The Journey to Kyiv

"The wind sent ripples over the water, and the whole Dnieper silvered like a wolf's fur in the night."

Why Kviv? A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit Lviv, Ukraine. I liked the flavor and wanted to see the "real" Ukraine. Kyiv is an old and important place, and its recent history is deeply connected with our own. I wanted to be in a place of beauty and mystery where serious things are happening. 

As well, it's close to Chernobyl, and after reading Svetlana Alexievich's oral history of that sad place, I have been moved to see it.  

I hope to eat boiled food and gather information and inspiration for my next play. The last, The Mighty Sequoias, just closed. It was successful, and I want to keep the momentum going. Flooding myself with books and experiences is usually the fuel that kicks a new one off. 

Greek Easter felt like a good time, and Sara was free to travel with, so off we went. 

The flight was designed to be a nine-hour chunk, followed by a one-hour layover in Frankfurt, and a two hour dessert course that would land us in Kyiv in the early afternoon. The first part went just as planned, and I was able to read the entirety of The Master and Margarita and some short stories by Gogol.

The former was a goofy tale about the Devil wreaking havoc in '50s Moscow. A very clear influence on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and, probably Susanna Clarke. It kind of read like a Commie Douglas Adams novel.

The Gogol was a revelation, serious sorts of fairy tales with sudden stabs of beauty and haunting proverbs. I greatly enjoyed one called The Terrible Vengeance. I chose these books for the author's connection to Ukraine.

Found time as well to watch that Thor movie everyone said I was a loser for not having seen yet. I'm not a loser anymore! Hail to me! I rule so hard now.

The other travelers seemed like solid Germans headed home and Russian Orthodox priests in disguise. Everyone ate their sunflower-bread sandwiches with efficient humor. 

The layover in Frankfurt was fraught with the usual peril. Those German airports are like Rube Goldberg traps designed to ensnare and tease. Moving sidewalks that barely move, hallways that extend themselves as you hurry down them. Directional signs that promise progress but deliver more signs. 

We arrived at the Z terminal and needed to be at the B. 

Reading that there is a Z Terminal tells you all you need to know about the efficient humor of the Frankfurt airport. Shuttles that lead to escalators that lead to trams that lead to ramps that slide down to corridors that open into perfume shops that spill you into conveyor belts that dump you in a pile at an underground security checkpoint. 

An agent took particular interest in Sara's medical exercise ball. It's a solid racquetball-like sphere you use to work out tension. It caused them, and us, a great deal. 

After determining it wasn't injected with Romulan Ale or made of frozen heroin, we were released to run, passports waving, to the gate. They knew our names. We were the only ones missing. 

It still required a train and a wheeled staircase to board. There's no end to the Trials of Frankfurt. 

Hot little hop to the Final Destination during which we ate sweaty cheese sandwiches and waited patiently for the landing gear to pop out. Nice little view of the Mighty Dneiper through the window. On its banks, golden cathedral domes shot stars into everyone's eyes.

Fucked around with the Uber app, gave up and took a cab. Like a person! An honest taxi! Like people! Winding ride with heavy traffic. The driver's radio played a selection of those weird "house" covers of pop hits you hear all over Europe. This time it was a sprite singing a weird version of "Cry to Me" and a pixie's version of "Umbrella."

It's always something. Familiar and wrong but with its heart in the right place.

The dazzling cultural highlights of Kyiv appeared and vanished through the window. Various statues with various weapons. Curling cathedrals. A marvelous preview of the future.

Just as we were sick of the ride, we arrived. An airbnb behind a Turkish coffee house.

A brutish Babushka answered the bell, gave us the key, gathered up her weight in shopping bags, muttered unintelligibly, and left. Welcome to Kyiv. 

Hilarious two-level place with a staircase that looks like The Mandrell Sisters might descend at any moment. Beanbags and a toilet seat that falls off when you lift the lid. Ideal for such as we. 

We crashed at once. Nice long nap without bothering to unpack. That's how it's done. 

Plan was to wake up, grab dinner and go to bed when the locals do. Jet lag is for suckers! We would soon learn, the joke was on us, the locals don't sleep! 

After we dressed, we walked out into the dark streets to find dozens of bars and 24-hour coffee shops and diners. Heaven. 

We headed for a Georgian restaurant Sara had read about. Did it make sense to eat another country's cuisine on our first night? Sure. There's plenty of time for borscht later. 

Cute little place not too far from the homestead with a gregarious server who talked us into lots of wine with his easy charm.

"You must try this one, do you know it? Ah, you do not, but I can tell you it is buried in an, ah, under the ground, in a, an, an amphora, and sealed with a, I do not know the word for the seal, but it tastes of the earth. How many milliliters would you like?"

We also ordered khinkali, which are the dumplings Georgia is famous for. The server placed bibs around our necks, which frightened us.

The clientele at this place were well-heeled. A slender silver-haired man beamed at his teenage children. He looked like a theater director from a cartoon or an author from a movie in a Polish film festival. 

His wore his scarf in a tight ring around his neck.

We were served olive oil with Georgian salt. Dipping soft bread into it produced an excellent sensation when paired with the Buried Dirt Wine.

The khinkali arrived, four of lamb and four of pork. A little dough purse with a prominent "button" sealing it all together, drawing the bag closed. The bibs made us worry they were explosive. I'd had a bad experience in Chinatown once upon a dumpling.

We looked around, unsure how to eat them, but no one else had yet been served. I took the plunge, sawed off the first button, which had the consistency of the stalk on a floret of cauliflower, and was relieved when only a thin trickle of broth trickled out.

Kind of forked up and scooped in the filling, and it was fine. I felt a little foolish, but there it was. By the time I'd finished one, other parties had been served, and I saw I'd gone about it exactly wrong.

The button is a handle. You lift the whole dough-bag to your mouth, nibble a little hole and suck out the juice. Then you kind of eat the rest like you're holding a banana upside down. The teen daughter of the Silver Director was particularly good at it.

We laughed at how wrong we'd been. My grandfather loved being wrong. He would throw his head back and laugh when he was shown some error he'd made. It was a beautiful trait and one it's taken me some time to inherit. I have it now. I'm like him now, in that way.

                                         

(not my pic)

After that, we made short work of most of them. We had over-ordered, so we took some home in a box. Got out of there, so the servers could laugh at us in peace, and took a longish after-dark stroll past a strange plastic snail and toward the glittering lights of St. Sophia.

Bought rice cakes and yogurt at a 24-hour grocery, and went home. The sidewalks are in great need of repair, but it loaned a kind of flavor to the walk. I stumbled often and joked with Sara that my grandfather who loved to be wrong also loved to stumble in the street.

"I am a man and not a mountain goat, and this gives me pleasure."

At home, she went right to sleep, but I could not. After a fruitless hour, I got up, went right to the fridge, and took the dumplings out.

I ate them like fruit in the dark.