Glimpse of Village Life

I'm generally following the right bank down the Dniepr River, though it's got pretty swampy edges so I stay a kilometer or two inland from the flowing water. I try to avoid busy roads, instead, sticking to the forest paths - that many people seem to fear - and small roads connecting villages of a hundred inhabitants or so.

Villages that I've seen consist of cottage houses of white-washed brick or block with colorful trim and metal roofs. Each house has a large kitchen garden. Chickens, ducks, and geese abound through out the village. The main road is paved but the others are packed earth, so near to the river, this means sand. Occasional pigs and goats wander around as well. Ornate exterior doors stand isolated from each house and lead down a flight of covered stairs to a root cellar. Water wells with pitched wooden roofs and great metal windlasses also occupy each yard. Outhouse latrines stand behind the houses.

If there's a church in the village, it's a small one. So far, each I've seen has been padlocked, so I haven't seen the interior of any of these village chapels. The onion domes are metal like the rest of the roofs of the clustered houses. Like the grammar schools, if there is one in the village, outhouses are in the corner of the yards.

If there's a shop in the village, it's identified only with a small sign over the door - 'magazine', written in Cyrillic; otherwise, it looks pretty much like any other house. There's a surprising variety for such small shops - some fruits and veggies, lots of bottled drinks, both alcoholic and non... a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi, for example, sells for about 1 USD; a 1/2-liter bottle of beer, about 0.60 USD, also bread, candy, sundries, and buckets of fish, [almost] live, pickled, or salted, salamis, cheese, chicken, but no other meat. I've seen some balance scales with removable weights for measurement and some electronic, but every shop I've stepped into has had an abacus for tallying up the bill. Although the little shops are not cafes or bar, each time I've asked for a cup of tea, the woman who runs the shop makes one for me as I sit and rest on an upturned crate or small plastic chair. I've not seen a man in any shop, either as a customer or worker. The shops are definitively for the villagers, not really for passers-by.

Grown men wear enormous fur hats or small leather ones; women colorful kerchiefs; children knitted caps. Everyone I pass smiles and either offers a 'dobry dehn' greeting or replies likewise if I offer it first. Many elderly people have added something in German, schoolkids in English, reflecting the fact that I'm immediately taken as a foreigner.

Dogs abound throughout the villages to stand guard, but though some bark with an annoying intensity, none has been aggressive toward me. Cats equal dogs in number and come begging for food and a loving pat. I've seen few other animals in the forest - the odd red tufted eared squirrels and plenty of small song birds. Stork nests stand empty - at least one in each village. The storks, I was told, return in spring to have families.

With one week's walk behind me, the greatest concern I had - finding lodging - has been assuaged. Each priest calls the next and tells me which village to walk to. What a relief! A few priests even came out to meet me at the edge of the village - no doubt having some look-outs sentried to give him the word that I'm arriving. No one has heard of a foreign pilgrim before, so I've been the welcomed oddity of each town I've stayed in. Several times, the English teach has been called in to translate, but a few times only the German teacher was available. No matter, we talk in a very friendly way and I'm treated very cordially. Soup, bread, cheese, all homemade; a cot by the central firebox keeps me warm all night. Very nice.

Oops, Wrong Monastery

Oops, wrong monastery, but what a terrific find =)

The exit from Kyiv was as to be expected - an hour of noisy, stressful convergence of main roads into highways, but they eventually petered out and I got safely into a delightful pine and oak forest, sparsely peopled with mushroom-hunters and their dogs on the cloudy day.

The word of the day could easily be 'smile'. Nearly everyone I encountered smiled kindly at me. So many people were eager to strike up a conversation. I'm an oddity, clearly, owing mostly to the hiking sticks, I think. ...or just the fact that someone, especially a woman, would be backpacking through their chanterelle-filled forest. The preponderence of 'o's in their gibberish indicated to me that it was Russian I wasn't understanding rather than the 'i'y Ukrainian. Whatever, they were smiling at me and offering to help guide me to where I was going. A few even whipped out their mobiles in the midst of our little chat to bring in a ringer who knew some English. Very kind, very smiling people I saw.

The sandiness of the forest floor checked my pace more than I predicted. My legs and gluts got a good workout for nearly four hours. I stopped for refreshment in a village and asked the barkeep for specific directions to the monastery I hoped would put me up for the night. That the monastery I had heard of was a Catholic Oblates of St Mary was way more information than I could muster in Ukrainian. 'De monastir' was all I could comfortably blurt out. He marked up my map and I continued on.

A goatherd rose out of a grassy gulch to talk with me while his suspicious goats ripped at the lush grass. He led me a ways around some scrub brush and pointed to a great white church with green onion domes on a distant hillside. Yikes, I wouldn't make it by dusk. He implored me to take a bus, but I declined. Rather foolishly, I walked on, into total darkness. I asked a few more people in a series of hamlets to make sure I stayed on the right path.

An hour after the sunset, I illuminated a sign on the side of a little road with my flashlight: Monastir - 1.5 km. Ugh, more walking... 15 or 20 minutes more, and my legs shaking with fatigue. But knowing I was close, I was happy with the day's experience. Those minutes later, I went right to a lit window in an outbuilding near the entrance to the monastery and tapped on the glass. Two monks motioned me to the door and gave me a kind welcome. 'O'y, though, not 'i'y... Russian, not Ukrainian... Orthodox, not Catholic... it was all the same to me, but I wasn't sure what the rules are for giving pilgrims a night's accommodation in the absence of that convenient papal decree that western pilgrims have relied on since the Middle Ages.

Scurrying by more monks brought the surprisingly young abbot. He listened to my Ukrainian request for pilgrim lodging, and replied with gentle smiled gestures that the Catholic monastery is two km further. Rather than cry or sit in protest like I half felt like in my exhaustion, I proffered the prized letter of introduction given to me by the Ukrainian Catholic priest in Denver. The abbot smiled even more, handed me back the letter, and indicated that I was welcome. Phew! As it turns out, both the church in Denver and his church at the monastery are named Transfiguration of the Lord. What are the angelic odds of that?

He led me to the church and allowed me to sit (and fumble awkwardly with a headscarf) while listening to their chanted version of Vespers. Afterwards, the dozen or so monks marched to the refectory and I followed. One table for the monks and one for laypeople. Supper was rapidly eaten in smiling silence while one of the monks read incredibly fast. Black bread, pickle soup, kasha, some cabbage salads, and various relishes were all wolfed down by everyone. With the sudden ding of a small bell, everyone stood, genuflected aerobically in quick succession, and supper was over.

Among the lay people were two university students from Kyiv who volunteer there for the solitude and seven icon-painters currently decorating the interior of the church. One of the students speaks some English and everyone was full of questions. They courteously allowed me to shower and change out of the sandy hiking clothes before we would satisfy together all the curiosities of everyone's situation. Before much could happen, the abbot sent word that my presence was requested. The translater made an attempt at fixing my headscarf and was incredulous that I didn't have a skirt to wear - even the women icon painter wore ankle-length canvas skirts. Ah well, off to the abbot.

Soft spoken, he told me of the monastery, gave me a tour of the grounds, guided me through the finished paintings of the Chapel of St John the Baptist, up the bell tower to see the dozen hand-operated tuned bells, and further up the scaffolding to the interior of the cupola where the icon painters were finishing depictions of larger-than-life prophets to the sound of Byzantine chants coming from someone's laptop. It was all incredibly beautiful and tranquil. He floated the idea of my converting from Roman Catholic to Russian Orthodox and I promised that if I ever do, I'd return to have him baptize me personally. At a minimum, besides the obvious need to learn Russian, I'd have to get the headscarf thing down better... fluffy hair doesn't seem to be the right coif to keep it from sliding back all the time.

I was bestowed with gifts from the abbot and several of the monks - a richly embroidered cloth, small icons, a tryptic of St Andrew, a book on the monastery's founding saint, a small crucifix... The abbot had never hosted a pilgrim before. He made sure that several photos were taken of us together (promising to send them to me electronically so I might post them here).

All the lay folks gathered in the women's attic dorm room with a multitude of questions. The poor translater had a hard time of it, having much to translate all at once. One fellow's great-great-grandfather was said to have made a pilgrimage by foot to the Holy Land, but no one else had any idea that pilgrims exist as they do today.

Midnight was long past by the time we got to sleep. They slept on while I got up at dawn to head back to the forest path and make my way to the Catholic monastery I was sort of heading to earlier. I am incredibly grateful to the Russian Orthodox gang for their hospitality. Walking after dark, to the wrong place, was never so rewarding nor so much fun.

My first day of walking revealed to me the friendliness of the smiling Ukrainians.
=)

Got Stamps?

These few days in Kyiv have gone quickly; I begin walking at dawn.

From what I've experienced, I find it a fun and pleasant city, even in the constant gray drizzle. I've seen many of it's sights, but not nearly everything the town has to offer. I notice architectural similarities to other northern European cities - Berlin, Krakow, Prague, Vienna... - and notice some grand city mansions are more polished than others suggesting a transitional period like Prague 8 or 10 years ago. The churches are what make this place unique - bundles of gold onion domes abound and make colorful landmarks for touristic navigation. I like it. There are many interesting places to see and I'm sure the city will only attract more visitors in the years to come. The abundance of art sold from table stands in the street is also unlike any place I've been before... a surprising handicraft I saw in abundance is the nesting dolls of Barak Obama. They're keeping with the times on the streets of Kyiv.

With my couchsurfing buddy, I've discovered authenitic night life... nice little bistros with live music always makes an evening more pleasant. It's amusing that these young Ukrainians sing American songs so beautifully and with such well-placed passion and emotion yet don't actually speak English. Unfortunately, the opera and ballet, the theaters and other performance halls are shut down because of the political nonsense about the flu... you can sit in packed bars and restaurants, but not the ballet... It seems ironic that the crowded subways - impressively deep underground, by the way - and buses are deemed safe for public gatherings yet the possibility of the flu spreading smong opera viewers is somehow too risky. I'll have to return to the city one day in order to see the fancy opera hall.

As to pilgrim business, I wasn't able to get too many stamps for my credenziale yet - just one from the Roman Catholic St Alexander's church and one from the Russian Orthodox Pechers'k Cave Monastery. The difficulty is in finding someone to ask! These churches seem to lack the ever-present churchladies in Catholic churches in Western Europe. They've always been so helpful to me. Maybe it will be easier in the countryside.

I'm eager to start walking. At dawn, I'll strike out for a Roman Catholic monastery of Oblates of St Mary in Obukiv. There's no way for me to contact them ahead of time, so I'm just going on faith that they'll let me stay the night. I'm ready for a little name-dropping (thanks Matt and Sylvia) and go armed with letters of introduction in Ukrainian (thanks Fr Vasyl, Nadja, Pani Olena)... and by tomorrow evening will have an idea how the pilgrim accommodation challenge might work in the east.