Every Stone

Driving in Ukraine is an adventure. We were lucky enough to have seatbelts in the third row of the surprisingly new VW van, a brilliant silver, that we took today to the focus groups in the town that sounded like a bad infection of some type. (“Smila”?) Unfortunately the seatbelts were more temperamental than Cher and Madonna combined. They only worked at a certain angle while the car was off and parked. Fine. O teased me about putting on my seatbelt while stopped, even before starting, but not five minutes later we nearly crashed into the side of a car and everyone, as soon as they returned to their seats and fastened their seatbelts, thought it rather ironic. The driver explained he’s never braked that quickly before. Of course.

I dozed on and off through much of the drive, having only gotten four hours’ sleep, but I was conscious enough of the time to note that the countryside is very, very, very flat, and the only bumps or hills you’re likely to see are those visual tricks created by the bumping and jostling of the car. I suspect it was another 160-180 km/hr day. Didn’t look.

Aside from the seat belts and speed, the major driving event was simply seeing Soviet cities and architecture. They’re vertical. These huge identical apartment buildings that look like projects in the US, very blocky, and very compact. Every town. Every place. Blocks of them together indistinguishable to any but a resident. We did our focus group at a nexus of some such buildings, in a run-down school. O offered his opinion succinctly: “Bad toliet. When you have a good school head, you have a good toilet. Bad toilet means bad school head.” It’s very true.

As a side note on the people, O has rapidly become my favorite Ukranian. He carries a small leather man-purse that may or may not contain a small gun. Probably not. Probably. He teases me gently about random things that he can manage to say in English, such as the purported connection between my refusal to consume adequate amounts of chocolate and beer for dinner and our van’s being stopped by the train. When he says my name, it’s like three separate words: “Reh,” “Beh,” and then shortly, “Kuh.” It’s a bit like the way I remember my grandmother Carole saying it, so that reminder makes me happy. He’s also of reminding us when his children’s and wife’s birthdays are. That’s endearing. S also carries a picture of his daughter in his cell phone memory and happily shows it as often as possible. Of course, he’s about 12, so none of us are sure how he had her so early. (He’s very smart, very competent, incredibly hard-working, and outstandingly decent, and he holds a very high position for such a young age — in the Bankova, the White House.)

The focus groups were very good, very educational, and, as always, people were remarkably funny. One woman referred to the affect of one politician as like “a boiled fish.” Not even sure what that means. The female politician got ravaged in terms almost identical to those used to describe Hillary. People were pretty shameless in their appreciation of plain physical might. Never heard people come so close, although here they do as well, to saying, “Strong and wrong is better.”

In the car on the way back, we had a “traditional Ukranian dinner” of chocolate and beer. I’ve come to really like Stella, which is good, because they don’t really drink water, soda, or tea often, at least in the circles of very large, ex-KGB men I travel with for these things. We also had some smoked cheese. I really thought it was turkey. They insist it was cheese. At this point, I don’t want to know the details, but I’m pretty sure it was terrible for my arteries. Thank goodness chocolate and beer are full of vitamins. (I think the chocolate really did have berries in it.)