The Borderland Chronicles

The drunk deaf boy squirmed and moaned in his aisle-side bunk above the devoutly religious woman with the white head wrap, who was sleeping below. His three friends had literally thrown him up there just five minutes earlier, then they went to have a cigarette in the back of the wagon.

Five young female students with two parental chaperones, on their way back from a weekend excursion in Kiev, sat on the two bunks below me, talking about the boy and his friends. The four boys, or perhaps young men – all must have been between 16 and 18 years of age, their pubescent faces marked with zits – and also deaf, had been drinking Obolon beer since the train left Kiev Pas station five hours earlier.

By midnight all of the boys were drunk, slurring their signs and disturbing passengers trying to sleep. I imagine that it wasn’t their intention to be rude and to be loud. Given the fact that they were all deaf, they probably had no idea how obnoxious the slamming of glass beer bottles on the table could be. And given how drunk they all were, they most likely weren’t aware that their ricocheting off the ends of the beds as they stumbled down the aisle awoke people from their slumber.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but these boys were, in fact, acting disrespectfully and pissing off everyone in the wagon, and it showed on the passengers’ faces. So when the police came by on a routine walk-through, cited the boys for smoking and drinking – both of which are illegal aboard Ukraine’s trains – and made them each pay 100 hryvnia (about $12.50), passengers erupted in a small round of applause.

The celebration, though, was interrupted by gurgling and moaning coming from the passed out boy on the top bunk. I knew what this sound meant, and I’m sure others did, too. I sat up to face the boy just as he vomited over the side of the bunk. The chunky, brownish-orange goop splashed onto the aisle floor, with some landing mere inches from the religious woman’s face. Passengers let out a collective, “Oooopa!” One of the girls sitting below me reached over and shook the leg of the religious woman to wake her up. Once the woman saw what had happened, she went for the police.

Two officers returned with the woman, with the boy’s friends in tow. Frantic signing ensued. The cops, unable to sign, simply shouted at the boys, “See what you’ve done! Look at this! Don’t you understand?” It took a minute for the officers to realize their messages weren’t getting through. So on a piece of paper one officer wrote something down.

The boys left after that, with the wagon attendent, and returned with a bucket of hot, soapy water. Then, with the help of one officer, they pulled the boy who’d vomited down from the bunk and told him to scrub the floor clean. When he finished, the boy was taken by another officer, and he didn’t return.

The train, meanwhile, had stopped at a station somewhere five hours east of Kiev, and it wouldn’t continue on its way to Donetsk until this problem was resolved. The police officers wanted the remaining three boys to come with them voluntarily. I couldn’t see what one officer had written down and shown the boys, but when the boys saw it they began frantically signing to one another and shaking their heads in a panicked sort of way. After about three minutes of back-and-forth between the officers and the boys, the officers grabbed the boys’ things and their arms and escorted them off the train.

At that point, I sort of felt bad for the boys. Yes, they’d screwed up, pissed everyone off and broke the law, but their punishment would probably end up being more severe than it ought to be. I turned to look out the window at them as they were dragged out into the darkness, toward a small shack illuminated only slightly by a small light positioned above the door. I was thinking about what fate awaited them in that dark shack, when the train lurched forward.

Despite the effort to clean up the mess on the floor, the wagon smelled like vomit the rest of the night. It was a sort of acidic and sour scent mixed with ammonia, from the cleaning products. Because of that, and because of the discussions passengers were having below me, I didn’t get much sleep.

A friend of mine who I spoke with about this said every train ride is like a dice roll. And this is true. While I’ve had poor experiences, such as this one, some of my fondest memories of my time in Ukraine will certainly be of conversations and interactions with people aboard the trains. But this last one is a ride I’m hoping to forget.

My first two days in Germany were spent in Hamburg, which turned out to be a gorgeous, wildly unpredictable city with wonderfully polite people, quaint cafes and thousands of bicycles. Being from Portland, I felt like I’d stepped into a sort of alternate PDX universe, just with German as the language and better architecture.

As you’ll see from the photos, it was cold and snowy. In fact, it was the coldest it’s been there in nearly two decades. As a result, the city’s Outer Alster Lake froze over, providing an awesome surface for winter festivities, such as skating, playing hockey and, well, just plain old sliding about.

Reeperbahn Street is home to Hamburg’s infamous red light district. Neon lights illuminate the street at night, making it possible for drunken pub crawlers to make their way around. Twice while strolling along the street my first night there I was solicited for sexual favors (I politely declined each time). While searching for the apartment where I would couch surf (see the white and orange concrete building in the right of the photo), I passed a gorgeous transvestite, who was leading a group of young partiers into a night club. Dressed as a drum major, she led them with a whistle and baton.

Peeps shows are everywhere on Reeperbahn. Pay for a peek.

I spent my first morning in Hamburg aimlessly wandering the city. Walking along the riverbank proved to be a nice view. Small ice-breaking ships motored alongside harbor cranes.

Walking along the river led me eventually to Outer Alster Lake, which had completely frozen over. Thousands of Hamburgers (Yes, it’s unfortunate, but people from Hamburg are called Hamburgers. And yes, they’ve heard that joke before.) came out to skate, slide and just be atop the lake. Kiosks setup along the shore sold gluvein, crepes and bratwurst. It was a perfect winter wonderland.

Bikes! We think we’ve got a lot in Portland. In Germany bicycles are everywhere, and people ride them all year round – rain, sleet or snow.

Being the massive Beatles fan that I am, I set off to find the first venues the band played together as The Quarrymen. The Indra was the location of the guys’ first gig.

The Quarrymen also regularly played at Grosse Freiheit.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently flew to Germany to meet up with my friends from Portland who play in the band Blouse. We spent a couple days in both Hamburg and Berlin. Though we didn’t have much time to explore the city, I did manage to snap some photographs. And since it was Berlin, I used the German-made Afga 35mm black and white 200 film.

Berlin’s double-decker bridge, The Oberbaum, crosses Spree River.

Large ice sheets floated in the Berlin’s Spree River. This winter was a particularly chilly one for Europe. (Facing west)

What’s left of the Berlin Wall is essentially a monument and a gallery. Colorfully painted images adorn nearly every square inch of it.

A view of what once was West Berlin from what once was East Berlin.

Last October, as a fall 2011 Glimpse Correspondent for Glimpse.Org, I spent a weekend with six coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian mining town of Torez. The plan was to get an idea of their lives and then to write a piece that would provide the outside world with a glimpse into their lives. While in Torez that weekend we discussed everything from work and moonshine to family and the future. The result, published earlier this month, was a 4,000-or-so-word story illustrating the mining culture that’s existed in the area for decades and highlighting the future of the illegal mines, called “kopanki,” and what their disappearance would mean for the Torez community.

You can read the story over at Matador Abroad or Glimpse. You can also view my photos of the mine and the miners on Flickr.

Last week I tagged along with my good friends from Portland, the Captured Tracks band BLOUSE, in Germany for a few days. We met up in Hamburg before their set at Astra Stube that night, and I left them a couple days later after their Comet Club show in Berlin. Along the way, and in between sets, drinks and mischief, I snapped some photos.

Here’s a glimpse into BLOUSE’s life on the road.

BLOUSE playing at Astra Stube in Hamburg, Germany. The venue was small, the crowd a bit quiet, but a good time was had nonetheless. The show’s promoters were fantastic, keeping everyone’s bellies full of booze all night.

Charlie and Patrick at Astra Stube in Hamburg.

Post-show shenanigans. After leaving Astra Stube, the guys and I set out to experience Hamburg’s nightlife, finding our way to a divey and dark bar on Reeperbahn Street in the city’s infamous red-light district. We were all still under the influence of booze back at the apartment. Patrick tried to wind down by listening to some tunes before turning in.

Bunk beds in Hamburg.

Backstage at the Comet Club in Berlin the band did an interview with a local radio station. I’m not sure why everyone’s head is down except Charlie.

Charlie during sound check at Comet Club in Berlin.

Patrick during sound check at Comet Club in Berlin.

Charlie and Patrick chatting between songs at Comet Club. The venue was much larger than Astra Stube, and the crowd more lively. A group of American girls studying abroad in Italy – but on vacation in Germany – stood up front, singing along with nearly every song. Surprisingly, the Germans, too, knew many of the songs and even shouted out requests during breaks.

Patrick playing the bass line on “Controller”, with Paul on drums in the back. Unlike other stages during the tour, Comet Club’s came equipped with a fog machine, which emitted the stuff from right below Paul. Most of the night he was cloaked in a foggy haze.

Charlie singing “Ghost Dreams” at Comet Club in Berlin. She started off by confessing to the audience that she has nightmares often, hence the song’s title and lyrics. Misty played keys and sang backing vocals.

Despite not having a lot of time to check out the city of Berlin, everyone had a great time. The beer flowed all night after the show. At one point, in need of food, Charlie, Misty, Patrick and I set out in search of an all-night cafe. We settled with a fast-food stand. The girls ordered “something vegetarian,” while Pat and I asked for “something with meat.”

The next morning we parted ways. I made my way back to Hamburg to catch my flight to Kiev, while BLOUSE set off to the next city on the tour.

BLOUSE still has a few dates left on their European tour. You can find a list of the remaining shows here.

Back in October I visited a group of coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian city of Torez who work at one of the area’s illicit coal mines, called “kopanki” in Russian.

These are photographs from that trip. The music is a 1951 song by Vladimir Bunchikov, titled “An Old Miner” (“Старинная шахтерская”).

You can see more of the photos in larger sizes over at Flickr.

This won’t come as much of a shock to anyone, especially those of us who live in Ukraine or who have visited, but the women of Kiev have just been rated the most beautiful in the world.

“Kiev is, without a doubt, home to the world’s most beautiful women. A visit to Kiev is truly awe-inducing, it’s almost hard to believe that women this beautiful even exist. They’re also less intimidating and more friendly than their Russian counterparts. Check out Kiev in the summertime, when the Hydropark Island on the Dnieper River becomes a hot spot for sunbathing Ukrainian beauties,” Traveler’s Digest wrote.

The rest of the top five looks like this:

2. Stockholm, Sweden

3. New York City, USA

4. Buenos Aires, Argentina

5. Varna, Bulgaria

In case you needed further proof of the extreme weather conditions in eastern Europe, there’s this video that shows the Black Sea near the port of Odessa frozen over. The last time this happened was back in 1977.

Oh, and that creaking sound you hear in the video… that’s the ice.

You can see photographs of the frozen sea here.

A ‘stiliaga’ – the Soviet Union hipster of the 1940s and 50s.

I came across two very interesting articles this week pertaining to elements of Ukraine’s past and present culture.

The first, “A foreign affair: On the great Ukrainian bride hunt,” published in Harper’s Magazine, follows a man who goes undercover to learn more about the men that come to Ukraine in search of women to wed.

The second, “The Western Brand: The socio-cultural revolution of soviet mods against boring clothes, music and behavior in the USSR,” from The Ukrainian Week, explores the subculture of the stiliagi, a group of young, fashion-forward, progressive-minded individuals in the 1940s and 50s who copied the lifestyles of young people in the west.

I recommend checking out both.

Too cool for school. I mean that quite literally. With the temperature hovering around -24 degrees Celsius (-10 degrees Fahrenheit) this morning, most schools cancelled lessons all together. My school, however, thought they’d give it a shot and see how many students would show up.

In my first lesson of the day, usually a rowdy bunch of 28 12-year-olds, just 5 girls showed up. The teacher I work with was running around like a mad woman trying to figure out where everyone was while also dealing with parents of children calling her mobile to explain that they were keeping they’re kids home from school today. “It’s too cold to be outside today,” my partner teacher explained. “And some of the students live on the edge of town and would have to walk in.” (What’s funny was the number of phone calls from mothers worried their boys would catch their death if they were to go outside. Contrastingly, only a few mothers called to explain they were keeping their daughters home. And like I said, the students that did brave the weather to come to class were, in fact, all girls. I’m seriously beginning to question who’s tougher in Ukraine.)

Proof to the severity of this eastern European cold snap can be found with a quick scan of the international news. A Reuters story published yesterday reported that already 30 people have died in the past week. Most of those were homeless people, but still. I tried running some errands yesterday afternoon, but quickly gave in, turned back and went home when my snot and mustache froze just five minutes after stepping outside.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I’m not used to this type of weather. We get rain, fog, and at worst maybe some sleet. But the temperature rarely drops below freezing, except for maybe a few times and during the night. Having spent the previous winter in Ukraine, though, you’d think I’d be prepared. But nothing prepares you for this extreme chill.

I’m home now, curled up in a blanket a few feet from my radiator. This is where I plan to stay for the remainder of the day. Maybe this afternoon I’ll make some mulled wine. Here’s to hoping it warms up soon.