I’ve got family in Ukraine - “root” Kievans who have lived there for a century. Me, I’ve never spent any significant amount of time there until I briefly moved to live in the country in 2020 through 2021. Unable to make any inroads with the young folk, I ended up speaking to a lot of old-timers instead. There was absolutely no doubt that these “koreniy” Kievans were quite peeved at the recent developments in the capital - most of all about the new arrivals from the various provinces of Ukraine who spoke only Ukrainian and demonstratively denounced those who only spoke Russian.
Rolo ,this article brings back ancient memories for me. The Ukrainian upwardly mobile , social climber. Many, very many years ago I went to the Ukraine it was either 1967 or 1968. At that time it was still part of the Soviet Union and every 4 or 5 years they would hold their own Olympics called the Baltic Games. Ukrainians from all over the world would send their athletes to compete.
I was not Ukrainian since all my grand parents were from Russia and didn't speak either language as I was born in Canada . The only person that spoke to me in Russian was my grand father who died when I was 3 or 4 years old.
However a year before I had joined a track club and met a Ukrainian guy who was a fantastic 400 metre runner . I ran 100 metres and we quickly became buddies as I had played hockey for a coach who worked at the pretzel bell in Toronto and he would let me in to drink beer at 16 even though the drinking age was 21 in Ontario.
We had the best times , drinking and chasing young ladies. We are 16 or 17 years old and life is great ,train, drink and fuck.
In July my buddy says to me I'm going to Kiev to run in the Baltic Games you want to come.It 's a free trip everything paid and the woman all are blonde and long legged.
I say okay but how are you going to pass me off as Ukrainian when I don't speak the language and have long black curly hair.
He says don't worry about it. He gets me a fake ID in the name of Marko Nievodomsky and along with that a fake mother who is Ukrainian but married to a Polish man.
25 parents gets to come on the trip with the athletes as chaperones. The trip was great I won a gold in the 100 metres and silver in the 200 metres and in the 8 days we were there I got laid by 2 different girls.
We get home and for the next 2 years were the best of friends. Now I must tell you something , my mother was appalled at me going over to The Ukraine and competing under a false name..She was not a big fan of my friend..
About 2 years later he and another Ukrainian friend of his invite me to come to this party . Lots of woman all working in offices, factories, nursing and teaching. Hard working people
The party is great there are 3 bedrooms. I meet this woman and we end up in one of the bedrooms.We are just about to play hide the weenie when we hear yelling and screaming from the area where the party is. All of a sudden one of the woman burst into the bedroom while we are under the sheets. She sees my pants on the floor searches through my pockets opens my wallet and finds $1 bills all 3 of them and 1 $2 bill and throws the wallet and my pants and says get out .
I get dressed and she wants my friend to empty his pocket and his wallet . He refused and they started screaming at each other. It was a Friday night and they had all been paid and had cashed their pay checks. All the cash was missing . there was 7 of them.
In those days we were paid 4 or 5 $/hr.
He denies he stole anything and we leave. We walk and talk for a while and he says you hungry, feel like a beer.
So we go to this Italian Restaurant named Pinocchio' . I say I only got 5 bucks I'll get a beer and a slice.
We sit down and he orders an extra large pizza , Caesar salad and a pitcher of beer for the table. I say I need to keep a quarter for bus fare . I would put in $4.75. The bill comes to 22$. He pulls out a 20 and 5 and tells the waiter to keep the change. Tells me to keep my money treats on him.
right then I knew he had stole the money. I felt sick to my stomach.
My parents were honest working class people , we just didn't steal, especially from other working class people.
. He said let's go downtown , I said no I got to go home early ,getting up to work with my Dad in scrap iron.tomorrow morning.
I left I was home by 11. Usually I got home at 4 or 5 in the morning and went to work the next morning. First thing my mother says what happened your home so early , everything all right?
I didn't say anything to her but she knew something was wrong.
I rarely saw my Kiev travelling buddy . Only at the odd track meet and kept it short. hi and bye.
about 7 years pass and I get an invitation to his wedding which I don't answer and throw in the trash can.
a month later I get a call from his fiance telling me how it was important and meant a great deal to him.if I came to their wedding.
I said I'll get back to you. She calls twice more and I finally relent and say I'll go.
When I tell my mother that he's inviting me to his wedding she says I didn't know you two were still in touch. I told her were not.
when I went to wedding it was at one of the poshest Anglo -Saxon country clubs. It was very upscale , very expensive.
It was then that I realized that the reason I was invited was that he had no friends. He had entered a world where he didn't belong,
It was an exclusive section of our society for the rich and pretentious.. It was at this moment I realized that the number one goal of all Ukrainians is that they want to be a WASP, they want to be something else be it French be it English.
Ax...pravda. even though I am half ukrainian and went to a Ukrainian primary school. I never felt comfortable speaking it. At home we only spoke Russian and when we emigrated obviously no Ukrainian was even heard.
When you said that Ukraine is a mean place, i understood - lyudi ozloblennye. Am I right?
I remember visiting in 2009... Went to Kiev but mostly Crimea and less so my home city. It was more or less the same experience - the people were rude, impatient and irritable.
Then... Life happened and didn't have a chance to visit till 2019. And cos of time, circumstances and the difficulty of travel I went only to Crimea.
My friend, i was shocked at how nice and lyubeznye were the people there. My relatives live in touristy town by the sea and the locals usual hate tourist season. I was served by shop assistants with such politeness that every time I was pleasantly surprised. My mother who met up with me from a different part of the western world and hadn't visited since her flight in the 90s was also very surprised.
My humble conclusion was that those 5 years of Putin rule and coming back to Rodina made the Crimeans more relaxed and more human. I was met with so much kindness in my travels. I was travelling with my toddler so you can imagine it was anything but easy.
So now I read that Ukraine is still the same ot maybe even worse. And it makes me very sad. Great article as always.
Rolo ,this article brings back ancient memories for me. The Ukrainian upwardly mobile , social climber. Many, very many years ago I went to the Ukraine it was either 1967 or 1968. At that time it was still part of the Soviet Union and every 4 or 5 years they would hold their own Olympics called the Baltic Games. Ukrainians from all over the world would send their athletes to compete.
I was not Ukrainian since all my grand parents were from Russia and didn't speak either language as I was born in Canada . The only person that spoke to me in Russian was my grand father who died when I was 3 or 4 years old.
However a year before I had joined a track club and met a Ukrainian guy who was a fantastic 400 metre runner . I ran 100 metres and we quickly became buddies as I had played hockey for a coach who worked at the pretzel bell in Toronto and he would let me in to drink beer at 16 even though the drinking age was 21 in Ontario.
We had the best times , drinking and chasing young ladies. We are 16 or 17 years old and life is great ,train, drink and fuck.
In July my buddy says to me I'm going to Kiev to run in the Baltic Games you want to come.It 's a free trip everything paid and the woman all are blonde and long legged.
I say okay but how are you going to pass me off as Ukrainian when I don't speak the language and have long black curly hair.
He says don't worry about it. He gets me a fake ID in the name of Marko Nievodomsky and along with that a fake mother who is Ukrainian but married to a Polish man.
25 parents gets to come on the trip with the athletes as chaperones. The trip was great I won a gold in the 100 metres and silver in the 200 metres and in the 8 days we were there I got laid by 2 different girls.
We get home and for the next 2 years were the best of friends. Now I must tell you something , my mother was appalled at me going over to The Ukraine and competing under a false name..She was not a big fan of my friend..
About 2 years later he and another Ukrainian friend of his invite me to come to this party . Lots of woman all working in offices, factories, nursing and teaching. Hard working people
The party is great there are 3 bedrooms. I meet this woman and we end up in one of the bedrooms.We are just about to play hide the weenie when we hear yelling and screaming from the area where the party is. All of a sudden one of the woman burst into the bedroom while we are under the sheets. She sees my pants on the floor searches through my pockets opens my wallet and finds $1 bills all 3 of them and 1 $2 bill and throws the wallet and my pants and says get out .
I get dressed and she wants my friend to empty his pocket and his wallet . He refused and they started screaming at each other. It was a Friday night and they had all been paid and had cashed their pay checks. All the cash was missing . there was 7 of them.
In those days we were paid 4 or 5 $/hr.
He denies he stole anything and we leave. We walk and talk for a while and he says you hungry, feel like a beer.
So we go to this Italian Restaurant named Pinocchio' . I say I only got 5 bucks I'll get a beer and a slice.
We sit down and he orders an extra large pizza , Caesar salad and a pitcher of beer for the table. I say I need to keep a quarter for bus fare . I would put in $4.75. The bill comes to 22$. He pulls out a 20 and 5 and tells the waiter to keep the change. Tells me to keep my money treats on him.
right then I knew he had stole the money. I felt sick to my stomach.
My parents were honest working class people , we just didn't steal, especially from other working class people.
. He said let's go downtown , I said no I got to go home early ,getting up to work with my Dad in scrap iron.tomorrow morning.
I left I was home by 11. Usually I got home at 4 or 5 in the morning and went to work the next morning. First thing my mother says what happened your home so early , everything all right?
I didn't say anything to her but she knew something was wrong.
I rarely saw my Kiev travelling buddy . Only at the odd track meet and kept it short. hi and bye.
about 7 years pass and I get an invitation to his wedding which I don't answer and throw in the trash can.
a month later I get a call from his fiance telling me how it was important and meant a great deal to him.if I came to their wedding.
I said I'll get back to you. She calls twice more and I finally relent and say I'll go.
When I tell my mother that he's inviting me to his wedding she says I didn't know you two were still in touch. I told her were not.
when I went to wedding it was at one of the poshest Anglo -Saxon country clubs. It was very upscale , very expensive.
It was then that I realized that the reason I was invited was that he had no friends. He had entered a world where he didn't belong,
It was an exclusive section of our society for the rich and pretentious.. It was at this moment I realized that the number one goal of all Ukrainians is that they want to be a WASP, they want to be something else be it French be it English.
Anything else but Ukrainian.
Ax...pravda. even though I am half ukrainian and went to a Ukrainian primary school. I never felt comfortable speaking it. At home we only spoke Russian and when we emigrated obviously no Ukrainian was even heard.
When you said that Ukraine is a mean place, i understood - lyudi ozloblennye. Am I right?
I remember visiting in 2009... Went to Kiev but mostly Crimea and less so my home city. It was more or less the same experience - the people were rude, impatient and irritable.
Then... Life happened and didn't have a chance to visit till 2019. And cos of time, circumstances and the difficulty of travel I went only to Crimea.
My friend, i was shocked at how nice and lyubeznye were the people there. My relatives live in touristy town by the sea and the locals usual hate tourist season. I was served by shop assistants with such politeness that every time I was pleasantly surprised. My mother who met up with me from a different part of the western world and hadn't visited since her flight in the 90s was also very surprised.
My humble conclusion was that those 5 years of Putin rule and coming back to Rodina made the Crimeans more relaxed and more human. I was met with so much kindness in my travels. I was travelling with my toddler so you can imagine it was anything but easy.
So now I read that Ukraine is still the same ot maybe even worse. And it makes me very sad. Great article as always.
Wish this was an April Fools theme but it's the 2nd over there... :(