Sunday, March 24, 2013

Snowbound - March 24, 2013

On Friday after court, we returned back to the apartment to pack and catch the "express train" to Kiev (a six-hour ride versus the 12-hour overnighter train that we took last time).  A freak storm had hit Kiev, we were warned, and there was concern about whether the train would make it in and -- even if it did -- whether our flight would be leaving the next morn.

We pulled into the train station at Kiev shortly after 11:00 p.m.  This was no snow storm:  It was a blizzard!  Snow lay in heaps and drifts so deep that it was hard to imagine we were at a railway station because there were no tracks in sight!  Snow swirled, whipped by wind so hard that it appeared to be coming from every direction including from the ground; it hurt when it smacked against your cheeks.  Streets were dead quiet with buried and abandoned cars.  Our driver, who confessed he, like most other drivers, had just removed his snow tires the week before in preparation for spring, worried about us being stranded at the station, so he slid his way to the train station earlier in the day and then spent six hours waiting for our train to get in.  As he attempted to get his van out of the parking lot, which was by now snowed in, he explained to us that the blizzard has "paralyzed" the city.  When it took two men pushing for several minutes to get the van slowly rolling, I fastened my seatbelt and took a very deep breath.  "Here we go," I cringed, certain that a better option is being stranded at the train station.

 The next two hours were spent creeping and careening along almost empty roads, as the government had issued a warning to stay off streets.  No road crews were in sight, and snow was so deep on the roads themselves that cars' bottoms dragged against it.  Peter had to get out and push several times, and once we both did, with a sprint to catch up to the rolling vehicle and hop in before it got rolling too fast.  When we finally got onto the highway, pointed towards the airport, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, thinking we were home free.  However, the highways were even worse, with snow banks drifted so high that most exits OFF the highway were completely blocked.  Semi-trucks, who could not get off the highway due to the blockage of off-ramps, had given up and were lined up silently in the dark for miles in the middle of the highway.  At one point, a police car sped around us, took the next exit and POOF! smashed headlong into a bank of snow that was formerly the exit.  It sat there cock-eyed and poking out of the snow, its lights still on, surreal as a bad dream. A few minutes later, a stubborn truck driver who was determined to keep forging on got himself jack-knifed in the only narrow strip of a lane that was still barely passable, and the highway shut down until a swarm of people managed to push the entire semi backwards into a more crippled jackknife position but now slightly off to the side.  We creeped past and arrived at the airport around 1:30 a.m.  We later found out that our driver couldn't make it home and slept at a gas station.

But we were on a mission:  We were COMING HOME, and nothing would stand in our way ... or so we hoped.  The airport full of sleeping travelers told us otherwise.  We sat up throughout the night, awaiting some news, and when our flight departure bulletin flashed "cancelled" at 5:00 a.m., Peter joined the two-city-block-long line of stranded travelers in the re-ticket line.  Four hours later, he was still standing in the line when tempers began to flare and fights began. One person who was accused of "cutting" told the crowd who was yelling at him in Russian that he doesn't understand because he speaks only Spanish, so Peter bellered at him in Spanish to GET TO THE END OF THE LINE!! and he sulked off.  By noon, Peter had managed to get our tickets switched to a tentative departure on Monday, since the storm was expect to continue through Sunday.  Our amazing facilitator was able to find us a motel room near the airport.  It appeared to be a funky thing in the middle of nowhere, but when the world is blanketed in white, everything looks kind of "nowhere."  Our room came equipped with WiFi, for which we were grateful, so we could communicate back home to Pilar (who has been stoically caring for our children, pets and household the past month) that, um, she's not quite off the hook yet .... we are stuck.  By now we were hungry and comically tired; when we asked how we might find something to eat, the motel clerk pointed outside to the snowy mess.

Let me tell you that if roads were not being maintained, sidewalks were even worse with thigh-deep drifts in areas.  We stumbled down the main drag for a bit in the valleys cut by tires, jumping into the drifts and out of the way when cars slid by, only to look up at one point and discover that we were standing in front of what appeared to be .... A MALL!!!!  :)  With restaurants!

We picked the one that looked most inviting and then stared at the Russian menus for a while, stumped.  That's what happens when you don't have pictures to cheat and are language-challenged.  Within seconds we managed to get our waitress so flustered that she dashed off to get a new waitress.  Peter gave up and pointed to a neighboring customer's plate of food and said good-naturedly "THAT"!  (For the record, "that" never arrived.)   This is essentially how my conversation went: "Bees myasa, pah-zahl-sta (no meat, please!)."  Mmmmm.... no chicken?  "No chicken."  Mmmmm... no fish?  "No fish." Mmmmm ... no pork?  "No pork.  Bees myasa! No meat!!"  Mmmmm ... Ah! Ah-hah!!  A light went off.  Relieved, she headed off to the kitchen.  Five minutes later, I sat staring at a nice fat steak.  Sigh. We failed to cover "beef" in our conversation.  Or maybe my "NO MEAT!" was interpreted as, "No: MEAT!!"   Luckily there were plenty of surprises that kept arriving at our table, since we didn't know what we ordered in the first place, all of which appeared to be borne of the same thing:  Starch and grease. French fries, white rice, and fried potatoe pancakes ... we were so hungry that we devoured it all despite its random-ness.  Peter, who was almost asleep on his plate, headed back to the motel, bravely leaving me in that mall conveniently located in the middle of "nowhere" with a few hundred hryvnias -- which left me only one option.  SHOP!  One can never haul enough cookies home.   

                                                              A "Cheater Menu"

Today is the next day, and it's snowing.  Again.  Feeling snowbound, we ventured back to the mall  this afternoon during a lull in snowfall, in search of a cafĂ© with cheater menus.  We are set to leave to for the airport at 3:30 a.m. and hang out in hopes that our early morn flight will depart. Despite poking fun at the past 24 hours in this winter wonderland, I'm ready for THIS leg of our adventure to be done.  I need to be home now.  I really, really miss my home, my scene, my children.  In less than 10 days, I turn back around to leave again for Ukraine for the last leg of this adventure:  Bringing Leeza home.

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