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Published: February 1st 2008
My life has been moving in slow, predictable circles lately; if only the same could be said about my ice-skating.
Fed up of not doing anything creative with our weekends, we went to the Bolshevik Arena in Shulyavska for a Saturday skate. Everyone around us on the ice rink was in a good mood; teenage girls giggled and twirled past distinguished sixtysomething men in grey suits, who in turn glided past young couples, clinging on to fearless toddlers in bright woolly hats. Each accidental shoulder barge was met with a smile and a helpful push in the right direction.
I just tried not to fall over, propelling myself with the same small, unconfident steps which I used to shuffle along
vulystya Chervonoarmiyska's own patch of ice on my way to work on chilly mornings. After a couple of warm-up laps I found a rhythm and started to relax, but then with one over-ambitious pirouette I doubled my year's tally of frozen tumbles and collapsed knee-first on the slippery, cold ice.
The humbling part of picking myself up (besides seeing Ana sneak her camera back into her pocket) was watching the little tracksuited maestros, half my age and ten
times as fast, potential Kyiv Falcons or Olympic skaters, whizzing past me while I used an advertising board to clumsily pull myself off the floor. Some children even had personal trainers alongside them, helping them to make the most of an enviable talent.
Ana - cautious, graceful, bright white skates shimmering under disco lights - didn't show me up too much. When our hour was up we went back to the centre of the city, and soothed our sore ankles with beer and a pizza so spicy that it made me cry.
My mood has been low for as long as Kyiv has been living under tepid grey skies. Tall, soulless housing blocks make the city feel claustrophobic, Stalin's ugly legacies looking down on me like school bullies in a playground. For all of the town's New Russian riches and Parisian property prices which I see every day it isn't easy not to notice the poverty which fills in the gaps; the elderly women in faded headscarves sitting on dirty steps at metro stations selling bruised vegetables; those without anything to sell left with no choice but to beg, clutching plastic cups with so few
kopiyka dropped inside
them that the little silver coins barely cover the bottom; the vodka-soaked lunatic in the foyer of my building who I had to push past to get to the lift one night.
Snows falls sporadically but in places the city looks desperate. Life is difficult, and people do very little to make it easier. An example of this is the 'Soviet shop counter system', which some chemists still use. To buy some headache tablets, Ana first walked up to one counter and told the pale, miserable woman behind the thick glass window the name of the tablets she needed. The woman slowly took out a notepad and reluctantly wrote her a prescription. She slid the piece of paper in Ana's direction, and ordered her to take it to another counter at the other end of the shop. There another plump, indifferent woman put her money into the till, slowly took out another notepad and even-more-reluctantly wrote a receipt. Ana was then sent all the way across the shop again, where she handed over the receipt to the first unhappy woman (who let out a heavy sigh, as though Ana had strapped two bags of Donetsk coal to her back
and ordered her to carry them to Podil, not asked for 12 Nurofen), took the tablets from a shelf behind her, and handed the packet over without taking her eyes off the floor.
The atmosphere at the office where I work is as warm as those needless conflicts are cold. I learn something with each document which I edit or translate, with each sleepy chat about the hopelessness of Dynamo's midfield or Siberian cottages as the coffee machine whirs into action each morning.
Perhaps I have adapted to the country as well as it is possible to. I'm even starting to appreciate some Eastern European tastes: I was having lunch with Zhenya (from work) one afternoon, tucking into a small plate of
plov in a kitsch underground canteen, when I began to wonder which was more curious: that the radio in the corner was playing the Greek song from 2007's Eurovision, or that the fact that the song playing on the radio in the corner was the Greek song from 2007's Eurovision wasn't lost on me. Ukraine's own Eurovision entry, cross dresser Verka Serdyuchka - he of the silver space suit and
"I want you see - Russia goodbye!" lyrics - may not be Europe's favourite Ukrainian for long; actress Olga Kurylenko, the new Bond girl, was born near the Sea of Azov.
Over a tankard of Lvivske beer one evening Vladimir told me of the latest Ukrainian political controversy when the Mayor of Kyiv, Mr. Leonid Chernovetsky, was slapped in the face by Ukraine's Chief of Police, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, in an argument during a government meeting.
He also told me a story about an acquaintance of his who, when Ukraine was still the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, used to make a good living smuggling jeans from the Estonian SSR into the Uzbek SSR. There was a black market for all sorts of things - jeans, jam, foreign music - and people with initiative and no small measure of courage made a few extra roubles by trading them behind the KGB's back. I started to daydream about buying myself a ticket for the next train to Tallinn or Tashkent, taking with me just a pen, a notepad, a camera and a few spare pairs of jeans of my own - anything to change my surroundings for a while and find some space.
Some escapism
came one mild, empty evening. Ana and I went to Gloria Jean's coffee house not far from where I work, on a tip-off from Jared that the lounge downstairs is so cosy that he would bring his pillow and sleep on one of the leather sofas if he thought the owners would let him. Our chat just before Christmas made me so excited about his new discovery that I was nervous as myself and Ana took our first steps inside.
My hot chocolate had a generous sprinkle of Europe on top of it. Sitting with Ana underneath a menu board written in English felt as though I had stepped from a cobbled Kievan street into a busy part of London, from the IKEA furniture to the pleasant canvas prints on the walls, from the lush carpet to prices which would make the Covent Garden Starbucks blush. A pocket of decadence in a country where politicians continue to whack each other.
But with my sugar rush and in my comfy chair the irony passed me by. The tension left my shoulders almost from the first sip, knowing that I didn't have to hurry anywhere. For an hour I put
the Kyiv confusion to the back of my mind and we chatted about things that weren't so serious.
I'll make my evenings with Gloria Jean a treat, not a lifestyle; if I spent all my time in comfort then I will miss Ukraine's real identity. I realised while my cup was still half full that I enjoy her emotional ups and downs more than I thought.
Next diary: Cold Feet. .
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natasha
non-member comment
I enjoy reading your stories more and more :)