Our tour guide, Roman, is a college student here in Kharkiv; he was very new to the whole tour-giving thing, but we were grateful to have someone show us around who spoke English! This walking tour was much smaller than the one we did in Berlin (our group here consisted of us, five Dutch people, and two Germans, whereas in Berlin we were in a group of over 40 people from various countries), but it was nice to be able to talk with our guide on a more connected, personal level.
Kharkiv doesn't have as much to say about its history as Berlin did, but the tour was still very informative. We saw a lot of monuments commemorating just about anyone who was important to Ukraine, including poets, scientists, and Soviet leaders. Kharkiv is the educational center of Ukraine, boasting many different universities; it is the place to go in Ukraine if you want to get a good education after high school.
Most of the statues around the city are made of bronze, and the next photo shows Billy rubbing a man's toe for good luck (local superstition) - as you can see, the bronze has been polished through all the rubbings.
We also saw the fountain that had been dyed orange for Netherlands, now restored to its original colorless color,
a bed of flowers planted in the EURO2012 logo design,
and the little tower that is on the Kharkiv host city logo for EURO2012.
After the tour was over, Steve and Roman spent some time discussing the similarities and difference between the United States and Ukraine. Roman asked an interesting question: "So, what's the one thing that Americans all know about Ukraine, or what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Ukraine?"
I had been having basically the same conversation with a Dutch guy in our group, so I didn't hear Roman ask this, but when Steve asked me later, this was my response:
"Umm.... I have no idea. Americans don't generally talk about Ukraine."
I've been trying to think about what I knew about Ukraine before we started planning this trip. Sure, I could point Ukraine out to you on a map (I can point out on a map almost every single country in the world. Boo yah!). But actual knowledge about Ukraine? Hmm. I was stumped. All I really knew before coming here was that they don't use the Latin alphabet, they were once under Soviet rule, and they eat a lot of borscht. ....That's about it.
I don't know how much more the average American knows about Ukraine. It's not a country people generally talk about, for some reason. Hmm.... What do you all think of when you think about Ukraine?
Once we said our goodbyes to Roman, Steve and I had lunch with the Dutch guy I'd been talking to at a Ukrainian restaurant that Roman had recommended.
*Note: of all the people we've met here [the Dutch guys we met when we were all at the wrong hostel address, the Danish guys we watched the Germany/Portugal game with, and this older Dutch guy we had lunch with], we have not learned any of their names, and they never learned ours. Funny thing, it just didn't seem important at the time.
Anyways. Our first real foray with Ukrainian food:
I'm not really sure why either or us got soup, as it was about 90 degrees outside and humid. But the reddish-colored soup you see is the infamous borscht, which is a cabbage and beet soup. The Russian version of borscht is mostly beets, which is the pink soup you traditionally see in cookbooks and the like, but the Ukrainian versions we've seen have typically been more orange. They eat a lot of fish around lunchtime, and usually pork or chicken. No beef: our host Anna in Poland mentioned that most people in Europe as a whole don't eat beef very often due to the mad cow disease scare.
This is unfortunate, because we love beef. But no worries, we love fish and chicken and pork too!
One unusual thing we've noticed about meat here, however, is that you almost never see one big piece of meat. Everything is either made into sausage, ground and made into patties or balls for frying, minced and baked in a pastry, or diced and mixed in with their "salads", which I put in quotation marks because their salads are all similar to our potato or egg salads--lots and lots of mayonnaise. We haven't seen chicken served in big pieces (occasionally small cutlets) and we damn sure haven't seen a big steak. It's strange, the little things that you become so used to.....
I find it so interesting that Roman (did you tell him that's your maiden name?) asked what we think of Ukraine. It makes me want to learn more about other countries that I don't know much about. I definitely went to wikipedia after reading this post to try and learn something. The only thing I knew about Ukraine before this post was that my 5th grade teacher was from there. She immigrated, escaped from something, it was a struggle, but she made it to America where she had the opportunity to live as she wanted. She was one of my favorite teachers. Now I wish I remembered more of what she told us.
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