My Three Sons
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Published: August 4th 2014
Igor and me
Sitting in a cafe in Lviv.The Cast
· Igor, my Guide
I found Igor while combing the Internet looking for guides who might be able to lead me on horseback through the Carpathian Mountains. I had such an expedition in mind since seeing
">On the Trail of Genghis Kahn, a documentary about Tim Cope, a guy who traveled from Mongolia to Hungary on horseback. I was particularly interested in the last part of his journey, when he crossed the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary. He passed through remote villages populated by people living lifestyles barely touched by modernity. Who were these people, I wondered. Were they forgotten splinters of the Golden Horde? I was particularly interested in the Hutsul people, a unique culture living in a remote region of the Ukrainian section of the Carpathians. My interest was further stoked by the fact that Sergei Parajanov, the famous Armenian film maker, featured the Hustul culture in his film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors("reviewed" in my previous blog.) The last log on my fire was a manuscript that fell into my hands written by a close friend's great aunt. The manuscript was her account of surviving Nazi (and Ukrainian) persecution of Jews by hiding for two years in the forests of
Bohdan
Shirtless Bohdan was stoked that he found these giant toadstools. He assured us they would be worth a fortune back in Lviv. the region I would be passing through.
Igor is finishing his Ph.D. in psychology. His dissertation is on the phenomenon of aggression as it applies to individuals as well as nations, and in particular, Russian aggression toward Ukraine. To pay rent and tuition, he leads river rafting expeditions and bicycle tours all over Eastern Europe. (His company, which I recommend, is called
Carpathian.Vacations.) Although neither a horseman nor an anthropologist, he assured me he could make my Carpathian fantasy come true. I began taking horseback riding lessons from my sister. (For those in need of emergency horseback riding lessons, I can also recommend
JP Training.)
Of course my plans with Igor were complicated when an uprising in Ukraine forced their pro-Russian president to flee the country. In turn, this triggered the Russian annexation of Crimea, a counter-uprising of pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and a renewal of the Cold War. Igor assured me that things in Lviv, the capitol of Western Ukraine, were still calm.
· Bohdan, Igor's friend
Bohdan was recruited by Igor to accompany us. (Bohdan is pronounced Bogdan, Ukrainian seems to be indifferent to the difference between g and h. For example, tourists stay in
Kerem
Doing his disappearing beer trick gotels, not hotels, and the Hutsuls are the same as the Gutsuls.) Bohdan runs some sort of web page optimization business out of his apartment in Lviv. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell his customers that he would be on vacation for five days. As a result, he spent most of his time sitting in the back seat of Igor's van with his face buried in his laptop.
· Kerem, software salesman from Istanbul
To defray costs, Igor convinced Kerem to sign up for my expedition. I didn't mind having an extra person on the trip, but I was worried that Kerem might be a fanatic Moslem who would need to stop and pray five times every day. As it turned out, I felt culturally and intellectually closer to Karem than I do to most Americans. Although he was my son's age (as were all other members of the cast) his knowledge of American cultural references, stretching all the way back to 1960, made him something of a soul mate.
· Irena, horse thief
Irena is a young single mother who summers in Krasnyk, the remote Hutsul village where we will spend several days. To support herself and her
Irena
Posing for a special combined edition of Vogue and Outdoor World. six-year old son, Vlad, she works part time at the guest house where we will stay. She and Vlad will accompany us on several outings. Despite lack of any common language, Vlad and I bonded immediately. We spent hours thumb wrestling, sword fighting with straws, and chasing each other making monster noises. I let him play games on my iPhone until his mother took it away from him so she could play with it.
Episode 1: I arrive in Lviv
Igor was waiting for me as I cleared customs. When I saw how fit he looked a feeling of doom overcame me. How will I ever keep up with him, I worried. He lives in a nine-story Soviet-era apartment building serviced by a tiny decrepit elevator. All was familiar to me from two summers living in Yerevan. Now, as then, I did a quick mental calculation of the number of times I would have to ride in the elevator.
After dropping my backpack off, we walked through a leafy park to a sidewalk cafe in the center of town. I felt a strange sense of relief. At a glance I could tell that Lviv had more soul than
Tango Illegal
Taken on Lviv's colorful streets perfect Switzerland and the prices were wonderfully cheap. At first I wasn't surprised when I saw that a beer costs six Ukrainian Hryvnias, in Switzerland it would be six Swiss Francs (a little more than six dollars), but then I realized that a Hryvnia is only worth about eight cents!
Lviv was the capitol of the medieval kingdom of Galicia, an area of Europe that has changed flags more times than I have changed underwear (yes, I am exaggerating). It has been under the rule of Poland, Prussia, Lithuania, Austria-Hungary, Nazi Germany, and of course, Russia. Changes of ownership brought unthinkably cruel waves of repression, ethnic cleansing, and cycles of revenge. People here have long memories. All of these horrors are fresh in the minds of people born years after they happened.
But right now Lviv is charming. Stanislaus Lem, Stefan Banach, and Simon Wiesenthal lived here. Brick roads closed to cars wind through the old town past churches, street musicians, chess players, tango dancers, cafes, and people collecting money to support soldiers fighting in the East. I didn't sense any collective anxiety about Ukraine's uncertain future. People seemed relaxed. Igor, who took part in the demonstrations in
Before
The beginning of our rafting adventure. Kiev that ousted Yanukovych, says he now feels a sense of pride being Ukrainian that he never felt before, despite losing two friends during the protests to snipers' bullets.
Speaking Russian
I spent most of the flight from Vienna studying my Russian dictionary. It was frustrating, nothing was sticking. But on the way back to Igor's apartment we stopped in a grimy outdoor market to buy meat for the next day's camping trip. Suddenly things came rushing back to me. I could read the signs: bread, cheese, beer, produce, etc. (If anyone in Yerevan needs a Russian tutor, I recommend Tag!)
Of course there are differences between Ukrainian and Russian, and I worried that some people might resent my few Russian words, so I soon resorted to simply saying hello, thank you, and goodbye in English and depending on Igor for the complicated stuff.
Inbetween-a-sodes
We spent a good part of this trip driving hundreds of kilometers over very, very bad roads in Igor's VW van. We listened to Iggy Pop and the Doors on the van's tape deck. (The radio only plays bad Russian pop music, yet another example of much resented Russian hegemony.)
Rolling on a river
Some of the time we could all lie down and just let the current take over. It's hot in Ukraine at this time of year. The van was a rolling sauna, but our spirits were always high.
Episode 2: A desperate night on the Dniester River
At his core Igor is a river rat. He thinks in terms of rivers, rapids, and rafts. So our trip began with a trip down the Dniester River in his Cataraft (a raft consisting of two rubber pontoons, like a catamaran.) The experience wasn't too arduous, and even had a few pleasant moments until the pontoon I was sitting on developed a fast leak. I managed to plug the hole with my finger for about an hour, long enough for us to reach a suitable campsite on the bank of the river.
Igor's plan was to bike back to the van (we brought his bike on the raft for this purpose). He would drive back and park the van near the camp site. He estimated that he would be gone for about two hours. Kerem, Bohdan, and I were left to battle flies, mosquitoes, and stinging nettles. The camp was littered with trash, there was no place to sit, and the water supply looked polluted.
Snakes!
At least that's what Kerem called flies. We did everything we could to keep them off of our rapidly maturing pork. Each time a cloud of flies descended on us Kerem would leap around swatting the air screaming "Snakes! snakes! snakes!" Apparently this was the result of some weird short circuit in his otherwise perfect American English. Every time he tried to say "flies" the word "snakes" came out of his mouth.
There would be many funny language mishaps on the trip. On several occasions Igor would tell us about the rope wells that used to be a major source of income for Ukraine. This would invariably trigger a rambling discussion about the counter-productive criminalization of the hemp industry, the high quality and healthful benefits of wearing hemp clothing, and how it would be nice to get stoned about now. But after a few repeats of this conversation I realized that Igor was mixing up the words "rope" and "oil".
Another? Okay. The Hutsuls are devout Ukrainian Orthodox people, so I was surprised when Bohdan told me that they have many gods. "Really? Aren't they pretty solid monotheists?" I asked. Bohdan looked perplexed. "No, gods, many gods," he repeated, gesturing to a distant herd of goats.
Last one (I love these): The four of us shared a bottle
campfire
After it got dark, the flies went to sleep. Still plenty of mosquitoes, though. of some sort of Ukrainian moonshine on the grounds of an abandoned resort. At one time cosmonauts were sent to this place as a reward when they returned from space. "So why did they abandon it?" I ask Igor. "Because it was ruined by flutes," he answered. "Flutes?" I asked. "Yes, many years ago the river rose and caused many flutes," he clarified.
Igor returned to camp four hours later. It was dark and he was exhausted. There was no place nearby to park the van, which contained all of our camping equipment. It was still miles away through dark, muddy swamps filled with stinging nettles. Here's a list of a few of the many things we would have to do without: water, matches, toilet paper, cooking utensils, and mosquito repellant.
Igor didn't like what he found when he returned. It was a scene from Lord of the Flies. We were filthy and grumpy, hunched over a fire cooking clumps of fly-bitten meat skewered on sharp sticks like marshmallows. The fire was started with propane poured over wood and lit by a mere spark from Bohdan's spent cigarette lighter. Worse yet, my pontoon looked
Spider and the Fly
This giant spider invaded our campfire. like a used condom. (Apparently I was supposed to fix it while Igor was gone, but my magic wand was still in the van.) Then it started to rain.
The next day I managed to patch the hole in the pontoon. The patch would last an hour; long enough for us to get to a bridge where Igor could meet us with the van.
Episode 3: Dining in Hutsul Land
After a long drive on brutal mountain roads we reached the remote village of Krasnyk on the shore of the fast-moving Cheremosh River. Igor found rooms for us in a guest house owned by Natalia, a beautiful Hutsul woman who would turn out to be the Hutsul equivalent of Julia Child. Several times every day she would cook traditional Hutsul dishes for us. Her basic recipe: stuff a delicious thing with other delicious things and cover with a delicious sauce. Everything was hand made from ingredients that either came from her farm or the farm of one of her neighbors. I can describe what I saw and heard, but a big part of this trip was what I tasted, and here words fail me.
Episode 4: Let them
Rosie
Here's Rosie and her colt. Giddy-up in Hutsul is vierne, and whoa is brrrrrrrrr. horses be
The next day we drove deeper into the Cheremosh valley to a farm where Bohdan, Kerem, and I met our horses. We rode up steep hills for about two hours. My horse's seven-week old colt followed us the entire way. I remembered everything my sister taught me: heels down and look where you want the horse to go. (Thanks, Jan.) At the top of the hill we let our horses graze while we took in stunning vistas of the Carpathian Mountains.
Although I originally envisioned a multi-day ride, Ukraine isn't really set up for this type of thing. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm set up for it either, despite my sister's instruction. Also, I felt sorry for my horse. She worked hard to get my ass up those steep muddy slopes. At times I worried she might collapse underneath me. In the end I decided it might be enough of an adventure to simply walk through the mountains and let the horsies take it easy.
Episode 5: I am nearly converted by Ivan the Priest
The next day Igor and Kerem were eager to raft on the Cheremosh. I declined. Instead, I hired Irena, to
Ivan
Ivan holding my cross. (Photo taken winter 2012 by Irena). take me around Hutsul territory. Bohdan would accompany us as a translator.
From Irena I learned that this particular valley has long been a kind of secret retreat for Ukrainian artists, intellectuals, and leaders. Like me, they are attracted by the beauty, isolation, and mountain air, but mostly by the Hutsul culture.
Irena took me to the home where Sergei Parajanov lived while he was making Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. It's actually just a couple of rooms in a house that's still occupied. The residents have preserved the room as a kind of museum. In fact, several scenes in the movie were shot in and around the house.
In the town of Verkhovyna Irena took me to the famous Hutsul church called Krivorynia. She explained that it has operated continuously for the past four hundred years, even during communist rule, and is the spiritual center for the Hutsul people.
We entered the church in the middle of a sermon being given by Ivan, a tall, powerfully-built Hutsul priest with long black hair and a long black beard. His voice was strong and his gaze was penetrating. (I later learned that he has a special
Ivan's Cross
This is Ivan's fractal TV antenna. gift for curing mental illness.) After the sermon he shook my hand and offered to answer any question I might care to ask. I pointed to a cross setting on a nearby table and ask why orthodox crosses have a little slanted bar at the bottom.
The question excited him. He picked up the cross and gave me a tour starting at the top, which represents heaven and the bottom, hell. When he got to the slanted bar he began making sweeping gestures like he was gift wrapping the cross. Through Bohdan's translation I got that maybe the slant represents Purgatory, a kind of up-down ambivalence. Of course we only see the cross in two-dimensions, he continued. The cross has many dimensions, so maybe the slant is only a 2D projection of these higher dimensions.
Next Ivan led me over to a desk. He pulled out a piece of paper and started drawing swastikas on it. During the Second World War Western Ukraine had an ambiguous frenemy relationship with the Nazis, so I began to worry. "Hitler's cross," he repeated several times. Then he drew a kind of fractal TV antenna, crosses crossed with crosses ad
Cozy Church
Inside Ivan's church there were many rugs, tapestries, and other items made by parishioners over the past 400 years. infinitum. Maybe these were the extra dimensions he was talking about.
As I was wasting Ivan's time talking about crosses I noticed a young couple dressed in traditional Hutsul clothing. The woman was crying and obviously in need of Ivan's counseling. I imagined that the night before the young man she was with had talked her into performing some weird sex act, maybe involving goats, and now she needed Ivan's forgiveness. Not wanting to further delay important business, I thanked Ivan, put the drawing of swastikas in my pocket for later consultation, and backed out of the church.
Episode 6: Kerem goes to the hospital
When we returned to Natalia's guest house Kerem was in bed with a fever. This had to be a result of drinking the filthy water at our campsite, I worried. We monitored Kerem hour by hour until midnight, when he announced that he needed to go to the hospital despite Igor's advice that Ukrainian hospitals should be avoided at all costs.
While they were gone I lay in my bed listening to every strange noise that came from my stomach, waiting for the inevitable explosion (which never came, thankfully, so I guess
The laughing doctor
Here writing a prescription for Kerem while Igor looks on. it wasn't the water). They returned at 3 AM with a handful of pills. To Igor's surprise, the local hospital had not been such a bad experience. The doctor was friendly and the visit was completely free. (Igor had trouble understanding why it wouldn't be free.)
The next morning we went back to the hospital to get the results of Kerem's blood test. Kerem thought I should accompany him just for the experience.
The entrance to the hospital was a narrow empty corridor. It took us a few minutes to locate a nurse. To get the test results, she explained, we would need to walk across the hospital grounds to the lab. Why she couldn't simply call the lab was beyond my understanding. Maybe here phones haven't been invented yet.
Walking in the general direction pointed by the nurse, we passed a huge half-finished wing of the hospital. Igor explained that the wing was an old Soviet building project which, like all Soviet building projects outside of Russia, was halted when the Union collapsed.
We noticed a group of people standing by a door. It looked like a party. As luck would have it, Kerem's doctor
Cheese House
This is the shack where the cheese makers lived. Can't imagine what it's like in the winter. from the night before was in the group. When she saw him she came bounding over laughing loudly. Apparently she was very happy to see Kerem, who was probably the only foreigner she ever treated. She said his blood tests were good and he should continue to take the pills she gave him. She wrote an additional prescription for him, laughing the entire time.
Episode 7: Cutting cheese
Early the next morning Irena led Igor and me up a steep mountain to the farm of a Hutsul cheese maker. We climbed steadily for three hours. I was happy that I could keep up with them even though they both asked me numerous times if I was all right.
At the end of a pasture we came across a horse standing next to a gate. Irena jumped on the horse and rode around in circles. She wanted to open the gate and set the horse free. Igor and I protested strongly. As near as I could decipher, Irena thought that horses were sort of like the free yellow bikes that used to be in Portland until they all disappeared. We managed to talk her out of stealing the horse.
Dueling banjos?
Sons of the cheese makers At the top of the hill was a small complex of three very crude buildings. A couple lived there with their two sons. (I'm guessing at the relationships.) The main house was a single room shack with a dirt floor. A huge pot of goo boiled over an open fire. There was no chimney, so the room was filled with smoke. The older son reclined on a bench that probably was his bed. He smoked a cigarette and smiled. I couldn't see any teeth in his mouth and started worrying about a possible Deliverance scenario. We learned that the family has an arrangement with some of the local cattle owners: the family milks the cows, makes the cheese, and takes it to the local market. Any profits are split down the middle. In fact, they were in the process of loading their horse with bags of cheese for the long trek to the village. They offered us samples. I bravely stuffed a few pieces in my mouth. It was strong and sour. Apparently Igor and Irena liked it, so we bought a few kilograms of the stuff.
Episode 8: Season Finale
When we returned to the
market day
Cheese makers ready their horse to carry cheese to the local market, which was about a three hour ride distance. guest house we learned that Bohdan, like the poets and directors who went before him, had decided not to leave Krasnyk. He had negotiated a long-term rental in one of Natalia's rooms.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Ukraine
We always enjoy your travels. This sounds like a great trip.