Ukrainian peculiarities
What’s different about Ukraine? The little things.
Guards at the grocery store. A grocery store is a radically new concept in Ukraine. Most people are used to haggling at the bazaar for their food. The grocery store in Obuhiv is where you go if you want Western products like Pringles or Gillette razors. Because these things are so high priced and rare, there is a security guard every two aisles that watches you like a hawk.
Holodetz and salo. Holodetz is volunteer kryptonite. Think Jell-O. Now think Jell-O made out of meat. A square of translucent gelatinous stuff on your plate that is, in fact, meat. This is holodetz. Salo. Salo is simply pig fat. A slab of it. You eat it with black bread, butter and garlic. Sometimes, they dip it in chocolate and you eat that.
Refusing something three times. Customarily, you are supposed to refuse something the first time. If you don’t actually want it, you have to refuse its offer three times. Why would you refuse it? I don’t know, maybe because it’s an offer of more holodetz or salo.
A refusal to hand you change. In the Cossack era, a person had to refuse a position of leadership three times before he was worthy to accept it. You’re also supposed to refuse money three times before you can accept it. Because of this, a cashier will never hand you change at a store, instead putting it in a little dish for you to take, thus subverting the three-refusals rule and speeding things up.
Bread. Bread is a nationally worshiped food. The Ukrainian flag is blue on the top to represent the sky, yellow on the bottom to represent grain. The name of the city where I will live and work for two years, Zhytomyr, is made up of the words “Bread” and “Peace”. Bread is served at every single meal (and you eat it plain) and you never, ever throw away uneaten bread. Even if you’ve munched on your bread until it’s an inch-wide wafer and you can’t stand another bite, that bit goes in the breadbasket for the next meal.
Giving an odd number of flowers. An even number of flowers is given at funerals to the grieved. On any other occasion, it is bad luck. One of my clustermates, Liz, once gave her host mom three flowers, and the head of one fell off. The host mom freaked out and quickly put the two remaining flowers in separate jars to make them two gifts of one, thus keeping the flowers at an odd number.
Whistling indoors. Don’t do it. Ever. It’s bad luck.
Opening windows on public transportation. It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the summer, your shirt is transparent from sweat, your hair is plastered to your forehead and you are beginning to merge with your seat, you must not open windows on public transportation. There is a long-standing belief that the draft will make babies and old people sick and possibly kill them. Our cluster mentor, Nick, related a story during which he had opened a marchrutka window in the middle of summer. The entire marchrutka went into an uproar and, after he got it closed, an old man came up, grabbed Nick by the shirt, waved a fist at him and said in Ukrainian: “if you do that again, I will punch you in the face.” For the rest of the two-hour ride, all the occupants of the marchrutka glared at him.
Toilets and bathrooms are separate concepts. Toilets get one room, the bathtub and sink get another. This is probably because it’s customary to do laundry in the bathroom and who wants to be constantly interrupted by the biological needs of others? They are such separate concepts that one host family I know of built a brand new bathroom (finally bringing indoor plumbing into their home) but didn’t bother to build an indoor toilet, continuing instead to use their outhouse.
Oh, public toilets don't have toilet paper, so you have to always carry some in your pocket.
Light switches. All the light switches are outside of the room that they are for. This leads to two problems: one, if you wake up in the middle of the night and want to turn on the lights, you have to stumble outside your bedroom door and blindly search in the hall for your switch. Two, central rooms that lead into several rooms (as in the case of the one that leads to the bathroom, the toilet, the kitchen, Losha’s room and the hall) will have all the switches for each room. Next to one another. So if you’re trying to use the restroom in the middle of the night, you find yourself staring at them, trying to figure out which one will turn on the light for the toilet instead of the light in Losha’s room, thus waking him up at two in the morning.
No shower curtains. There simply are none. Liz swears she found a room with one at Prolisok, but no one believes her.
Interesting health prohibitions. Ukraine is a cold country. Ukraine is a country with very little access to medical care. Therefore, there are many prohibitions that, if you violate them, will cause your host mother to throw a conniption fit. Drinking cold liquids is one. All liquids, from tea to milk to juice to soda, are served either hot or at room temperature (yes, Liz was once served heated Diet Coke when she was sick). Ukrainians don’t believe in ice. When I go to the McDonalds in Kiev, I can be found swirling my drink around just to hear the ice rattle on the sides. Another prohibition is walking out the door with wet hair. A third is walking around the apartment barefoot. You’re supposed to wear slippers, but my host mom will settle for socks.
Apparently, all this will keep you from getting pneumonia.
No locks on the interior doors. At all. Even your bedroom.
Milk in bags. This one makes absolutely no sense to me. Milk is sold in plastic bags. Not cardboard boxes or plastic jugs, but in bags. When you pick one up, it’s this amorphous blob in your hand as the liquid swishes around. You cut a corner off to get to the milk, but if you don’t use it all there’s no convenient way to store it other than putting a clothes pin on the end and hoping it doesn’t leak in the fridge. Yogurt is sold the same way, and I’ve seen more than one American just upending the corner of the yogurt bag over their mouths and squeezing.
Black pointy shoes and black leather jackets. Everyone wears them
Carbonated water. If you buy bottled water, you’d better specify ne hazodna because Ukrainians, like Europeans, love carbonated water. Frankly, I can’t stand the stuff and before I learned how to read Cyrillic, I bought several bottles of water that later just got tossed.
Patronymics. This is a Slavic thing, but I find it interesting. You don’t use the term Mister or Missus to denote respect in Ukraine. Rather, the formal way to acknowledge someone in Ukraine is through their patronymic. This is their first name followed by the first name of their father with –illa tacked on the end for women and –ovich for men. There are other ways to form the patronymic, but I stick with that. In Ukraine, I am formally Daniel Fosterovich. And an American named after his father could very well be Bob Bobovich.
Babies. I think the long winters, cultural traditions, and small apartments lead to one thing: an outdoor baby density of two to every square foot. You cannot take a ten minute walk (and I am in the habit of taking longer ones when the weather isn’t deathly freezing) without seeing dozens and dozens of little babies, bundled to twice their size, all in cute colorful little winter caps with two ore three little points on the top, being carried or pushed in strollers. Mothers sit on faded blue and yellow benches, talking to one another while they absentmindedly push their strollers back and forth with one hand, rocking their children. Babucias coo from beneath head shawls at their grandchildren in parks covered in yellow leaves. Even older brothers and sisters push the little babies around, giving them fresh air, getting them out of the apartments. It’s one of the nicer things about Ukraine.
And lastly there are babushka bags. No one uses backpacks or sling bags or even big purses to carry things. They use plastic department store bags colloquially called babushka bags. You know when you buy clothes from Sears or the Gap or Structure and the salesperson puts them in a plastic bag with the store’s name emblazoned on the side? Those are the bags I’m talking about. Every person you see on the street will have one swinging at their side. Stalls at the bazaars sell fifty different kinds for three hrivna each. Women color coordinate these plastic bags with their outfits. The esteem of the bag coordinates with the brand on the side. BMW plastic bags, for instance, are in high demand. Mine is a Hugo Boss bag, black, that I use to carry my books to class.
The first day I, in my leather jacket and walking through a crowd of babies, went to buy a bag of milk with my babuska bag swinging at my side, I felt very, very Ukrainian.