Observations from Ukraine Nov. 2007

Wild Dogs
Or are they wild? Fed by the local people, the hundreds of dogs in Kiev do not seem to bother pedestrians in fact they seem to be befriended by many people. They are in open space below our 13th floor apartment and they all seem to be at their peak activity during our sleeping hours. They are heard barking for hours during the night but they are quiet during the day and many are simply sitting on boulevards or sleeping near the sidewalks.
We have heard that there are occasional roundups of the dogs.

Walking and the Metro
With 48 million people in a space smaller than Ontario and with many people not owners of cars, it is only logical that the streets of Ukraine are busy with pedestrians. We are in the car-less majority and do a great deal more walking here than we have done in Canada. Kiev is reported to have a population of 4-5 million but no one seems to really know the true figure as many people come into the city to work but live outside the city. The chief manner of transportation in Kiev is a combination of walking and riding the Metro system. There was one article stating that the Metro carries 1.5 million people per day. The sidewalks and paths leading to metro stations are busy from 6:00AM until late at night. The condition of the paths is variable. The surfaces are often concrete slabs or asphalt. The concrete slabs shift and often have uneven edges designed to catch any unwary foreigners and trip them! The best way of walking is heel down first and eyes down. Unfortunately the eye down method doesn’t help you to watch for other pedestrians. Elaine has fallen once and twisted her ankle another time; she once saved me from falling when I tripped on a slab.
Although Ukrainians seem to have a natural ability to line up (queue) for a Marshukra (mini-bus) they seem to lose that ability when they get off the bus. They walk right at you in a game of chicken to see who will move over first. There isn’t a sense for walking on one side of the sidewalks as the English and New Zealanders do. The sidewalks in Auckland had a centre line on their sidewalks to keep the pedestrians parted. Here private space around an individual is not respected. Stepping in front of another person is the norm; bumping or brushing past another is acceptable.

The Metro is not a place for the claustrophobic. After one trip on a busy morning with our faces three inches apart, I have felt I have known the person next to me for a lifetime. Unfortunately garlic is a favourite on the Ukrainian menu. Just when you think there is no space left for more passengers, two or three people will back onto the car with a strong push from the rear end, further compressing the passengers. The trains come into a station about every 2 minutes during rush hours and it is amazing to see the crowds build up along the edge of the track in those two minutes. Some of the Metro stations are deep under ground. The deepest was reported to be a bomb shelter during the Cold War years. It is apparently 8 stories below the surface; there is a series of very long escalators to move the passengers up and down. The Metro is a combination of surface tracks and underground tracks.

The streets and the Metro are very clean considering the number of people using them. The cleaners are mainly older women using very poor cleaning devises. The main tool appears to be a broom. Brooms seem to have been designed differently in this country than in others. You would think a broom would be very similar around the world. The Ukrainian broom is short, so short the women using them are stooped over and look awkward and uncomfortable. The brooms range from tied twigs to cornstalks. But the cleaning ladies do a good job of cleaning the city. During the fall the ladies raked the leaves and they recently they were out in the early morning sweeping the snow away.

Steps are another obstacle designed to trip up the foreigner. I would expect a step builder to plan the steps to be the same height, but not here. The steps will be of different heights in the staircase. The steps seem to be a random arrangement that will often start or end with a small left over space perhaps as little as one inch high. Again the eye down principle is required. But like the sidewalks you have to watch for fast moving downward pedestrians running at you. When a train arrives at the Metro, the passengers leaving the train flood the steps leading from the train just as you would like to go up the steps and get on the train.

On the Streets
Generally dark coloured clothing is worn on the streets of Kiev.They wear winter clothing now. Blue jeans are common on men and women. Men often wear leather jackets and woven skullcaps patterned after the hats worn by soccer players. A common dress for the young women is; mini- skirts worn with tights and tall boots, sometimes coming above the knee, with fake fur or cloth jackets. The women wear brighter colours than the men. A lot of the local made clothing has logos and writing on them that is an imitation of designer clothing. Some of the writing is nonsense but it seems important to have it in English anyway. I saw one today that said "Born in Canada" with a Canadian flag sewn on the arm but the rest of the writing was just gibberish English. I asked a young man on a bus who was wearing a jacket with a Canadian flag, if he was from Canada. No, he wasn’t and he didn’t speak English. Young people want to be dressed stylishly but most cannot afford western styles or imported clothing. Although the knee high boots may have a good use in this winter climate, we have heard a number of girls complain that their tall boots leak, so they are for looks only. The Soviet army hat is still the current style used by the Ukrainian Army and Police. The flat top part of the hat is very high above the brim at the front and slants to the back. It looks very different from Western army hats that have a flat top that is even around the brim.
In the busy areas of the city, many of the pedestrian crossings are under the street. It is a safe way to move the crowds of people. These passageways are lined with tabletop vendors selling clothing, electrical accessories, batteries and flowers. They really like flowers here and purchasing flowers has an interesting custom in Kiev. You never give a gift of flowers with an even number of flowers, as an even number is only used when there is death. Yellow flowers also seem to be reserved for a funeral. So flowers are priced individually, you can mix and match types and colours, they will be wrapped in a clear plastic protector and handed to you upside down. We see lots of people on the train or walking with their flowers carried upside down.

Eye Glasses
They are noticeable by their absence; only a few people wear glasses here. It is considered a weakness to admit that you need them! It also is an expense that many could not afford. We look like foreigners in a number of ways but wearing glasses would tip off the local people that we are not residents.

Tipping
People refuse tips for helping us when we need help with miscellaneous chores. Recently a friend of the landlady assisted us at the post office. She came twice to help us get a parcel for someone else; she waited in line, did all the talking with the postal clerk who had the typical civil servant attitude and helped us to do the necessary paperwork to get this parcel. I offered her a small amount of money for her trouble and said to buy a coffee on her way home. But it seems that they do not want to be seen as “takers”. Perhaps it is because there is so much corruption amongst the bureaucracy and officials here that the honest people want to distance themselves far from it. Their way is just helping you without money being involved.
Genuine friendliness and helpfulness are very common here. Groups of people in public seem to be rude by our standards but individuals are remarkably kind and generous with their time and assistance. In spite of that they are not especially well suited for the service industry. In contrast to the Mexican people who seem to be designed for serving, the Ukrainian way of serving in stores and restaurants is still very awkward, slow and indifferent. There are some exceptions and they are usually western trained employees. Many stores have an air of “guarding” the stock rather than presenting their merchandise for sale. Shopping centres have numerous private security guards on duty.

Public Drinking
It is legal and acceptable to drink in public.Often one sees men and women walking and drinking from a bottle of beer. It is common to see them sitting on a bench drinking beer after work. The beer is sold in glass bottles and broken glass is seen fairly often. Beer is very inexpensive, selling for about 40 cents per bottle. There are a few drunks in public; the train station has a few each time we have been there. The police patrol the station and move them out of the way.