Kvas

One of the most delightful things we discovered in Ukraine is a drink called Kvas.

Kvas is an ancient and beloved beverage from Slavic Europe. While it is basically a low-alcohol beer, it is enjoyed as a soft drink, even by small children. Kvas is fermented from black or regular rye bread. The colour of the bread used contributes to the colour of the resulting drink. Factory-made versions have been available for some time and many are quite good. But homemade will always be best. Below is one of the many Kvas vendors you can see almost everywhere there is a gathering of people.

It's good! It means people are working!

This is the smokestack of the NKMZ factory in Kramatorsk. The company produces mining equipment; metallurgy equipment; rolling mills, forges, blast furnaces, ore crushers, and presses. It is also the origin of the constant grey haze that is part of the local experience. I have no idea what kinds of toxic, carcinogenic crap that haze is composed of, but if you are downwind of it, and it belches that poison 24/7, It burns the eyes, noses and throats of all who encounter it. When I asked Cousin Lucy about it and commented that it can't be good (The local life expectancy for men is 52 years), she made this hissing noise and then laughed and said "хороший! Он значит что люди работает!" Which translates to "It's good! It means people are working!" Talk about your deal with the devil.....

The people in the photos

When our mother died in 2004, it was probably my life's most profound loss. As anyone who has lost their parents can tell you, life just feels different afterward. Since mom treated most of her life before we came along like the painful secret that it was, we never knew much about her family except the shadowy details she would scatter before us from time to time. Every now and then she would bring out yellowing photographs of people who just by looking we could tell were very different from the people we knew as family. "This is my Papa, your grandfather", she would say. "And this is Mama, your grandmother". "Here is baby Lyudmilla... and my grandmother Feodosia...." We knew that mom's childhood was very happy and that her happiness was crushed in a very sudden, brutal and horrific way, but before she began working on her memoirs, we knew precious little about these people from whom we came. Considering what Mother had endured, I was never quite sure if she was withholding what she knew, or if going back to the past was so painful for her that it created some kind of cognitive dissonance. I knew, for instance, that my Grandfather was from Poland, and that he was a photographer and a painter, and that my grandmother Anna was gifted musically and loved theater. But beyond that there were huge dark holes that would keep me up at night as a child, wondering. Mom never came right out and said it, but the understanding we had was that somehow the people in the photos were probably no longer with us. We just assumed that they were swallowed up in the horror of the war, never to be seen again. This was not the case however. Our grandmother Anna made her way back to Konstantinovka after her time in the German labor camps with two broken arms and a new husband. She lived there and taught music until 1975, when she died of cancer. That she and Mother lived parallel lives, each not knowing the whereabouts of the other for 30 years is one of the saddest things of all. She is buried in the family section of the local cemetery just outside town.

The photo on her rusting grave marker is the one Mother loved best. I grew up looking at this very picture and wondering what my grandmother was like, and if she would like to have known us as much as I wished I could have known her.

                                                                            Below is a picture of our grandmother the music teacher taken sometime in the 60s. We had never seen this particular photo. It was a gift from our wonderful Ukrainian cousins.

A lot of our family did indeed succumb to either the war or the ravages of time we all know and must deal with, but some of our mother's family, the people in the pictures, are thriving in their 70s with children and grandchildren throughout Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The kind and proud lady who hosted us during our fascinating stay in Ukraine was the baby girl in the frilly lace dress whose picture Mom often showed us. Baby Lyudmilla( Mom's first cousin) grew up and raised a family of her own. A daughter Irina who gave her a grandson named Dima. Lyudmilla Perfilova is rightfully proud of herself as the Matriarch of her family and a successful economist at the local metal plant where she has worked for the last 35 years. Quick with a smile and a loving scolding, Cousin Lucy made sure we knew we belonged there as part of her cherished family. My mother and I were extremely close in this life, and it's hard to describe, but in being here in the sphere of Lucy's love and tender care, I could feel my mother's spirit for the first time since we last hugged. Looking into Lucy's sparkling eyes, it was as if a part of her was right there next to me.

Here is cousin Lucy showing off one of the many awards she recieved as a premium and valuable worker.

When a family heart comes together, it's a beautiful thing.

Walking

My sister Elizabeth is the picture of fitness. She's a runner and is not the kind of person who can abide being sedentary for very long. Although I'm not in the kind of fantastic shape Elizabeth is in, I can't stand being still either, at least when I'm not writing. Or drinking. Or doing both at the same time. Once summoned to Lucy's apartment we often found ourselves lounging around for hours, eating watermelon, or drinking Kvas, or surfing the internet on Zach's laptop. When Liz announced to Irina one day that she wanted to go for a walk we found ourselves face to face with another cultural enigma. "Why do you want to walk?" asked Irina, with this puzzled, even incredulous look on her face. "Walk where?...I get Dima to drive you in the Lada. Don't walk Liza!" Apparently walking for the sake of walking, without a destination, was not something that Ukrainians do, or even a concept that they can wrap their heads around. (Unless there was danger in walking about the town, which we considered but dismissed after noting that they didn't have a problem with us walking home after midnight down dark alleyways and sidewalks with no streetlights...and friends I have to tell you sometimes those late night walks home felt creepy and dangerous. I mean those hollering drunks and shifty looking  Militsiya could just look at us and tell we were not just foreigners but seriously hard-core foreigners). To get around this awkward faux pas, I simply decided to provide our hosts with a destination to justify our walks. Usually it was the fact that I had forgotten to take my meds and they were back at our place. This worked like a charm and got us down the stairs and out the door to walk freely.

Our walks would take us through this park which was adjacent to the former Soviet Ministry of Culture, then into the streets of Kramatorsk

Shady and quiet, the town seemed sleepy and bucolic in the summer heat

I have no idea what this place with the strange English-style "Second Hand" sign was. We walked in one day and found a staircase leading upwards into the dark. We decided to just leave it a mystery.

                                       Here is the little 24 hour market. Sort of a Ukrainian 7-11

Notice the air conditioner attatched to this place. Air conditioning is a real luxury in Ukraine

                                                                                                                                                    

Sometimes we'd stop in to one of the little stores for a Fanta and check out the cheese and smoked fish

Here is the fountain in the park where kids would cool off from the heat. The water was sort of brownish-green. I would hate to imagine what varieties of bacteria these children were swimming with.

A broken down old Soviet bus

And a couple of phone booths

    

Kramatorsk has a kind of quiet but crumbling grandeur. You can feel what a special place it once was

This enormous building is the former Soviet Ministry of Culture. The sheer scale and opulance of it is breathtaking. It's a popular place for weddings these days. The big chap on the pedestal is of course Lenin.
Here I am with an old Russian tank

Vodka

I consumed more vodka during my time in Ukraine than in the previous ten years of my life. It's one of those traditions that one cannot avoid without insulting one's host. Ukrainians are distrustful of anyone who does not drink alcohol. If you plan to visit Ukraine keep this in mind. Vodka is presented a LOT and it's a custom that must be observed. Fortunately every grocery store has an enormous variety of vodka from which to choose. It's some of the best I have ever tasted. The best in the world in fact. The bonus here is that a liter of the finest Ukrainian or Russian vodka will only set you back around 4 bucks. Here is the vodka section of our nearby market.

Вода

One of the things we Americans take for granted is the ability to fill a glass with water straight from the tap and drink it without fear of getting sick. This is not the case in Ukraine. Drinking tap water in Kramatorsk could very well land you in the hospital. Unless of course you take the time to boil it, but even then, if there were traces of Cesium 136, or similar nasties present, you just wouldn't want to chance it. Fortunately local supermarkets have a huge assortment of bottled water from which to choose. Most bottled water we found was with gas, and that suited me just fine. My favorite brand of Russian water was this one. Not only was it very fizzy, but it had a nice salty taste and was very refreshing after a day in the hot dry countryside.

Elizabeth's Babushka

While spending the day with our first cousin Misha's family in Konstantinovka, we were blessed to meet a neighbor who actually knew our grandmother Anna. She was one of the sweetest people we met while in Ukraine, and she took a special liking to Elizabeth. Here is their encounter....

The little boy at the end is Misha and Marianna's adorable son, Arsini.