election day

What has a sausage got to do with elections? Nothing really, but I was looking for an image to illustrate this post, sort of to do with sausages, and I found this old advert. If only they knew all those years ago the cheap laughs some blogger might get…

Anyway, today in Ukraine is election day and I did think about writing a post but I wasn’t suitably inspired. And besides, there are significantly more able people out there doing a decent job of describing the termination (?) of the political fiasco that has has been played out in front of us for the last few months.

Back to sausages. I went to the gym this afternoon and finished with a quick dip in the pool and special sauna treat to reward me for my efforts. As usual there were the 100-year-old crusty men with their blonde 18-year-old Ukrainian female companions (cough) lounging around. It all makes for entertainment – especially when security gets called into the sauna. There is cctv all over apparently.

Well, the cctv can’t have been working when I went into the sauna. When I enterred the area (a room that has the sauna, steam room, showers and chilling pool) a slurring moustachioed man in the chilling pool said something to me in Russian to which I replied in my clipped nice-English-girl accent – “I’m sorry I don’t understand you”. I could have said that in Russian (of course I’m well practiced in saying that one phrase), but I thought an English school ma’am type tone might put him off. It didn’t as he kept blathering on, and in the end I escaped into the sauna where an American man commented – “yep it’s all part of the entertainment”. I guess it depends on your version of entertainment.

The American man left the sauna and a Ukrainian woman and child came in.

Chill pool man got out and went into the shower. He was stark bollock naked.

me to woman in sauna: er excuse me, is this normal?

woman: nyet. Not normal. He is from Moscow.

Of course, a Russian. No Ukrainian man could behave in such a way.

The woman left and I went into the steam room, trying to avoid looking at the Russian who’s now back in the pool joined by a friend who also has a big moustache (this has nothing to do with the story*) and is exceptionally drunk and very naked. I sat in the steam room for a minute or two and felt decidedly uneasy when I realised that there was no one else in the area but me and this huge very naked moustachioed man. His friend had left and he got out the chill pool balancing uneasily on a bench.

I was going through defence strategies in my head (just in case – you never know) and relied on the fact that he was exceptionally plastered and a mere poke from me would send him flying. He then started spitting on the floor (I’m used to that on the pavement and sometimes on our apartment block stairs but not inside) and that was absolutely the last straw.

I made a quick nip out the steam room, skirting past naked moustache man (who’d nicked my towel as well) and ran to a pool steward and reported the events. Amazingly no one else had said anything, even though they were offended (American man and Ukrainian woman), and it seems the cctv was out of order otherwise security would have been in and nabbed Mr Meat-n-two-veg.

And that’s my election day story. Nothing else to report on the sausage theme, except that our cupboards are full to the brim with various dried and tinned foods (and salami in the fridge) in case we are housebound this week. MDF reckons there may be potential anarchy on the streets when the election results are announced. I don’t think I could cope with the excitement.

* unless the men were descendents of Stalin or the Village people over for a holiday

whingeing pom

Life in Kiev has become a steady routine, although my routine lunches and fizz sessions have been somewhat curtailed due to my impending exams and the need for me to crank my dusty brain up and revise heavily.

So for the last few weeks I’ve been flat-bound which has served to highlight some of the irritations of living here. It’s time for a WHINGE (which I have proudly not done for a while):

*something is making me itch – I couldn’t sleep last night because of it and it hasn’t stopped all day. Slathering over huge chunks of cream isn’t working. I wonder what softened salo would be like instead? I hope I haven’t got measles or chicken pox or some creepy tropical disease.

*it’s getting cold – down to 5C at night now. But the heating doesn’t get switched on until 21st October.

*we have a power cut so my efforts to warm up with a cup of tea were fruitless. There’s nothing like the dull clunk of a powerless kettle switch to dampen the spirits. At the moment power cuts are happening at least once a week.

*power cut means no internet and no phone.

*our fridge packed in yesterday and it will be Saturday (4 days later) before the “fridge master” can come and fix it.

*there’s a big smear of poo on the stairs from the stupid yapping dog below us. It’s been there for a week and I keep forgetting it. Yes I can avoid the stairs and take the lift, but I have issues with that too.

Of course there always has to be a good side:

no fridge = no fresh food = more eating out
no electricity = no phone + no internet = peace and quiet

no fridge + no electricity = one step closer to living the ‘green’ ideal. Or good practice for living in a cave.

overheard in kyiv again #3

This is an ongoing post (although not nearly as good as the New York one), updated as and when ridiculous conversations take place.

pt*: how much you weigh now?

me: ooh, er, uhmm 50kg**. It hasn’t changed in six months.

pt: that’s because you eat everything.

*the never ending flow of encouragements from my personal trainer
**the inner me does

olek*: so, this farmer we’re meeting tomorrow, he has a Hummer and he has four thousand Gectares** of land.

MDF***: ah! four thousand ‘ectares.

me: rolls eyes.

*Ukrainian colleague of MDF’s

**It seems Ukrainians (please don’t pull me down on Russian/Ukrainian pronunciation) pronounce H as G – as in ‘Gollywood’. Why ‘Hummer’ and not ‘Gummer’ is a mystery to me.

***MDF is French

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

me: do you have a drinks menu?
waiter: yes we do.
me: super. Do you have wines?
waiter: yes, we have many wines. We have red wines and we have white wines!

(new restaurant which is actually lovely with a rather decent wine list)

friend (not English): what’s this ‘bugger’ word? I always hear you saying bugger.
me: er uhmmm

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

lmm: you were right about the chicken. I just unpacked some breasts and found a maggot on top.

me: gross!

lmm: I mean how could it get there, it was a big one too. Ah man that’s just foul.

me: hahaha, foul-fowl! heheheheheahahaha

lmm: I think I’m going to hurl.

(lmm suffering a sense of humour failure faced with flesh eating maggots first thing in the morning)

you know, I had to like, teach him some English words, like back, stomach, knees…like, get on your knees!
(man talking about educating his new Ukrainian lover)

taxi driver: angliski?
me: da
td: manchester?
me: nyet
td: chelsea?
me: nyet
slight pause
td: may I smoke?
me: pazaluhsta (means please)
td: you want smoke?
me: nyet spaceeba (means thank you)
(this was a trip to the airport with the most polite taxi driver in Kyiv).

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

me (watching the fashion tv swimwear parade in the gym): do you think if I work really hard I’ll get a bum like that?
trainer: hmmm, yeeess, is possible. In future. Sometime. (avoids looking directly at me)
(oh sigh, I live in hope).

me: bloody hell these lifts are killing me.
trainer: yes, but they will give you lovely bums.
(my one bum is plenty enough for me thanks).

“You muuust make more muscle. More muscle good for fat burning. More tone, good shape, nice body”.

(personal trainer to me after two months of muscle harrassment)

“You want some money huh? How much you need? Tell me, I give you what you want”. (overweight, old American man to two young devoushki in the Premier Palace hotel lobby)

“We must work on upper body strength. I see you in swimming aerobics – when we swimming with leg only, you ok. But when we swimming arms only, everybody fast, you stay very behind”.

(my personal trainer doesn’t mince her words after my clearly disappointing pool performance)

me: phew, these are good exercises – good for carrying the shopping.

trainer: no! Carrying shopping is for your husband.

(Once again in the gym working on those batwings. I think I’m altering my view of gender equality).

5 year old: come on I need to pee.

3 year old: I wanna go first.

5 year old: are you desperate then?

3 year old: yes.

(this took place in the changing room of the gym between two little girls with perfect plum in-the-mouth English accents)

a lesson in hierarchy

MDF invited a junior colleague home for dinner. The poor guy probably would never have dreamed of stepping over our threshold (it’s a bit odd like that in Kiev sometimes) had their flight to Simferopol not been cancelled and they had nowhere else to go but the dodgy Borispol canteen. So they settled instead for my cooking:

me: Olek* do you like ham and do you like cheese?

olek: I don’t know**. MDF***, do you like ham and cheese?

mdf: Yes I do.

olek: Ok, I like ham and cheese.

*not his real name

**Ukrainians are major pork and cheese eaters

***not his MDF, but my MDF for the sake of continuity here

what a load of balls

We have just returned from a fun weekend in France where we spent time recovering from the disappointment* of ‘les bleus’ loss** to Argentina during the opening game of the rugby world cup.

As hosts of the world cup, France is rugby crazy right now and in case you forget what’s happening over the next few weeks there are a few reminders placed around Paris;

The Tour itself is decked with an appropriately placed ball…

The first match started off jolly enough with the opening ceremony (although we missed most of it because a certain MDF couldn’t coordinate his supporting shirt colours and we missed the first train), smashing music (literally) and beer*** aflowing.

Even my admiration of the French teams’ forms didn’t irritate my male companions – we were a little way up,

so binoculars were necessary to capture the perfectly honed haunches of Ibanez. He is a hooker.

To cut a long story short (and to make up for my utter lack of ability as a sports commentator), events unfortunately didn’t go as planned and there was a fair degree of tension amongst my fellow spectators, starting off with disgust…

followed by cupping-head-in-hand:

When the score was this:

(that’s 12-17 in Argentina’s favour)

our neighbour lit up – no point mentioning that it was a smoke free zone:

Sadly no amount of nail biting could save the day for France;

so we upped and went before the last whistle, lest we were swamped with ecstatic Argentinians. That wouldn’t have done much for the dented French pride.

I don’t think many French will be drinking this popular brand for a while…

But the night was not quite over.

And you might be wondering what on earth this post has got to do with Kyiv?

Well, once I got stuck in a lift in Kyiv. In Paris, I got stuck on the metro**** escaping from the 80,000 worth of crowds leaving the Stade de France. On a train whose electricity just got cut off (gosh, sounds a bit like Kyiv). In a carriage rammed packed full of rugby supporters. This is a true perspective from where I was standing:

It was a little claustrophobic.

No electricity + being at armpit level of rugby supporters = no air = boiling hot = beery fumes = that faint feeling = me gradually removing as many garments as possible. Phew, before it got crucial (30 minutes) the train juddered into life and off we screeched into Paris proper.

The lack of electricity was apparently due to someone (drunk? happy?) running on the line just past the stadium stop. When this happens the supply is automatically cut off. Naturally the non-pc Gaelic sense of humour kicked in:

“pah, it’s probably an Argentinian***** on the track”

“alors, come on let’s start the train and go!”

notes:
*read utter depression and despair on MDF’s part
**”that’s all the thanks you get for selling them Exocet missiles and Mirage fighters before the Falklands War” sympathy for France from my stepfather
***even though it was non-alcoholic and cost 6 bloody Euros
****pressing the button and yelling “ya ceichas v liftye” (russian for I’m stuck in the lift) was no use here
*****I’m pleased to say no Argentinians were harmed in the course of this adventure