Budapest ~ Odessa ~ Kiev

Friday we took a quick hop from Budapest to Odessa. We were the last ones to get through customs, except for the Brazilians who were being escorted back onto the plane to Budapest for lack of visas. In spite of the commotion related to them (I counted 7 border guards handling this situation) the border guard helping us was very focused and handled our situation fairly quickly. Our bags were waiting and we departed.  As soon as we came through security, there THEY were! The taxi driver “vultures” and they came at us from all directions wanting to “serve” us. We changed some money and hired one of these aggressive guys to take us to the train station. We managed to talk him down a bit, but we found out later we probably paid 5 times what was necessary. We’re chalking that one up to “live and learn”. 

Our driver became very jovial along the way since the traffic jams he promised (and the reason for the higher price) were not to be seen. He kept referring to the policemen in the middle of every intersection and saying, “O, no traffic!  Policejty!  Tuk, tuk, tuk!”, and waving his hands like he was directing traffic. Upon discovering that we are from California, he became more jovial. He rambled for several blocks about Schwarznegger, the Terminator, but we have no idea what he was saying about him. He drove very fast and recklessly, bordering on lunacy as he zipped along.

Along the way we saw packs of dogs: stray dogs, big dogs and mangy dogs. (like a bad version of the ‘Go Dog Go’ book!) There were dogs eating out of trashcans and dogs eating out of a McDonald’s bag in the gutter. One lady was either holding her groceries above her shoulders in order to keep the dogs away from them, or she was trying to feed this group and there were too many wanting food for her to handle. We’ve heard stories of the packs of stray dogs in Romania and perhaps it is the same way in Odessa. It did remind me though of one of the most beloved characters of Czech literature, Good Soldier Svejk. Svejk played the town idiot, though he wasn’t at all. He just was lazy and loved beer, gossip and to make the establishment look bad. He was famous for making his beer money by forging pedigree papers for stray mutts and selling them as rare breeds with classy credentials. He could make a lot of money in Odessa this way! ;)

We bought tickets for sleeping quarters on the overnight train and then waited 8 hours to leave at 23:09.  Most of that time, we sat and tried to learn some Ukrainian. We only met one person who spoke some English, so we have mostly relied on our Czech.  Although they don’t speak Czech, it seems to be that we can all recognize some words, which are common, or at least common enough. We are a couple of steps above ‘sign language and grunting’ when communicating J. Most of our time ‘learning Ukrainian’ meant learning the alphabet so we can read the signs.

We found a waiting area for ticket holders. As the wind kicked up and the temperature dropped outside, homeless people began to come in.  They can pay the equivalent of about 20 cents to stay inside and sleep on the benches. One homeless lady sat on benches directly across from us and stared non-stop at us. Finally, she came over asking what time do we leave. We told her and she decided to sit one seat over from us. She gave Kimi a part of a newspaper and was saying something about ”read and understand our politics”!? Later the lady was enjoying watching this one small girl and her father walk around and gave the girl her orange. However, when some other children were just kind of playing around, she got up, started yelling at them, told the guard, and even went to the parents and yelled. Finally, the guard told her it was none of her business, to sit down, shut up or leave. She sat but continued to grumble! When we left for our train the lady was quite glad because it turns out, she really just wanted our spot where we were sitting!

We made it onto the right train and found our compartment. We both slept some but not well. I counted 10 times that we stopped in 9 hours in order to let another train go by. We were able to lock our room and that was comforting.

We arrived at the Kiev train station at 8:44am and promptly tried to find a phone booth. Of the 4 phone numbers we had for contacting our facilitators, nobody answered any of them.  Hmm, frustrating.  We would have called the night before, but the phone we brought with us would not unlock with the pin code our server had given us. We’ll keep working on that. 

We called the people we are staying with in Kiev. They told us to use the metro (subway). The metro experience was like no other. Pushing our way through mobs of people, just following the mob to buy tokens and pay (cuz we had no idea how it works), cramming onto the extremely fast escalators, and trying to figure which subway and direction to go! Kimi asked some mothers standing with their children for directions. They pointed us in the right direction and then went part way with us. We made the transfer to another subway and our host was waiting for us. Perfect, like clockwork!

We slept all afternoon on Saturday, had dinner with our hosts and a pastor friend who is here from St. Petersburg, Russia. They just finished a Bible conference in Kiev.  Pastor Roman helped start a publishing house in St. Petersburg as well as a church ministry. Tomorrow is a day of rest and then we’ll appear at the SDA on Monday. 

The Lord is always good, no matter the circumstances.  Lamentations 3: 19-23 says, “Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.  Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down (humbled) within me.  This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.  The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; Great is Thy faithfulness.”