September 20, 2002
Today is mostly down-time. At 7:45 this evening, our train will leave for Donetsk. Inna will be
at the apartment to pick us up around 6pm. In the meantime, we're hanging out at the apartment in
Kiev and rearranging our luggage for the train.
Our hostess, Nina, served us a nice breakfast with cereal, milk,
bread, cheese, meats, coffee and tea. The cereal was interesting. The brand name was "Start!", and there
were three different varieties: chocolate balls, squares with nut filling, and squares with "milk filling".
All seemed very sweet. It looked like there were other varieties available in stores, too, based on the packaging.
After breakfast, Nina walked us to a nearby Internet cafe, where we sent our first email message to
our mailing list. We couldn't connect the laptop to the network, so we just sent email from the
email account provided by our web hosting service. (Kristin tried AOL's web email, but it wouldn't work
with the ancient web browser installed on the PCs in the cafe.) We did a bit of web browsing, visited
the Kiev Post news site (http://www.kpnews.kiev.ua/), and searched
Google for information about Donetsk. Some of the University websites were helpful, relating a bit about
the population, history, and culture of the city. One hour at the Internet
cafe cost 6 Ukrainian currency units, or roughly $1.20. It looked like the
main use of the Internet cafe was computer games. (The young man at
the computer next to us was playing Warcraft III with Russian menus.
I decided that I definitely want that game for Christmas!)
After the Internet cafe, Nina took us for a walk up the street to the Kiev Expo Center. The Expo
Center itself was quite a large campus, with ornate buildings, gardens, and fountains, and wide open
walkways between them all. It was a very nice, fall day, with light puffy clouds and blue sky. The
temperature was in the low 60s.
There was a trade show going on in four of the large buildings. It was a printing equipment show,
with many different demonstrations of huge printers, some as large as small rooms. They were showing
off posters and other large-format advertizing materials that they'd just printed, giving live demonstrations,
and showing off related things like paper products, computers, and smaller computer printers. We
picked up some Apple Computer fliers that were written in Russian, and snagged a poster showing various
types of Russian wine and alcohol bottles.
We returned to the apartment, and Nina started preparing lunch while we worked on our repacking,
catching up our journals, and charging our computer batteries. Nikki warned us that we'd have lots of
down-time on this trip. It's a good thing we brought some books, some games, and the computer!
We waited at the apartment during the afternoon. Nina served us lunch (fried pork chops, noodles,
a pork-based broth, and a salad of fresh vegetables), and then about an hour before it was time to go,
she made us a tea-time snack of apple and cheese blintzes with tea and coffee.
Inna returned with Vitali and Larissa, our adoption coordinator. Larissa gave us our instructions
for our first few days in Donetsk (with Inna translating everything) and then sent us off with Inna and Vitali to the train station.
The Kiev train station was very new, and very modern. A glass and steel structure--like any we'd
have in Chicago--clearly revealed the people, shops, sculptures, and video screens inside. Kristin was
particularly taken by the water sculpture, with a steel mesh that slowed the falling water down to
create a mesmerizing wave pattern moving slowly down the sculpture's sides.
We waited outside the train station until half an hour before our train was scheduled to leave.
Inna explained that the train station was not a place we'd want to wait in for long.
Across the street, we strolled in a small park outside a very new
church. (It was still under construction inside, actually.) We hurried
onto the train and straight into the sleeping berth. Inna, Kristin, and I shared the four-person
berth--Inna on an upper bunk and Kristin and I on the two lower ones.
The train left promptly at 7:17pm. We visited for a short time, then took turns visiting the
bathroom at the end of the car while others changed in the berth. Inna and Kristin went to
bed quickly, and Lee stayed up a bit longer writing in this journal.
While Kristin slept a good six hours or so (falling asleep as soon as she went to bed), Lee got only about
one hour of sleep the whole night, as the train was loud, very bumpy, and
cold. Both of us found the trip on the train difficult. We consider ourselves fairly intrepid travelers,
but this train was not pleasant by any means. The corridor outside our berth was filled with smoke from smokers,
and the bathroom was not only primitive, but also filthy. The berth itself was cramped and the beds were narrow
bench seats, which both of us had trouble staying on throughout the night. The only food and water we had was
what we brought with us. And the train itself was very noisy and jerky, and the tracks were quite bumpy.
We are seriously considering insisting on flying back to Kiev rather than taking our baby on the train.
Despite the difficulties of the night, we both knew that we needed to get our rest, because
tomorrow would be a big day!!!
