As I have told in Kharkov they don't speak Ukrainian, but Russian. Even though all signs and university lectures are in Ukrainian I don't think this part of Ukraine ever spoke Ukrainian. They say Russian is a rich language, that there are about 50.000 words compared to 25.000 in English, and for sure I know there are a lot of cuss words. But I wonder how many are actively used, the few Russian words I have learned tend to pop up extremely often. And actually the way they construct sentences in Russian often reminds me of the way Tarzan is speaking. They don't use a lot of filling words, like 'is/am/are' or 'the/a'. In Russian you wouldn't say 'my name is Tarzan' or 'I am Tarzan', but rather something like 'me Tarzan'. If you mean to say 'how do I get to the metro' you simply say 'how get to metro' (kak braidji k'metro). When my colleagues mean to suggest that we go to lunch, they would never say 'hey! shall we maybe go for lunch now, or something..?', but more likely 'go, eat!' ('paidjum yiest'). And when we have had our lunch and want the waiter to take the money we have put, I have heard them say 'girl, take!' ('diervoschka vaizmi'). I don't think they mean to be rude, I guess they just like to cut to the chase.
I regret a bit that I have not had time to study some more Russian because it can teach you a lot about the country and culture. For example I find it interesting that people here most often don't ask 'how are you doing?' and when they do the standard answer is not 'fine' or 'good', but rather 'normal'. I guess it is more honest because if you are always 'good', 'good' becomes 'normal'. To me it is also interesting the way all Russians like to use short forms of each others' names. If for example your name is Alexander, people will more often call you names like Sasha, Sania, Sucha, Ljosha, Ljolik or numerous others. Some times the short forms aren't really shorter, girls called Olga are often called 'Ole' which is funny for me because my brother Ole has also been called Olga for fun. What has also caught my Danishly vain interest is that people here - when something goes wrong - like to use a quote from Shakespeare, 'not everything is good in the kingdom of Denmark'.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Brand new office
This is actually old news, we moved to the new office about two months ago. But when it was new news it was also old news because for three months before moving we were promised that we would be moving 'next week'. But I guess the workers hadn't finished just yet and in fact they still really haven't.
Our office is in the 'second' floor (in Denmark first) of this building where they added three extra floors. I don't know what is up with the tape on the windows. They started putting mortar on the sides of the window holes and over the sides of the tape and they removed the scaffolds so I assume the tape is never going to be taken off. I guess now we are just waiting for the tape to dry up and start falling off to create that special Ukrainian half run-down/half built-up look.
Every now and then some guys will come by and fix some of the things they forgot in the first rounds. First some of the air condition machines, then some curtains, then a hand dryer in the toilet, then the rest of the tables, and so on. When they are not drilling wholes on a ladder above my head I don't mind so much.
They hired some old people to look after the building and create a homely atmosphere. I think they sort of live here, I came by late one evening and the man let me in but he did not look to pleased to be woken up.
Now we also have a peace of professional gym gear. One time when our female colleague had left Max 'gave it the whole arm', as we say in Denmark.
Our office is in the 'second' floor (in Denmark first) of this building where they added three extra floors. I don't know what is up with the tape on the windows. They started putting mortar on the sides of the window holes and over the sides of the tape and they removed the scaffolds so I assume the tape is never going to be taken off. I guess now we are just waiting for the tape to dry up and start falling off to create that special Ukrainian half run-down/half built-up look.
Every now and then some guys will come by and fix some of the things they forgot in the first rounds. First some of the air condition machines, then some curtains, then a hand dryer in the toilet, then the rest of the tables, and so on. When they are not drilling wholes on a ladder above my head I don't mind so much.
They hired some old people to look after the building and create a homely atmosphere. I think they sort of live here, I came by late one evening and the man let me in but he did not look to pleased to be woken up.
Now we also have a peace of professional gym gear. One time when our female colleague had left Max 'gave it the whole arm', as we say in Denmark.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Morality
Semen told me an interesting story about what happened to his girlfriend. She works in one of the biggest banks in Ukraine and recently she mistakenly took some fake money from a customer. Then she had a serious talk with the director of the bank and the idiot made her buy back the fake money from the bank, using her own real money. I don't know what she did with her fake money.
I am beginning to understand why Ukrainians can have a hard time trusting each other. Morality does not seem to be a major concern here. I have now met several people who have either cheated or helped someone cheat with their university assignments. One time it was even a student's supervisor who advised the student to pay a friend of mine to make her assignment.
I also heard some rumours about strange stuff happening around government people. Some time ago some official was killed while on a wolf hunt with his colleagues, the strange thing being that in the area in which they where hunting no one has seen wolves for the past fifteen years. Alex also told me about strange stuff such as when the Ukrainian government were privatizing and everyone were allowed to have a piece of land for free, but the government people made sure to get the good pieces of land for themselves and their friends. They say many of the rich people here got rich that way.
I am beginning to understand why Ukrainians can have a hard time trusting each other. Morality does not seem to be a major concern here. I have now met several people who have either cheated or helped someone cheat with their university assignments. One time it was even a student's supervisor who advised the student to pay a friend of mine to make her assignment.
I also heard some rumours about strange stuff happening around government people. Some time ago some official was killed while on a wolf hunt with his colleagues, the strange thing being that in the area in which they where hunting no one has seen wolves for the past fifteen years. Alex also told me about strange stuff such as when the Ukrainian government were privatizing and everyone were allowed to have a piece of land for free, but the government people made sure to get the good pieces of land for themselves and their friends. They say many of the rich people here got rich that way.
Wednesday camp
Last Wednesday I went camping/shashliking with Andrey and Max and their friend and Max' girlfriend. We came directly from work and had to get back there the next morning, so it was quite hard for this old guy. Andrey and Max decided to pretend that Wednesday was a day for having a rest because they used all they vacation days to prepare for exams. They are working full time and studying full time at the same time, and they even get straight 'A's.
I borrowed Jakob's new mountain bike and we drove to a place a bit outside of town. Max thought we drove 20 kilometers but I am sure it was only around 5, which was lucky for me. From the place we had a view of a big part of the city, in the evening it was quite beautiful with all the lights. We had our camp just to the right.
I am always amazed at how easily all Ukrainians can make a fire from branches they find lying around. The shashlik spears they put between two big pieces of wood.
This is a video! Not much to see though, but you can hear Andrey playing guitar and singing with the other guys. Andrey is one of the best camp fire guitarists I know.
That's me waking up. Andrey made the photo. Actually I was the only one sleeping in a tent, the other guys were sleeping under the open sky.
Recently Andrey bought an extremely fancy camera and ever since he has been making a million photos. On the trip he brought all his hobbies, which are mountain bike, guitar and the camera.
I borrowed Jakob's new mountain bike and we drove to a place a bit outside of town. Max thought we drove 20 kilometers but I am sure it was only around 5, which was lucky for me. From the place we had a view of a big part of the city, in the evening it was quite beautiful with all the lights. We had our camp just to the right.
I am always amazed at how easily all Ukrainians can make a fire from branches they find lying around. The shashlik spears they put between two big pieces of wood.
This is a video! Not much to see though, but you can hear Andrey playing guitar and singing with the other guys. Andrey is one of the best camp fire guitarists I know.
That's me waking up. Andrey made the photo. Actually I was the only one sleeping in a tent, the other guys were sleeping under the open sky.
Recently Andrey bought an extremely fancy camera and ever since he has been making a million photos. On the trip he brought all his hobbies, which are mountain bike, guitar and the camera.
The ghetto
By now we are four Danish people living in Kharkov and together with Tom we are forming a little foreigner ghetto.
One Saturday we all met at Tom's apartment. From the right is Rasmus who is working for another Danish company who has a team in our offices, then Jeppe and Jacob who came to replace me and the old Jeppe, who already went back to Denmark. Tom also invited Vika and Elena who work at our offices.
Tom rented this very cheap apartment far out of town. It is functional but the owners would have done good to watch some of our Danish DIY TV shows. Even I know that you should always clean a surface before painting it but I could see that they had not because the doors were quite sticky.
One thing Americans have in common with Ukrainians is a love of party games. Tom showed us a game which even involved a lot of Vodka.
Other place, same scheme. That time we were only Danish people so we did not have to play with the food.
Jeppe and Jacob took over old Jeppe's apartment, which is big enough for many people.
This is Rasmus' apartment which also has some interesting decorations.
One Saturday we all met at Tom's apartment. From the right is Rasmus who is working for another Danish company who has a team in our offices, then Jeppe and Jacob who came to replace me and the old Jeppe, who already went back to Denmark. Tom also invited Vika and Elena who work at our offices.
Tom rented this very cheap apartment far out of town. It is functional but the owners would have done good to watch some of our Danish DIY TV shows. Even I know that you should always clean a surface before painting it but I could see that they had not because the doors were quite sticky.
One thing Americans have in common with Ukrainians is a love of party games. Tom showed us a game which even involved a lot of Vodka.
Other place, same scheme. That time we were only Danish people so we did not have to play with the food.
Jeppe and Jacob took over old Jeppe's apartment, which is big enough for many people.
This is Rasmus' apartment which also has some interesting decorations.
The metro
It is about time I post some pictures of Kharkov's metro, which is quite excellent. Unlike the toy metro of Copenhagen this metro really makes a difference for the city. It is extremely cheap (about twenty to thirty times cheaper than the Danish) and for one price you can quickly get to any part of the city. That way the city really feels smaller, it makes no difference in which part of the city you are. Besides that the metro stations have some very interesting architecture.
Many of the stations have cool space age retro chandeliers like this one.
This is one of the main stations, close to our old office.
Close-up on the chandelier.
The passage ways remind me of something from Star Wars.
This is where the metro trains take off, also very retro futuristic I think. At the end there is a digital clock telling you how much time has passed since the last train - unlike in Denmark where they try to make some hopeless guess about when the next train will arrive.
In the rush hours there are a lot of people. With some Kharkov people the metro is actually not so popular, I guess the crowds can be too much sometimes.
On a higher level of the station there are small shops selling practically everything. There are even pharmacists selling 'entertainment medicine' without a prescription, I was told.
This is another of my favorite stations.
This station has special torch lamps.
And another of the central stations, like in some kind of castle.
The further you get away from the centre the less fancy the stations get but this one is still quite interesting I think.
Many of the stations have cool space age retro chandeliers like this one.
This is one of the main stations, close to our old office.
Close-up on the chandelier.
The passage ways remind me of something from Star Wars.
This is where the metro trains take off, also very retro futuristic I think. At the end there is a digital clock telling you how much time has passed since the last train - unlike in Denmark where they try to make some hopeless guess about when the next train will arrive.
In the rush hours there are a lot of people. With some Kharkov people the metro is actually not so popular, I guess the crowds can be too much sometimes.
On a higher level of the station there are small shops selling practically everything. There are even pharmacists selling 'entertainment medicine' without a prescription, I was told.
This is another of my favorite stations.
This station has special torch lamps.
And another of the central stations, like in some kind of castle.
The further you get away from the centre the less fancy the stations get but this one is still quite interesting I think.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Ivan and Natasha's wedding
In Ukraine it is normal to get married in your early twenties and so did Ivan and Natasha. Ivan I know through Kyryl. Like Kyryl and many people at the wedding party they are both system developers. The wedding was held at the house of Ivan's parents which is a lot like the dachas I visited, but it is situated almost at the city centre.
Wedding band rehearsals at the house of Ivan's parents. For some Sundays we had entertained the neighbours, trying to get some songs together. It was quite hard to organize anything and a week before the wedding the group I played with did not have a drummer or even some songs that we could all play. They all took it very calmly though, I guess stuff like this is not enough to worry Ukrainians.
Preparations. To the left is Alex who told me a lot of interesting stuff. He is a games designer and he has been working for big distributors like EA and Infogrames and he also writes books and drinks a lot. To the right is his wife Olga and just behind him Natasha, Ivan's wife-to-be.
The big day. Ivan and Natasha are not religious so they got married at the Palace of Wedding to the music of Elvis Presley, played by two violins and a piano. The palace has four rooms which work like a sort of assembly line, every time one company goes to the next room a new company will fill the room they left. Very efficient, actually, but the palace people messed up the wedding contract and wrote the wrong year. Then they made a new contract and wrote the wrong month.
After the ceremony the couple and some other unlucky people had to drive around the city for five hours in the baking heat and make photos by all Kharkov's war monuments. This is when they got home and we 'surprised' them with some champagne and some bread.
Some bread. According to tradition the bride and groom will take a piece each, dip it in the salt and eat.
Ivan's sister and two other girls were dressed up as angels when they walked around to all the guests. People had to make a speech about their presents and I let Kyryl use his lyrical skills. We came with some knives and according to some traditional illogic they had to give us one 1 grivna, something about presenting a weapon and not being enemies.
One more toast. After each toast some people would start shouting GORKY, GORKY, GORKY, .. and the couple would be tongue kissing until they stopped, or maybe opposite. 'Gorky' means bitter and it refers to the vodka that a lot of people were drinking, the point being that sweet kisses should be able to take away the bitterness. I am sure they could not taste anything after an hour of toasting and kissing. The people to the right are Ivan's parents and best man Alex.
When the music started the couple had the first dance alone, a very beautiful moment. Ann was screaming 'Still got the blues'. That 'scene' I saw Ivan's father build some weeks before.
After that all other people started dancing, including many elderly people. We played some terrible music but it was just perfect. They were dancing through some sloppy jams and even when we were not playing anything.
This is the tradition of kidnapping the bride and/or her shoes. To get her back the groom usually has to make some bribes, but I don't think Ivan gave in to their enormous demands. Instead the best man and best woman had to do 'something extraordinary'.
Unfortunately it was the best man who had to make a strip tease, the best woman sang an extraordinary song.
Wedding cake with smoked prunes. Ivan told us to play 'Rape me' by Nirvana, I guess he also does not like smoked prunes.
The party continued the day after at the 'Hydro Park'. We had some shashlik and went swimming in the river. I think collectively we must have had around 300 mosquito bites, I got at least 20.
At the shashlik party I also got to talk with Ivan's uncle who had a big scar around the top of his head because someone tried to take his scalp. He told me that 15 years ago Kharkov had two gangs of around 300 teenagers who used to try to kill each other every weekend. He said it started in the Soviet times because they thought they had nothing to do because they were not allowed to drink alcohol or have sex.
Wedding band rehearsals at the house of Ivan's parents. For some Sundays we had entertained the neighbours, trying to get some songs together. It was quite hard to organize anything and a week before the wedding the group I played with did not have a drummer or even some songs that we could all play. They all took it very calmly though, I guess stuff like this is not enough to worry Ukrainians.
Preparations. To the left is Alex who told me a lot of interesting stuff. He is a games designer and he has been working for big distributors like EA and Infogrames and he also writes books and drinks a lot. To the right is his wife Olga and just behind him Natasha, Ivan's wife-to-be.
The big day. Ivan and Natasha are not religious so they got married at the Palace of Wedding to the music of Elvis Presley, played by two violins and a piano. The palace has four rooms which work like a sort of assembly line, every time one company goes to the next room a new company will fill the room they left. Very efficient, actually, but the palace people messed up the wedding contract and wrote the wrong year. Then they made a new contract and wrote the wrong month.
After the ceremony the couple and some other unlucky people had to drive around the city for five hours in the baking heat and make photos by all Kharkov's war monuments. This is when they got home and we 'surprised' them with some champagne and some bread.
Some bread. According to tradition the bride and groom will take a piece each, dip it in the salt and eat.
Ivan's sister and two other girls were dressed up as angels when they walked around to all the guests. People had to make a speech about their presents and I let Kyryl use his lyrical skills. We came with some knives and according to some traditional illogic they had to give us one 1 grivna, something about presenting a weapon and not being enemies.
One more toast. After each toast some people would start shouting GORKY, GORKY, GORKY, .. and the couple would be tongue kissing until they stopped, or maybe opposite. 'Gorky' means bitter and it refers to the vodka that a lot of people were drinking, the point being that sweet kisses should be able to take away the bitterness. I am sure they could not taste anything after an hour of toasting and kissing. The people to the right are Ivan's parents and best man Alex.
When the music started the couple had the first dance alone, a very beautiful moment. Ann was screaming 'Still got the blues'. That 'scene' I saw Ivan's father build some weeks before.
After that all other people started dancing, including many elderly people. We played some terrible music but it was just perfect. They were dancing through some sloppy jams and even when we were not playing anything.
This is the tradition of kidnapping the bride and/or her shoes. To get her back the groom usually has to make some bribes, but I don't think Ivan gave in to their enormous demands. Instead the best man and best woman had to do 'something extraordinary'.
Unfortunately it was the best man who had to make a strip tease, the best woman sang an extraordinary song.
Wedding cake with smoked prunes. Ivan told us to play 'Rape me' by Nirvana, I guess he also does not like smoked prunes.
The party continued the day after at the 'Hydro Park'. We had some shashlik and went swimming in the river. I think collectively we must have had around 300 mosquito bites, I got at least 20.
At the shashlik party I also got to talk with Ivan's uncle who had a big scar around the top of his head because someone tried to take his scalp. He told me that 15 years ago Kharkov had two gangs of around 300 teenagers who used to try to kill each other every weekend. He said it started in the Soviet times because they thought they had nothing to do because they were not allowed to drink alcohol or have sex.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)