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* Pre-Order Volume 2! * | Travel with "Ed The Grass Cutter" to Ukraine or Russia! | Writers! I need you! | Contact | Hotel Reviews |
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• Introducing the new book •
The Fantastic Diaries • • • |
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You are reading |
There's no grass to
cut in December, January, February or March, so "Ed The Grass
Cutter" heads overseas - looking for creative inspiration,
adventure, and opportunities in business & love. |
Why is it free? |
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Go to:
Section 2:
How I came to be in Mariupol Want to travel to Ukraine or Russia?
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Diaries" brand. Click here.
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Entry: December
1, 2007 That’s what Andrew Smirnov in Kiev told me. And his Japanese boss at Mitsubishi had told that to him. How interesting, I thought. Finding new business opportunities and exploiting them is what Mitsubishi pays 30 year old Andrew to do. And what his boss meant by those words was that companies of Mitsubishi’s stature don’t go after chump change. Eagles don’t hunt flies… Those words resonated with me. I felt inspired. Andrew went on to talk about his country’s problems… how Russia had saddled them with debt when the Soviet Union broke apart, how terribly corrupt the upper echelons of government is, how bribe demands killed Ikea’s entry into Ukraine, how extremely difficult it is to start a business in Ukraine due to the bureaucracy involved and the bribes to be paid. He told me that trying to import anything into Ukraine was a world of peril, since Ukraine has inadequate port facilities with no storage, and of course - there is the extortion involved to get goods released from the port. I listened with fascination, finding it all difficult to believe. But he spoke with conviction. I like Ukraine. It is exciting to be here. It is a country of opportunity, just like Russia. Strangely, the nation appears to have an inferiority complex from what I have observed in dealing with Ukrainians. They are down on Ukraine. The Orange Revolution accomplished almost nothing from the point of view of the average Ukrainian. Andrew says the country is decades behind…. even two or three generations behind. Is it really? My friend Hanna, also from Kiev, is a little bit different. She’s got the world by the balls. A 21 year old whiz kid, I first met her in October 2005 when she was 19. At the time, she had just gotten a new cell phone and mentioned that she had to transfer all the contact info of 430 people from her old phone to her new phone. And she had her old phone just 6 months! She networks like crazy! Nearly all of those contacts were business-oriented connections.
Hanna is focused. She worked very hard at her university studies, gave herself the title “business consultant” before she even graduated, and landed a job with a US technology transfer company as the head of their Ukraine activity. Then she decided to provide her business consulting services to a Belgium company. And almost simultaneously she landed a position in the Ukraine Parliament Ministry Of Energy. She is simply kicking ass, and is only 21. Here, people like Hanna are unusual and uncommon. The middle class is growing quite well, but still many people do not make much money. My acquaintance, poor Andrei, struggled for years. He worked as a guide helping desperate and dateless foreigners to meet women. The work was not dependable at all. And Andrei was desperate himself. I came to fully understand this in time. I met him briefly in November 2005, the night before I was to hop on a plane to fly back to Philadelphia. I was considering expanding my tourist guide service to Kiev and my meeting with Andrei was a “get acquainted” session. He bugged the hell out of me after I returned home. Almost everyday it seemed Andrei was emailing me, telling me of his desperation for work, how his life sucked, how he couldn’t get any women, and how he needed me to buy him “fart-proof” underwear. Poor Andrei had an intestinal problem and farted a lot. I wished he hadn’t told me that, because how could I set him up with guide customers after learning that? My oh my… the emails kept coming. And they pleaded with me to do anything to get him work. He clung to me like a pesky fly. And he even began to get upset when I did not respond within 24 hours. That’s when I had to make things more clear to him. At last I had relief. The emails slowed. I guess he found someone else to cling to? But a need for his guide services did arise months later, in March 2007. Suddenly I was on my way back to Ukraine. I had to go to some crazy places in this country and needed a traveling assistant. Andrei was the only Ukrainian I knew who would travel with me, and I was willing to tolerate breathing mass-quantities of methane to accomplish the goals of my trip.
The airport known as “Borispol” outside of Kiev is a big surprise to me. The runway is brand new. The terminal is modern. It‘s not at all like the bumpy one I am familiar with in Saint Petersburg, Russia. There, at the airport known as “Pulkovo,“ the landing is always rough - as are the sights, with its junk yard of obsolete soviet aircraft that all arriving planes pass by on the tarmac. When you land in Saint Petersburg, YOU KNOW you are in a foreign country. But this airport outside of Kiev in Ukraine is not like that. It looks like a modern, small, European airport. Then you look out the window of the aircraft as you approach the terminal and see 2 tough, very serious-looking officials standing on the ground, watching the plane. One is in a formal military uniform with those big funny-looking hats, and the other is wearing dark green military camouflage clothing tucked into black soldier boots and is holding the leash to a contraband sniffing German Sheppard. And you think to yourself “Uh oh!” And you know what’s weird? When you get off the plane, here and in Russia, you are not welcomed with a warm greeting of some sort. Instead, somebody in a formal military uniform eyeballs you as you exit the plane. It must be a relic from the soviet times. Then you know for sure that you are in a foreign country. Getting through passport control has an air of seriousness about it. I try to act like everybody else, which is to shut my mouth and not smile. Next, you worry about the locals stealing your luggage as it does rotations on the conveyor belt at a place beyond your reach, beyond passport control. Then you have to worry about making it through customs once you do retrieve your luggage. And then there you are, in the lobby of an airport in a very foreign country with a very foreign language. What a feeling of relief and comfort it is to be greeted by a friend at that point! It was Hanna! I told her I was coming, but I knew she had other plans so I did not expect to see her there. How lucky I was that she changed her plans for me! And she even had a driver waiting for me (he was much cheaper than the airport taxis).
It was great reuniting with Hanna and talking about everything. She accompanied me to my hotel of choice. I had visited 53 Kiev hotels during my 2005 visit, shot photos, wrote reviews, and put it all on the web as part of my experiment to make Google ad money (www.hotelinspector.com). So I knew exactly where I wanted to stay on this trip - a place that was modern, that had an entertainment complex in the same building, with a little shopping mall and a very cool bowling alley, at a really good price ($70 a night). This was the “7 Days Hotel.” The location was not good and the price wasn't the best value, but I stayed in this neighborhood last time - at a really nice $30/night apartment - and felt comfortable there. This hotel insisted that I pre-paid some money through their website to guarantee a reservation, but their site was not secure! It didn't have that lock symbol in the lower right hand corner of the screen. I certainly wasn't going to email them my credit card info, which is what they expected. So I refused but told them I was coming. By luck they had rooms when I arrived. Even if it they had no rooms, I knew I could find a room someplace else, despite the hyped scarcity of hotels in Kiev. Hanna left me after I checked in, then I gave Andrei a call. That night we met and I treated him to a nice dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant in Kiev. For 36 year old Andrei, it was a lavish meal. And I found that I liked him more, since now we were better acquainted. I needed to get on a train and go to Mariupol in the south of Ukraine along the Azoz Sea. Since I speak little Russian, having a traveling helper was something I needed. And since Andrei is so desperate, this was my time to help him earn some decent money. After fully savoring the meal, Andrei broke the bad news to me, which was that he had achieved a breakthrough in his pursuit of income-producing work. He had just landed a $300 a month job working for a company that processes visas for one of the foreign embassies in Kiev. This sum of $300 a month was peanuts, and difficult to live on in this rich capital city. But Andrei saw this as a necessary stepping stone to better things. And he felt he had to decline the opportunity to make better money with me on my trip for the sake of his long-term career objectives. However, he did know of someone who might be willing to travel with me. Her name was “Mila.” Crazy Mila Enters My Life The next day, Andrei assisted me in buying a Ukrainian cell phone at "Rhythm." That's the name of the entertainment complex my hotel was in. Afterwards we sat and waited for Mila to show up. She was late, but once she finally arrived, my initial impression was good. We moved our meeting upstairs to the big bowling alley and ordered some snacks and drinks while we talked more. At this bowling alley, they scan people with a hand-held metal detector at the entrance, and you are expected to check your coat. Our conversation was good. I described what the guide assignment entailed and told Mila that I thought she would be suitable for the work, and I finished by asking if she had any questions for me. She paused, smiled in a devilish sort of way, then said "No." Hmm... that was curious I thought. So Mila accepted the assignment and we left immediately to go to the train station to purchase our train tickets. How did we get there? By "marshootka" of course! These are privately owned shuttle vans that usually seat around 13 or 15 people, and some drivers don't care if people stuff themselves in to make the number 25. Boy, is that uncomfortable for those who are standing! The cost is a bargain - usually just 1½ grievnas, which is about 30 cents or a little less.
The main train station in Kiev is big! Less than 24 hours later we were in a first class sleeper compartment on the train. I had brought lots of snacks and drinks for the long trip. Our compartment was not bad at all! It was a pleasant surprise. I stood by a window, hungry to view the sites. Pulling out of the train station was exciting... seeing those other funky soviet trains in the yard, and everything else. The trash... the run-down buildings. The odd, over-grown cemetery that was now a forest. Everything I saw, every vista was something new and different to me, and it was thrilling. With my last trip to Ukraine I had only visited Kiev. In comparison, this trip was something crazy. And I was loving these moments... being on the edge of boldness.
Mila was a great companion for the trip. We talked so much and laughed. It made the 16 hour train ride go much quicker. "What would happen in Mariupol?" I wondered as I laid in my train-bed-for-short-people on that night. When the sun arose, the train was still in motion. We passed sparse villages that looked quite poor. And as we approached Mariupol, our train passed by massive steel-making infrastructure. The landscape was bleak with its many smokestacks and few trees. And there were so many "shacks" ...old, very poor-looking little dwellings that were peoples' homes. Mila is a big city girl and she had never traveled to Mariupol either. We were both a bit shocked with the scenes of poverty. Several minutes later our train came to a halt. We had arrived and it was action time. What would we find here? Judging from the sights out the window, it did not look good. As soon as we exited the train, Mila and I both noticed the stench of industry in the air. It did not smell healthy. I scanned my surroundings again. This place had an air of poorness to it. And it certainly was different, and nothing like affluent, busy Kiev.
An aggressive taxi driver intercepted us near the train while his more lazy competitors lounged about their cars in the nearby parking lot. I covertly eyed this fellow over. Fifty-ish. He did not appear risky. Then we saw his car after struggling with our luggage for a bit... it was an old piece of soviet junk. Okay, I accepted it. Our immediate destination was to be the Spartak Hotel. I had found them on the internet. On their website the rooms looked good, the location appeared to be ideal, and the room pricing seemed to be a bargain, but on this morning I was arriving without a reservation. It's not the smartest way to travel, but I was optimistic that everything would be okay. Oops! No rooms! It was 9:20 in the morning. What would we do now? I wasn't too worried. That's why I had a guide. This was her problem to solve! Well, the hotel staff said they might have one room for us, but we would have to speak with the administrator, and this person was not currently available. Probably in 10 or 15 minutes we could speak with this person, they said. How surprised I was to see the constant stream of Ukrainians entering and exiting this building. It was a busy place! Thirty minutes passed. Then sixty. Then 90! Finally somebody showed up who we could deal with, and Mila was successful in getting us separate rooms, though it was not easy for her. At last we could relax. Yes, the rooms were okay. The carpets needed replacement, but overall these were comfortable rooms. The price? About $45 a night per room.
We agreed to give each other a couple hours to shower and relax, then we would meet-up and explore our surroundings. I can say with authority that the city of Mariupol, Ukraine is a crappy place. You can see and feel the poverty. Nearly all the buildings are old and in a state of noticeable decay. The center of the city does have a few pockets of nice areas. There are some interesting old buildings. A few parks. A couple nice restaurants. And a combination disco and bowling place. Plus they've got the beach. Mila loves being near the water. So we checked it out. Since this was March, the beach was fairly barren of people. Looking to the north, the coast was dotted with many smokestacks off in the distance. And nearby there were no affluent homes except for one new dwelling. The rest were tiny ordinary homes. A couple times we ate lunch at a restaurant with a view of the sea. Our view was too often interrupted by the unpleasantness of passing freight trains. Yes, train tracks right there at the beach.
Mila loved being near the water so much that she was willing to endure harsh weather to get beach time during our Mariupol trip. On one of those days the wind was so fierce! The gusts felt like 70 miles per hour. It was wicked! It was so windy that I had to concentrate on standing while walking over the pedestrian bridge above the passenger train yard. On this section of the beach on that day, I noticed an old couple, alone on the empty beach, bundled up in winter coats, sitting on a bench in a tight embrace, gazing at the turbulent sea, just holding each other. I had my Nikon D70s with me and what an opportunity this was to capture a moment of human tenderness. I asked Mila to approach them and ask for their permission to be photographed. They rudely rebuffed her and told her they knew all about our scam, and they basically told her to get lost. Well, they looked like nice people from a distance! We continued our walk along the beach, searching for any interesting shells. Then we encountered a fence structure. Thanks to the tide, we were able to walk around it. Then we found much better shells! Soon afterwards an old man with a mouth full of gold teeth approached. He was the security guard and he wanted to know how we got into the compound. Oops! When he learned I was American, of course he called me a spy and added very resolutely that President Bush was the worst American President ever! He then told us to get out before the dogs found us. (I think that was a bluff). So what was I doing in Mariupol? Why did I fly over the ocean and take a 16 hour train ride to this shit hole?
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Hotel Reviews | Travel with "Ed The Grass Cutter" to Ukraine or Russia! | Writers! I need you! | Contact | * Pre-Order Volume 2! * © Copyright 2008 Ed Ryder |
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