Friday, April 28, 2006

Ukraine: Sex. Birth. Life. Death. (Pics)

NOTE: Although we went to Crimea to climb, this blog is about everything but. The next one, with pictures, will be about the climbing.

The trip started and ended with mad dashes for the train. Looking for my lost hat had made us late and pedestrians yelled at us as Jon and I dashed around them, running full-out along the length of the train to our carriage. The brakes unlocked, that sudden, loud and nails-on-chalkboard squeaking metal shift of the entire train settling forward half an inch, and we kept running, trying to stay balanced against the shifting of backpacks heavy with climbing gear. Our carriage attendant lowered the steps and we leapt on, slicked with sweat. After showing our tickets, made our way to our cabin as the train began to roll forward.

Also on the train, but four carriages ahead of us, were Yura and Kiril, two climbers from Kyiv that I had met a week before on a cliff in Zhytomyr. They had invited us to Crimea for three days of climbing over the extended Easter weekend. Crimea is the southern peninsula of Ukraine that juts out into the Black Sea, a subtropical region in a country of steppe, a rugged and beautiful sea coast where Russian Tsars once had their winter homes. We found Yura and Kiril’s cabin and found they had brought their girlfriends, Valya and Irina, also climbers.

“This is great,” I remember remarking to Jon half an hour later after we had all exploded in laughter at some joke. Talking about climbing with Ukrainians on a train rolling through the darkening day into night, being stuffed with sausage and lavash, that was great. Although I had ended up skipping dinner while looking for my hat, it’s impossible to starve on a Ukrainian train. Tradition dictates that you share your food with fellow passengers and many temporary friendships are made over the tiny table in each cabin. We all split a paska, a traditional Easter cake. It wasn’t supposed to be eaten until Sunday, but we figured that we’d be on the rock and now was as good a time as any. Paska, like every other kind of Ukrainian cake, looks fantastic and tastes horrible. But Jon and I ate it with smiles anyway.

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Yura serving up paska

I was making my way back to our cabin a few hours later, tired, when someone called to me from an open door. The man calling to me said that there was nothing past his cabin and that I must be lost. He was right: I had accidentally passed mine. I thanked him and turned around, but then he asked me inside, where he and two other Ukrainian men were gathered around a small feast on their small table, drinking beers, while an older woman slept on one of the top bunks.

I was asked where I was from: my accent is always a giveaway, but rather than have them guess, which always provides interesting but ultimately incorrect answers (“France? Lebanon? Spain?), I told them I was American. I’ve only once had a bad reaction to the news that I was American, from a skinhead at a rock concert in Zhytomyr. He got in my face in slurred Russian before finally spitting out what was apparently the only English phrase he knew: “Yankee go home!” Then his friends pulled him away.

The three men, like most Ukrainians, greeted me happily at the news of my nationality and offered me vodka. They were car salesmen, they said. The carriage behind ours, they told me, had eight cars they were taking from Kyiv to sell in Crimea, which is why they were in the last cabin: to keep an eye on the merchandise. They began pushing food at me, including homemade salo (spiced pig fat) smeared with beet and garlic sauce on black bread. It doesn’t sound appetizing but is actually fantastic and goes perfectly with vodka.

The conversation swung to politics and rather than having to dodge questions about my views on Ukrainian politics, they actually pressed me about American ones. Did I think America was going to go to war with Iran? I hesitated a second, then said that, since the war in Iraq was so unpopular, I didn’t think we’d start one with Iran anytime soon. They cheered that thought (possibly since Ukraine had troops in Iraq, they worried troops might end up in Iran) and raised their glasses.

“To war!” shouted one of the men, the one who had spent most of the evening telling me how his hometown of Sevastopol had been declared a hero city after World War II and that the greatest experience I could have in Ukraine would be to be there on Victory Day.

“No!” said the guy who originally called me into the cabin. “To peace!”

How fitting, considering I am in Peace Corps.

“Za mira!” I yelled, and we drank to that.

***

Sex. Birth. Life. Death.

The complete cycle, all in 24 hours.

Sex was not me having it—unfortunately—but was embodied in the raunchiest strip show I’ve seen in my life. I was in a nightclub in Alushta, a small city set in the mountains about 20 miles from where Jon and I had spent the morning climbing. The cliffs, on the coast of the Black Sea, had been completely covered in fog, ironic since Crimea is known for sunshine. Apparently I had brought sun block and a bathing suit in vain. The fog was actually so thick that Jon and I were nearly killed crossing one of the roads that chicane along the mountainous coast. We couldn’t see two feet ahead of us and heard no cars, but in our mad race to the other side nearly got winged by one racing out of the white.

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A babushka in Alushta

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In Alushta's bazaar

Alushta is where Chandani, another Peace Corps volunteer, lives, and we crashed with her over the weekend. Also crashing was Mona, another volunteer, and with these two ladies I went out to the club while Jon, not a club fan, caught up on his sleep.
Most clubs in Ukraine have a midnight show which will generally have a selection of four things: choreographed dancing, singing, break dancing and strip shows. I prefer the latter two, as the former are almost always poorly done by local (un)talent.

I was not disappointed. After a round of break dancing, a stripper came out and began her show. She must have been trained as a gymnast at one point because, in only a g-string and knee high leather boots, she was doing insane pole stunts, including what amounted to a handstand on the pole, arms spread wide and gripping it while her inverted body bent into the shape of an arrow and suspended there. The gymnastics alone made the show worth it, but she was just getting warmed up.
She pulled a guy out of the crowd, took him to the pole and had him hold it. She took of his shirt and then pushed down his pants to his ankles, revealing his boxers. The club clientele, 80 percent female, went nuts, women standing up and cheering, getting closer to the stage. The stripper laid the man down on his back and began to gyrate on him, twisting herself to rub her crotch in his face and simulate going down on him.

“No she did not,” said Chandani.

“I did not want to see that,” said Mona.

The stripper had the man stand back up, put her back to him, and then slid down him, pulling his boxers with her. He was standing naked at this point, her body blocking his bollocks, when she began to writhe against him. He looked like he was going to explode.

She slid back up, expertly bringing his boxers up with her so that he never actually exposed anything, pulled his pants back up and then led him offstage. Believe it or not, the show wasn’t done.

After another round of break dancers, the stripper came back out, danced for a little bit and then walked back out into the audience. She picked a bottle of vodka off another guy’s table, poured it onto her breasts and then had one of the guys lick it off.

She then pulled a girl out of the audience and took her to the bar. They both got on the bar and I was sure the girl was a plant until I saw her face. The entire time it was one of “should I be doing this? Should I be doing this? Should I be doing this?” But she did it anyway. The bartenders handed the stripper a can of whip cream and the stripper sprayed it on herself, which the girl licked up. Then the stripper started taking off the girl’s shirt, which, after some hesitation, she let her do. Her bra went next.

These two women made out on the bar while half the club cheered and the other half, including Mona and Chandani, acted offended but kept watching anyway. As a finale, the stripper tugged down her G-string to just above crotch, sprayed whip cream on her pelvis, laid the girl down on the bar and then straddled her face. When she stood back up, the whip cream was gone.

I have seen sex shows in Amsterdam (where both the performers and the audience are bored) and strip shows in Mexico (reputed to be the most hardcore) and I have never seen anything that intensely erotic ever.

So there you go: sex.

Birth in this case would be the celebration of Jesus’ on Easter. Okay, his birth celebration is Christmas, but maybe we can say this is celebrating his rebirth?Church is probably not the place most people go after a club (at least not for eight more hours), but we did. In Ukraine, Easter is celebrated with an all night service starting at midnight. Halfway through the service, people will line up in a circle around the church, baskets full of food and holding lit candles. The bishop or priest of the church will then go around the circle, splashing holy water onto the people and the food. The food will then be eaten the next day.

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Paska for sale

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Food awaiting the blessing

I had missed Easter service last year because I had been in America, and this once would be my last one before leaving Ukraine. As I assumed I would never be back in Ukraine in April, it was imperative that I go to see the ceremony that night, which, in Alushta, started at 3 AM. I dragged Chandani and Mona along with me, the food that I was going to have blessed in my pocket. I had found it buried underneath some other bottles in a tiny store in a tiny town near the cliffs we had climbed that morning: a half liter bottle of Pepsi.

Our timing was excellent. We arrived as the circle formed around the church and could hear the last of the mass being chanted inside, the bells ringing every few minutes. I placed my Pepsi down in between two baskets, each holding food and a paska, a lit candle pressed into each one. It was a beautiful site, all the people holding candles and quietly waiting. Although I was not there for religious reasons, I found it moving all the same. I thought about how plasticized our Easter is in America. This is where the tradition of Easter is at its most original: eggs are symbolic of birth and fertility and are eaten on Easter. But they must first be blessed and so are taken to the church in, of course, baskets. But this holy ritual somehow morphed into seeking out plastic eggs in plastic baskets and is more of a children’s game in America than a rite.

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People lined up around the church

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Candles burning in the Easter night

The blessing was not as gentle as I thought it would be. Two priests, each holding a traditional wicker broom, walked beside altar boys carrying buckets of holy water. The priests dipped the broom into the bucket and then whipped the water at us and the food. And it was a lot of water. Old women were getting hit full in the face, yelping and then saying “Christ has risen”, their tone almost apologetically for not being more appreciative of the water whipping. Water hit my Pepsi, which is now a blessed Pepsi (I brought it back to Zhytomyr; not sure if or under what circumstances I’ll drink it) and quite a lot hit me. When I thought about it later, I realized I had been wearing my travel clothes: khakis, boots, fleece sweater, pack jacket, and so they were all blessed, too. Maybe they’ll keep me safe on my journeys.

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The priest, blessing with a water-soaked broom

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My blessed Pepsi

Technically I was also blessed, which is why I got to go to Chandani and Mona, who were sitting against a building and waiting for me, and say: “I am now a blessed man. You are standing next to a blessed man.”

“Look who’s here,” they said.

I turned around and, sure enough, off to the side and watching the ceremony, long blonde braids hanging down and wearing a wrap-around red coat that stopped at those knee-high leather boots, was the stripper from the club.

Life. Life is climbing, which is what Jon and I did all the next day, but that’s in the next blog.

Death. On the marshrutka back to Alushta, we came upon a car wreck, the car halfway up an embankment and its front smashed in. I took a picture of it because my camera was already out, but then realized that the next car, a black one and with its front end smashed in, was still smoking. I put the camera down as we next passed a woman sitting on the side of the road, holding her head with one hand, blood running down her face, and then we passed two men, obviously dead, lying where they had been dragged to the side of the road. Two other men were standing, waiting for some ambulance that had hopefully been called, and our marshrutka didn’t even slow down.
They say in Peace Corps Ukraine that you’ll see at least one dead person before you leave. I’ve now seen three.

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Death is always a sobering end.

But it is only the end, and this story, my story is not there yet. It made me slightly sad to see it, but in truth I forced myself not to think about it. Instead told myself to be thankful for life and everything that affirms it: strip shows and church services and days spent rock climbing.

So, like life does, we continued down the road, driving along the rocky coast for miles and miles.

***

Jon and I sat playing a game of chess in the train station in Simferopal, a two-hour bus ride from the cliffs. A chess board was lying on a the seat between us while we waited for our train. The announcement came and we began to pack up when Jon said something worrying: “I can’t find my ticket.”

He looked. And looked. And looked.

And couldn’t find it. This took fifteen minutes.

I glanced at the clock. We had three minutes to get on the train and didn’t even know where it was.

“We have to go,” I said, not even sure if we had time to catch the train, ticket or not. “Now.”

So started another mad dash for the train, gripping backpacks.

We found our train and ran down the length of it. In my head, I knew we were fucked. They check tickets at the door, will not let you on the train without a ticket. I saw our carriage, saw our carriage looking worriedly at us as we ran towards the train.

“Do not stop!” I yelled at Jon.

The train began to move. The attendant didn’t even try to lower the steps and luckily the platform was high enough that I could jump into the open door. He backed away as I came flying at him, backpack swinging wildly from one shoulder and blocking his view of Jon. I shoved my ticket at him and he was taking still more steps back as I pushed myself towards him, trying to give room for Jon to get past me.

Jon leapt on after me and immediately moved into the hallway and down the carriage as fast as he could, ignoring the attendant. The attendant saw him, but was to busy with me to stop him.

When I found Jon a few minutes later, he was really upset. He had upended his backpack but could not find the return ticket. Two cabins down from us was Seth, another volunteer who had been to another part of Crimea, but who had arranged to be on the same train back as us.

Seth came up to us and was quickly informed about the situation. At the other end of the hall was the attendant, coming towards us. Seth and I had both been in need-to-bribe situations before and weren’t nearly as worried as Jon. It also helped that we both had our tickets.

“I don’t have any money,” Jon said. He'd given most of what he'd had to me earlier in the day to buy gear.

I shoved a 50 hrivna bill at him.

The attendant was about forty feet away.

“Maybe we can get away with 20,” I said. “Seth, do you have a 20?”

Seth folded one up and slid it into my palm and I slid it towards Jon.

The attendant arrived and demanded Jon’s ticket. For whatever reason, Jon went with the I-don’t-understand-you ploy and through bad Ukrainian and mimes said he couldn’t find it, motioning at the spread-out contents of his backpack.

“Then you’ll get off at the next station,” said the attendant in Russian.

Seth and I immediately assaulted him in a barrage Russian and Ukrainian: this was our friend, he paid for the ticket, this was his bunk, we bought the tickets together, don’t you have a passenger list, why don’t you have a passenger list, he had reserved the bunk, it was his and he wasn’t going anywhere…

People started poking their heads out of their cabins, curious at the loud, accented languages.

“He’s getting off,” said the attendant and turned to leave when Seth said the magic words: “Maybe there’s a fine?”

“Yes,” I said. “What is the fine?”

The attendant hesitated, then said: “the cost of the ticket.” That was 86 goddamn hrivnas. Seth and I both paused. Do we haggle? But by naming the ticket cost and not an arbitrary number, the only way to lower it was to admit it was a bribe.

Jon handed over my 50, Seth’s 20 and 16 of his own.

He later found the ticket, in a plastic bag that he had put his band-aids in.

He was pissed for the rest of the trip. But at least he got home.

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Going home