague, then, from the Charles Bridge, watch the larger ones shot into the sky. There’s rumor of a party at Bri’s, but no word on whether that’ll happen for sure.

About this city, I’ll say this: It’s gorgeous, vibrant, diverse and unpredictable. There’s a wonderful blend of the old and the new, which fits seamlessly together. From what I’ve observed, the city is accepting of all sorts of people from all sorts of places. I must have overheard a dozen languages being spoken today alone, and not just from tourists. At the moment, I’m cozied up in a quaint, modern cafe around the corner from Bri’s apartment, sitting next to a frosty window at a small wooden table. Outside, snow and ice coat the sidewalks and lie in between the ruts of cobbled streets. I’m warm for now, but I know the cold will nip at any exposed skin on the walk home. Today was warmer than yesterday by about three degrees. Still, it’s just 26°F at 5 p.m.

Tonight we’re staying in and making dinner. Not sure what’s on the menu. But after all the walking Bri and I’ve been doing, it’ll be a welcomed break. There’s more to come soon, as I’ve still got eight days before I fly back to Ukraine. If you’re interested in viewing some photos of my time here thus far, you can see them over at flickr.

Posted in Artemovsk, Culture, Encounters, Food, It's Cold!, Kiev, Konstantinovka, Prague, Travel, Ukraine |

This past Saturday was a fellow PCV’s birthday party, in which I was invited, along with some others. It was a great time. But I’ll get to that a little later. The real story here is the method of transportation I chose to take in order to get there.

It was proposed to me by my pal Mattison, who lives in Konstantinovka, about 22 or so kilometers west of me, to go rock climbing early Saturday afternoon before making our way by bus to Margo’s apartment in Dobropillia, where her party would be held. The plan was to cycle to rock climbing and back, then take a bus or two west to the party. But the weather forced us to change our plans. With the rain coming down pretty consistently, we decided to forgo the rock climbing, thinking it nearly impossible to grapple with a wet rock wall. Instead, still wanting to go for a ride – and I’m still not sure how I was enticed into this particular idea – Mattison and I rode 65 kilometers, or about 40 miles, to Dobropillia on our bicycles.

Through wind, rain and severe cold, mud, muck flooded roads and clay, past men with shouldered shotguns, rifles and ammunition, cows, chickens, ducks, and every other conceivable farm animal, being slapped by walls of oily brown water splashed up by oncoming dump trucks, we rode west along highways and village roads. We stopped to rest from time to time, usually because I needed a short break to stretch my lower back and adjust the large pack on my back that kept slipping into an uncomfortable position. Twice we pulled to the side of the road to fix the crank shaft on Mattison’s bicycle, which kept stripping out. We were a mere halfway to our destination at that point. Miraculously, the thing held the rest of the way.

I’d had it in my head that upon arriving we’d be greeted with a catered dinner and a grand amount of vodka. Mattison had fixed this in my mind many hours earlier. Supposedly Margo had told him that this was the plan. Those last teeth-chattering, thigh-burning 10 kilometers in which I had lost all feeling in my toes, completely numb from the water and cold, what kept me going was the thought of lounging on a sofa, my feet in wool socks, with a plate of food and a glass of much-deserved booze resting at my side. A night in, I said to myself, would be nice tonight. But when we arrived, I could tell right away something was up. The girls had on dresses and shimmery belts wrapped high around their waists, black knee-high boots set carefully by the door. Everyone was passing each other in the hallway without saying much. There was a frantic disposition about the place.

“You made it just in time!” Margo said, welcoming us in. ”We’re gonna leave for the restaurant soon.”

Er, restaurant? We were both caught by surprise. Mattison and I walked our bikes into the spare room and threw down our packs. While Mattison went to the washroom, I shed everything from my body. My clothes were caked in mud and an unusual white clay, and wet completely through. My toes were blue and numb, and when I stood it felt as though there was nothing beneath my feet. It was one of the strangest feelings I’ve experienced. I can only imagine what world-class mountain climbers experience during their summits, trying to stay warm in sub-zero temperatures. Do their entire bodies feel this way?

At the restaurant we toasted to Margo’s 25th birthday and gorged ourselves on a variety of Ukrainian foods. After enough liquid courage was consumed, minor dancing ensued. Taxis brought us back to the apartment that night. We chatted for a while more over drinks. A good time was had by all.

I remember first thing the next morning checking to make sure all my toes were still where they should be. A dream I had that night included me losing some of them. They were all there. I chose not to ride the bicycle back to Konstantinovka. I opted for the comfort of a warm bus instead. I couldn’t find a reason to put myself through what I’d endured the day before again, especially with a hangover.

Posted in Blogtober, Cycling, Dobropillia, Konstantinovka, Ukraine |

After attending a very interesting literary event in Konstantinovka with two other PCVs last Friday, in which the family and friends of a woman who survived the holocaust spoke about her trials, tribulations and eventual escape to America, all of which are discussed in a posthumous collection of diary entries, we got word that the summer camp we were to work at this week had been cancelled. Something about the director of the university breaking plans that had been made for months in advance, and attempting to extort some $4,000 from Peace Corps and the PCVs in charge of organizing the 8-day camp. And so, a plan was hatched. The two other PCVs and myself would visit two other PCV friends in the seashore town of Novoazovsk, about four to five hours bus ride south from my home in Artemovsk. After enduring multiple sweat-soaked bus rides and transfers in the sweltering 100-plus-degree heat, we arrived at Novoazovk, where we waded knee-deep in mud for 200 meters in order to find a spot in the sea deep enough to swim. That first night we cooked sausages and vegetables over an open flame, and drank beer and vodka with some Ukrainian friends well into the morning. When we finally crawled into bed, the sun began to rise, as did the heat. Each of us spent the early morning hours tossing, turning and kicking the bed sheets off of us in a futile attempt to stay cool.

After a large breakfast of banana pancakes and eggs, we made for the sea, this time taking a short marshrutka (route bus) ride to the tiny resort town of Siedove. Waiting for us there was a sandy beach of crushed shells, scantily-clad Ukrainians, shawarma (tasty Middle Eastern sandwich-type wraps) and a mud-free Sea of Azov. We filled the afternoon swimming, tossing the Frisbee and playing Durak, a Russian card game whose name literally means “fool.” Back at the apartment that evening in Novoazovsk, we cooked spaghetti, drank casually, some of us played cards while others read and relaxed.

In all, the weekend was a success. Despite the stifling heat and sad news of the summer camp cancelation, we all managed to enjoy ourselves. I may have even got a slight suntan.

Posted in Konstantinovka, Novoazovsk, Peace Corps, Sea Of Azov, Siedove, Travel, Ukraine |