🇺🇦 Ukraine

Fate brought two friends and yours truly there, wayyy back in 2009/387. Pics or it didn't happen‽ So then.

“Fate” I casually wrote, but considering this sitrep ~15 years after, it was indeed sort of a fateful destination; and our random timing brought us to the capital on their Independence Day.. Crimea was still Ukraine, and this Putin guy still an OK guy. Well, of course not, probably, but such was the vibe. We walked the Potemkin Stairs, probably discussed a weighty matter or two at Yalta; taxi Gerrit drove us everywhere! with a smile, to Bakhchysarai, too. We took pictures with Україна-Мати, paddled in the Black Sea, actually! and had many a burger at many a McDonalds.

I remember gibbering the opening phrase of the national anthem — “ще не вмерла..”, its sounds I had learnt by heart just in case, you know Slavic people will most always appreciate your vicarious patriotism — in an unsuccessful attempt at charming our way out of a scene with a LEO duo harassing a friend and me for urinating in a public space in Odessa. A deed sounding far more vulgar! in words than it really is when done at night, discreetly behind a tree, in an unlit park, out of sheer necessity.

For sure less reprehensible than – for lack of English by means of gestures, grins, and grunts – making tourists pay a bribe random fine to dodge a ride to an office of an unspecified location and nature, where they could tell their story if they so wished. 😏 Having to leave behind the friend who was supposed to be on the lookout wasn't our main concern when considering our few options. The officers know of an ATM nearby. You swallow any pride left, and pay! obviously.

We were ripped off like that several times during our brief two-week stay, classic “pretty miserable, but we'll look back upon it with a smile” – which we would done did. 🙂

Tom, 16/2/24