The title of this entry means, "There and Back Again" in Russian. I was going to translate it into Ukrainian, "Там і повернувся, щоб знову", much more gorgeous and whimsical of course, but a little bit of a mouthful for a blog title.
Туда и Обратно Снова refers to the literary genius of J.R.R. Tolkein, and is the title of Bilbo's book about his life adventures (not available on Amazon, only available on hardback in Middle Earth). A title which is a mouthful all the same, but it doesn't capture the spectacular feeling I get when I think of the passage in the Lord of the Rings when Bilbo talks about what it feels like to set out on adventure:
"It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to."
For the deliberate wanderer, those first steps are the essence of divine ignorance; that conscious incompetence, some sort of bold glee in one's own naivety, and a surrendering of self to blind faith in the face of imminent mishaps, impending discomfort, pervasive illiteracy and copious wrong turns that have always accompanied travel.
Bilbo should have added that it's impossible to keep you feet after walking out your door, or that even if you keep to your toes, you still have absolutely no idea where you might be swept off to. Moreover, being swept off is exactly the meaning of the very sort of voyage that makes Bilbo’s book worth reading, if you could ever get your hands on it.
One afternoon last year I raised my hand in the basement of the Ronald Reagan Building to swear an oath, became a public servant and enlisted in my nation's goodwill efforts abroad. I had absolutely no idea then that little more than a year later, and two years to the day after I'd left her, I'd find myself back in Ukrainia.
Even though I was returning to a country where I lived for two years, the very nature of this country would guarantee a long slate of new and surprising turns on the journey here.
Arriving in Kyiv a newly minted foreigner, I was not disappointed to feel the exhilaration of a stranger in this place once again.
This would be a completely different experience than my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sevastopol, I was certain of that, but I was throttled at the vast difference in perspective between that of a wayfaring semi-student vagabond living in the provinces and that of a sofa-owning neck-tied yuppie.
Two years and a different salary make a lot of difference. For once the city is accessible in a way it never was when I was a volunteer. Like the ability to enjoy mojitos at a Cuban joint with live (gasp: Cuban!) music serenading my rum. This time around living in Ukraine, I wouldn't have to make that agonizing kopek-pinching choice between buying beer and buying cheese.
Immediately upon landing at Borispol, I saw the changes in Ukrainia since I had left. The airport is under a sea of cranes. In the baggage claim area, the conveyer belts worked, in bright and airy new environs.
One can now buy a cappuccino from any number of college-aged entrepreneurs selling
good coffee from trunk-dwelling Espresso machines along the metro entrances. Portable coffee seems to have become all the rage in Kyiv. “Coffee House” and very other java joint chains used to only offer sit down brew. A caffeiniac was always chained to a mug at a table unless you were content on Nescafe in a plastic cub from a machine.
Now they have a take-out window and advertise how one can take one’s coffee out of the café! It used to be that in Ukraine the pedestrian would stroll the street with a beer but not a coffee. Now it has been reversed. Because of a new set of propriety laws that have been passed in preparation for the 2012 Euro Cup, it seems ever rarer to see folks walking with a green glass bottle of luke-warm Obolon Svetley in hand.
There is now a sushi on every corner of Kyiv. I'm not exaggerating.
I've seen a lot of people jogging, which I never had before.
Also the Gap has arrived. No comment there, but I have to say, I like the billboard.
Things familiar: well on arrival, I pretty much ran over anyone in my path on the way to the local market to buy tomatoes. That and sour cream. Most recently, brinza cheese, strawberries, now cherries. The produce in the place is unrivaled.
These familiar tastes and smells brought me back to the last decade (that is, two years ago). But familiarity is fleeting when once carries a visa. And then there are the scenes which may seem so familiar and mundane, but on closer inspection emerge as film in which only the passage of time and space can develop.
On a walk through a local park yesterday afternoon, I noticed for the first time how people populate the park benches after work. Mostly couples, but also families and friends. Not on the couch watching television, at a noisy bar in the midst of happy hour, in an airconned mall - no, on a sunny Friday evening, there are just hundreds of everyday people, joking, laughing, looking, kissing or talking about the day, smiling and enjoying each other’s company.
The sun never really sets here in summer. The late evening feels like early morning. I catch a whiff of envy for the days when I looked out at a horizon of the Black Sea, trying hard to determine where the sky ended and the sea began. Smiling, I realized it was only fleetingly that I longed for that familiarity.
There and back again; swept off my feet, beached on a strange and wonderful land once again.
