Month: November 2011 (Page 2 of 3)

Well Water for city dwellers

The water supply system has broken down in a subburb of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. No worries. There is always the local water well. Dozens of people line up to get there plastic bottles filled.

There is also a queue in a nearby district. No problems with the water system here, but people just prefer water from Mother Nature. Tap water in Ukraine is of poor quality. Many wells are located on church property. The sacral environment makes the water better to the taste locals.

By Jerom Rozendaal

Video: Winter clothes from Europe

Medio Oktober. Ukrainians are preparing for the winter.

The Shulyavski second hand market in Kiev is crowded with people on a Wednessday afternoon. Dozens of people dig through the heaps of clothes in search of a bargain.

The garments origin from Europe and were donated by charity organizations. Among the fur loving Ukrainians fur coats are especially popular around this time of the year.

By Jerom Rozendaal

Gallery: Kiev

A selection of photos from Ukraine’s capital city.

Gallery: Pushcha-Voditsa

Images from Pushcha-Voditsa, a Small spa town outside of Kiev

Can you save me from the borrowed cloud I’m on?

Today:сегодня

Posted from: www.bearder.com

Riding the Forest Tram

Tram 12 to Pushcha-Voditsa

Tram 12 takes you through the forest to Pushcha-Voditsa

Like most Slavic people, Ukrainians have a deeply held belief that cold drafts can cause all kinds of serious illness, up-to and including death. Or worse. They also have ‘proven’ information to suggest that sitting on a cold hard seat can lead to infertility.

Feeling brave I decided to risk both and to head off on a Ukrainian tram mission.

A few months ago my manager told me about a spa resort outside of Kiev which you could reach by tram, and that the tram itself was pretty cool because it goes through a forest. I knew then that I had to check this out and despite the freezing weather, now was that time. I didn’t know the name of the place or which tram to take, but I wanted out of the city and a quick google search for ‘Kiev’, ‘tram’ and ‘forest’ provided the answers. I was set.

The town/spa resort is called Pushcha-Voditsa, and the tram line is number 12. It leaves from Kontractova Ploscha – next to the metro station. Luckily, that’s only a 15 minute walk from my home.

If you’re unfamiliar with the trams in Kiev, let me explain…

Built in Czechoslovakia in the bronze age, they are almost always driven by tough looking women, they are cold, they are uncomfortable and they are slow. However, this just adds to the experience. They are also super-cheap at just 10p a ride. So, if I didn’t go crazy, I could do the whole day out on less than 50p!

The tram was waiting to leave when I arrived, so I jumped on, paid the woman driver my 10p fare and settled my arse down on a rock-solid, ice-cold plastic seat. I was expecting it to be uncomfortable and I wasn’t disappointed.

For the most part, the tram chugs along through some average Kiev districts, some suburbs and past a few strange roadside markets. I shifted around in my seat to keep the blood flowing to my legs, I watched two school kids playing wraps (a game which involves punching your opponents knuckles until you miss) and I thought about life. What else can you do on a tram? Anyway, after 45 minutes boredom (and pain) gave way to a sense of adventure as the tram stopped on the edge of the city and then rolled off into the forest.

This is what I paid my 10p for, but to be honest, there wasn’t a lot to see, just tall autumnal trees and a rusty looking tram line weaving off into the future and back into the past. However, that’s why its cool. Within minutes you’re in a woodland corridor and could be a million miles from anywhere …but you’re there on a bloody-old tram, going very slowly with a bunch of locals and their shopping.

Anyway, the woodland voyage ends after about 15 minutes when you arrive in the perfectly peaceful town (village?) of Pushcha-Voditsa. I didn’t know where to got off so I decided I’d stay until the driver kicked me off. This was about 6 stops later at the end of the line and next to a small kiosk where I bought a Mars bar.

Then I realised that I had no idea about anything in P-Voditsa and no plan, so I started walking in the opposite direction of the town, up the road to a small lake and into the forest. The place is definitely sleepy, but it’s also beautiful, quiet and, like many towns in Ukraine, it feels like its stuck in a time gone by. Personally, I love this feeling but it did occur to me that this would also be the perfect setting for a low-budget horror film with kids camping and crazy people with chainsaws etc…

I’ll save you the rambling details of the rest of the day. You can see the beauty of the place in the pictures below. If the Ukrainians are right about cold seats – I may never have any kids (my buttocks get cold just thinking about those plastic tram seats), but it’s still a nice day out. Oh, and with the cost of a Mars bar the whole shebang cost me a pocket warming 55p!

Ukrainian Logic

I’m a naturally curious person. Like an over-grown baby, I love to try new things and explore new places and I want to touch, poke and pull on things until I get into trouble. I like asking why? What? How? and When? and I’m constantly trying to make sense of the inexplicable.

Being like this is often frustrating and a little exhausting, but I guess its one of the reasons I love being in Ukraine. There are a million things here which I don’t understand or which I have never seen. This is engaging and as my manager once said as we walked past another burning litter bin ‘its like living in a film’.

True, and its a great analogy, but what kind of film is it? Its definitely not a romance. These flower-loving Ukrainians can be romantic but this isn’t Paris or Venice. Its definitely not a horror either – Kiev is way too safe and friendly for that. I guess I would list Ukraine in the comedy-drama section with a PG (parental guidance) rating. Its engaging and amusing, but you should be cautious where you look.

Anyway, getting back to the point, one of the most fundamental things I’ve learnt in my quest to understand Ukraine is this: don’t try to understand everything. Why? because some things in Ukraine just don’t make sense, they do not follow any conventional logic and they seem to exist to baffle. This my friends is Ukrainian Logic. 

Ukrainian Logic is not so much of an oxymoron because some Ukrainian things are logical, but specific instances of Ukrainian logic are definitely antonyms of logic.

Here’s an example

Ignoring the fact that there is a ‘wanted picture’ outside my door, in English, for the ‘Twin Peaks’ Sheriffs department (that’s just weird) consider this picture of the letter boxes inside my apartment:

Ukrainian logic

Illogical letterboxes

Assuming that you can count in a logical sequence, you’ll see the problem. What happened to the numbers? Don’t try to understand. Just accept that following Ukrainian Logic, 105 come before 104.

But what about the mystery door with no number? I guess we will never know. So lets look at 103. It has bold letters, so it must be important. I’ll go and ring the doorbell…

Where's the door?

Ukrainian logic. Where's the door?

…hold on, wait a minute, where’s the door?

Ukrainian logic exhibit 2

Ukrainian logic exhibit 2: Where's the door

Eh?

Ladies and gentlemen. Please come to Ukraine and enjoy it. You’ll love it, but you may never understand it.

Lippy Kids

Hurmah, or ‘Date-Plums’ I’ve never seen, or heard of them then before but they are good. Thanks to Yulia for introducing them 🙂

The ‘Dutch Oven’ Jerom, his wife and a Pumkin coloured Englishman

A pumpkin

Kiev city administration

Posted from: www.bearder.com

Education for Sale

Education for sake

Education for sake. Adverts are common in Kiev

In a Kiev underground station my eye fell on this advertisement: ‘Order dissertation, essays and more. Fast and good quality.’

My thoughts returned to the long months that I was sweating over my final thesis. It was in the summer of 2008. I studied history. My parents had already started to complain, because after seven years of studying it was high time to finish university. A writer’s block and laziness had prevented me from starting. But I got going and in four months I wrote my thesis of ninety pages on the former Soviet-leader Michael Gorbachev. My friends were drinking beer in the park while I got through old newspapers in university libraries.

How convenient would it have been, if I could have delegated my work to someone else. Let me explain: In Ukraine and Russiathere are decicated businesses that write dissertations for you. For less than 150 euro’s you can get all the work done for you.

Common practice
Buying dissertations and other essays is a common practice in Ukraine and Russia. A friend of mine told me that he had his thesis done this way. ‘I had already started working when I had to write my thesis and I had no time to do it myself.’ He received his thesis only an hour before he had to defend it.

Official figures don’t exist, but based on the large number of companies that promote their services at the internet, the selling of theses is a flourishing business. And this can only mean that there is a market.

The companies that produce them promise that the work is done in one month. ‘It costs you 200 dollars. Half you pay in advance’, tells a tells a lady on the phone. Here office, Logos info which has several branches in Ukraine. It was the third hit on Google. I did not even tell her I wanted a thesis on Michael Gorbachev, but this turned out not to be a problem at all.

Teachers
The masterminds who will spent weeks in books and archives for you are not so mysterious as they seem. ‘We have historians, law teachers and economists working for us’, write some companies on internet. ‘The work is being done by teachers’, confirms the lady on the phone. And adds: ‘Success is therefore guaranteed.’

‘It is a big problem in Ukraine’, says Nikolai Kozubra, professor of law at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. ‘Due to fake diplomas and bribed teachers Ukrainian education has devaluaded the last years.’ Kiev university ranks third on a list of best universities of the country. The ranking is nowadays the best guarantee for companies that a employee is well educated.

Professional
According to Kuzubra it is difficult to unmask the ‘felony’. ‘If a thesis I copied from the internet we can find out quite easy. But these office write tailor-made products, the work is unique and done by professionals.’ According to Kuzubra the government should fight the malpractices by forbidding these companies by law.

But the problem lies deeper. The once prestigious profession of teacher has devaluated since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The average salary of an Ukrainian or Russian teacher is about 300 dollar. They can’t hardly be blamed for spending their free time earning some extra dollars.

The companies I called all told me the thesis could not be delivered in English.

But maybe this is not so bad at all. There are many occasions I talk with about my thesis with pride. The thesis I wrote in the summer of 2008 was marked with an eight. After I received my diploma that I presented my teacher a bottle of Vodka, named Gorbatschow.

Ten amazing statistics about the rebuilt Olympic Stadium

Kiev's Olympic Stadium

Kiev's refurbished Olympic Stadium

The grandiose building work in the heart of the capital is coming to an end. Tomorrow, 8 October, the renovated Olympic National Sports Complex will be unveiled in a huge and colourful ceremony. This is the arena where on 1 July next year the final match of Euro-2012 will be played. It is crucial for Ukraineas fellow host Polandwill open next summer’s football fest, which is the third biggest sports tournament after the Football World Cup and the Olympic Games. Four host cities in each country will stage the games. In Ukrainethe cities are the “cultural capital” of Lviv, the “second capital” Kharkiv, the “capital of Donbass” Donetsk and, of course, the country’s capital, Kyiv. But let’s get back to the stadium in Kyiv.

Football-loving Colombian star Shakira will be helping to create a party mood with her music at the opening. She penned a song called “Waka-Waka”, which became the official song of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa in 2010.

During the reconstruction of the stadium many unique operations were completed, and quite a few “construction” records were broken. Let’s look at some key stats.

Key numbers about reconstruction:
119,000 cubic metres of concrete used for building works
100,000 square metres of granite used on decorating works at the NSC and the surrounding area
48,000 square metres – the area of the roof over the stands
12,000 square metres of the façade is glazed
40 km – total length of the cables
760 tons – the total weight of the entire cable-stayed system

608 powerful floodlights installed on the roof, which make up the lighting system
88 Full Range and 80 low-frequency networks make up the sound system of the Bowl at the stadium
4.4 trillion colours are displayed on the LED displays, the largest in Ukraine
43 fast food kiosks make up the system to serve fans. Thanks to the in-house factory kitchen at the arena 60,000 guests can be fed simultaneously: 4,000 guests in the VIP-area and 54,000 people in the fast food outlets.

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