shadows are cast by things and people

spoiler alert … we did get out again. but how?

october 28, 2011

“collect all four!” i yelled, as we left the border complex, referring to the fact that i had three ukrainian stamps in my passport with three different symbols denoting the method of my entry or exit. plane, train, and now … i glanced at my passport, shocked to realize that when you walk across the border into ukraine you don’t get a little picture of feet but rather a car. boo. i wanted some official acknowledgement of the fact that we had just walked across the border, that we had survived all of my worst bureaucratic and cold-war-spy-film nightmares, and on foot to boot. but no.

i was spending way too much time mulling over this fact, and wondering if you really get a picture of a bus if you take a bus across the border, or if that was considered a car, too, when we hit the main drag and i was forced to stop looking at my passport and put it the fuck away.

there is very little information on the internet about crossing the border on foot, which is part of why i am going into such extreme detail here. there is precious little of actual practical value — where the buses are, where the path starts, what to expect — but a lot of people talking without saying anything. but what seems to shine through in every account is the fact that the main road on the other side of the border crossing is lined with people waiting to take advantage of you.

i kept thinking of father leszek’s wife. leszek is a polish catholic priest we had met during my first visit to Poland in 2006. we were visiting with him shortly after learning about grandfather’s village in ukraine when his wife, an unpleasant woman in the best of circumstances, told us not to go to ukraine. “they’ll take the bread from right out of your mouth.”

a stark image that floated in front of my vision the whole time i had spent in kiev, and now here it was again, as we approached the row of money exchanges, pawn-type shops, indecipherable signs pointing to inexplicable businesses, and a few straggling drivers waiting by their taxis. it was not the onslaught i had been expecting, as one driver kinda shrugged at us while lackadaisically stating, “taxi, taxi.” a few others followed suit, but in general everyone else pretty much ignored us and the few other stragglers exiting the border complex. huh. maybe it was the slow time of day?  we carried on, following the directions to the bus stop that would hopefully be our way to drohobyć.

horse cart. these would soon no longer be a novelty.

for those who need to know, from the exit of the border complex go straight ahead, away from the line of cars waiting to cross into Poland , past the businesses and people who will probably not bother you much, and take the first street to the left. this is where we paused, partly because of the spectacle of a horse-drawn cart collecting recyclables and partly because the directions we had gave distances in meters, which i did not have the common sense to translate into feet/yards/something that makes sense to me. i have a serious amount of trouble judging distances anyway, and my brain absolutely refuses to take the extra step to try to understand and remember exactly how big a meter is. i was also starting to worry about the amount of walking my mom was able to do. so i left her on the corner to watch the horses and went to scope out how far the bus depot really was.

not far. to put it in terms that make sense to me, it was a little longer than a city block. well, a san francisco city block, not those shorter seattle blocks, nor the longer new york blocks, not to even mention other cities with different methods of measurement.

jeez, even that doesn’t work. suffice to say, it wasn’t far, but because of the terrain it is not visible from the corner.

i went back to collect my mom, making a mental note that we only had about 9 hryvna (around $1.12 – the exchange rate hovers around 8 to 1) on us, left over from my last trip. still, because i was compartmentalizing needs, and right then we needed to figure out about the bus, and also because i tend to trust ATMs more, we passed the money exchanges with little thought and approached the travel center.

it looked like it had sprung whole from disney dreams of rustic modernity, a log structure attempting to signify something it wasn’t, new and somewhat shiny. travelers lounged around, an older woman in polyester dress, apron, sweater and kerchief swept away cigarette butts and straightened up, and, in the bus office, a young girl who spoke no language other than ukrainian shook her head and told us that we had just missed the morning bus to drohobyć and would have to wait until 6 pm, seven hours, to get the next direct bus. in english, polish, russian and ukrainian we three danced around understanding as she explained the complicated series of connections we would have to take if we didn’t want to wait. we didn’t. ok, then, what? first stop, mostys’ka. the young woman went through the three steps for us multiple times, and then she called the older cleaning woman over to check with her. yes, first stop mostys’ka. then sambir, then drohobyć. and again, she went through the steps. ok, ok, ok, but could you write it down? confusion. what? why? finally we made it clear, that though we pretty much had a handle on the cyrillic, it would be easier to have the letters on paper. the list she gave us is barely decipherable in any alphabet, but it was something. right, ok, so where do we go? the bus is right there, we deciphered, following her pointing finger to the far side of the parking lot where a marszrutka (маршрутка – a mini-bus of the type we had taken to the border) was almost certainly getting ready to leave. it’s about to leave, she said. and i freaked out.

um … ok …

traumatized by the dearth of direct buses to drohobyć, i panicked a little when the true amount of money we had became clear to me and i did some mental calculations about how long we had before the bus left. this modern-seeming travel center lacked an ATM and a money exchange, so i would have to run back up the street to the turn-off to exchange money. some uncertainty as we discussed what to do– exchange american money? polish money? what do we have more of? what should we hold on to? what will make us seem least conspicuous? my mom handed me 100 PLN (around $33) and i started to run when the old woman stopped me. she seemed eager for something, but what? translation seemed impossible, even with my mom’s various languages. finally she worked it out. the woman was offering us 200 UAH for the 100 polish złotych. my mind reeled. what was the exchange from złoty to hryvna? i hadn’t looked that up. i knew dollar to złoty and dollar to hryvna, but my mind refused to extrapolate. i knew it wasn’t 2 to 1, but was it close? the woman stood between us, eager, beckoning, while mom and i quickly discussed my mathematical failings over her head. i told mom i didn’t know if that was a good exchange, i didn’t know what to do. my mom, somewhat lacking of tact on occasion, turned right to the woman and asked her if we could get a better rate at the exchange. it probably seemed ruder because she had to repeat it multiple times. finally the woman gestured us angrily away and said, “go to the exchange.”

so i ran.

up the hill (did i mention it was a hill? no?), around the corner and … faced with a row of nearly identical exchanges, some with rates outside, some without, i was uncertain which to choose. finally i leaped into the one closest to me that seemed the least shady.

a small shack made up entirely of a short vestibule with plexiglass-covered windows on either side. i turned to the left, merely because the woman behind the window there was looking up when i came in. unable to remember even the slightest word in ukrainian, i showed her my polish money. smart. but she just gestured to the window across from her. i still have no clue what she was there for. there wasn’t much by way of furniture in the room with her, not many office supplies or tools of any kind. there were no hints that any other business was contracted there, no signs, aside from the exchange signs outside. maybe she was just there to point confused travelers in the right direction?

i turned to the other window and marveled at what looked like a cross-section of a diminutive living room. a people aquarium. the man inside was sitting in his chair, turned away from the window, watching the t.v. set in the corner. domestic furniture with knick-knacks atop, dressers and sideboards, old and comforting wallpaper. books. the only indication of his profession was a small counter under his side of the window, holding only a money box. i handed the 100 złoty bill to him and he handed me almost 250 UAH. no receipt, no computer record, no paper trail of any kind. ok.

when i got back to the travel center, the bus was pulling out, in fact it almost hit me, but my mom told me she had been informed that another bus was pulling up and would leave when it was full. ha ha, funny joke there, life. my mom was not amused, though, when she found out how much the old lady was trying to rip us off for.  but then we actually laughed when it turned out that the bus was only 3 or 4 hryvna each, which meant we had had enough money the whole time.  heh heh.

we got on the bus, sat in the back row and waited, again, for money to be collected, for the next part of our journey to begin.

helpless in the face of a new reality

NOT the border entrance

october 28, 2011

we were purged from the bus with no indication of which way to turn, as every other rider seemed to move in their own independent direction, shattering the mental myth i had cultivated that we would all trudge as one towards our doom.  some gathered in front of the incredibly anomalous grocery store that suddenly loomed up ahead of us.  everything around us screamed “official” and “desolate,” what the hell was a biedronka(1)  doing there?  catering to travelers, i suppose.  we got our bearings and then turned in a likely direction.  to the left of us was chain link, surrounding mysterious buildings.  ahead, a driveway blocked by a guard, by a wooden-armed-gate … was that it?  didn’t look too much like an actual crossing, but who knows?  but, no, it was a yard for buses.  or vehicles.  parts sold there.  or something.

vendors, both legal and illegal, lined the street we had driven down, lined the fence, moved in lines like giant snakes as they shifted back and forth, displaying their wares to new arrivals.  somehow we found out:  back down the road a short distance, following the lines of vendors to what looked like a field, to our right.  but, no, not just a field; a gray sidewalk cut through it, rolling away from us, around corners and rises, destination screened from our eyes. that way.  i tried to gather my courage to take photographs of the middle-aged women brazenly displaying, in arms cradled as if holding children, bottles of whiskey, cartons of cigarettes, which they had obviously just finished carting over the border into Poland.  i couldn’t do it.

well, it's something

there were so many of them, meeting, dispersing, clutching at every passerby for a moment, hoping they could get a firm grasp.  i tried to take a picture of the woman selling used clothes by the side of the path, some of the contraband sellers behind her, but i moved the camera too soon and got something that, while interesting to me, doesn’t really capture the scene.

sigh.

mystery ...

but my mood was lightened as we turned the first corner of the path.  we were finally able to get a first glimpse of the border complex, but my attention was drawn primarily to the bank of biedronka shopping carts(2) that were gathered at the bend.  my mind reeled a little.  why were they partway down the path from the ukrainian side?  were they abandoned by shoppers crossing into ukraine who had suddenly realized that they weren’t supposed to take them?  or were they left there by smugglers who would return to them later, when they crossed back over to ukraine?  i mean, yeah, people needed some way to get their wares across the border, but did the border guards really allow them shopping carts?  what the hell were they doing there, so many of them, so far from any people?

no answers were forthcoming from anyone and we were too nervous for much speculation so we just carried on, following the band of youngsters ahead of us who suddenly seemed to be the only humans on earth.  in fact after we turned the corner, the vendors instantly behind us, things got dramatically quiet and still.  the kids were carrying big bags and instruments, three guys and one girl, and i couldn’t help but think of them as dorothy and her companions, following the gray brick road to the most fucked up emerald city ever.

more path, uphill, fences moving in until we were just rats in a maze, and suddenly a few people passed us going the other way.  like apparitions, they startled.  we hadn’t really been walking that long, but time slowed and stretched out there in no man’s land.

and then we came to a stop.  of course, the path ended in a line.

it wasn’t moving.  hard to tell how long it was, as it snaked through a revolving door of thick metal pipes, invisible into the building beyond.  we stood, we waited.  and waited.  people were coming out through a door to our left, but they were obviously passing into Poland.  not many of them, a trickle.  we waited some more.  i tried to listen to what the young’uns were saying while also attempting to remember my cyrillic enough to read the signs around, which were also in Polish and english.  i was struck with the level of my hubris, for the second time.  this had happened during the first trip to ukraine.  then i had thought, “different alphabet, no problem.  i’ll pick it up.”  i had studied the internet-provided cheat sheet a little before we left, but it wasn’t until our train was drawing close to our destination that i started to panic and attempted to shove it all into my head in one go. i had gotten pretty good at it then, so i just assumed it would all come back to me.

it didn’t.

my mom, though, was a superstar.  aside from speaking fluent Polish, she has studied both ukrainian and russian, (the latter more than the former, though) and is pretty good with both cyrillic alphabets.  so i didn’t need to panic, but it took me a little time to remember that.

the gateway ...

finally people stopped trickling through the other door and our line started moving, one at a time, through the revolving monster.  ever since getting stuck in the revolving door at the bank where i work i’ve been really nervous around the beasts.  this one would only allow one person in at a time, so you had to cram yourself into what was essentially a narrow cage and wait for the green light to tell you it was time to push.  somehow we were almost the last people in line, so the revolving door spit us out into a space inadequate for the amount of people that had entered before us.  when the space is packed, or when they have to let people through from the other side, they freeze the door, which is what we had been waiting for outside.

two lines, one for EU citizens, one for everyone else.  i decided, despite my irish passport, to stick with my mom, who is saddled with her US identity.  also, i was concerned at the amount of grumbling that was coming out of her mouth, the target of which was a poor woman who was just trying to get out of the way of the last few people being thrust into the room.  her only choice was to move to the side of the line, almost next to us, to avoid being crushed into our backs.  my mom obviously thought she was trying to cut the line, and her sense of justice was duly inflamed.  i had to assuage her volcanic tendency to right supposed wrongs, so i stood by her on the line, patted her shoulder and tried to change the subject.

a metal barrier that we were all shoved against in turn, waiting for another green light, no honor system here.  a grizzled man in farmer’s clothes swung his giant bags over the barrier long before it was his turn, just trying to get them out of the way, but it felt too much like an infraction.  every cold-war-era drama that had reared my imaginative mind was coming back to haunt me.  the line thinned.  and then it was my mom’s turn.

something about waiting for a green light to condone my movement makes me incredibly nervous, especially in bureaucratic situations.  is this a test?  if i try to push before the light goes off, am i considered too eager?  dangerous?  if i am too slow to push, am i an idiot?  unfit to enter?  why do they want to stop me, anyway!!??  psychological profiling could never reach the level of my imagination.  so, one hand on the gate, i looked between the light and my mother, who, due to our family tendency to over-explain, had been coached to answer that she was a tourist.

the man looked at her passport, said not a word, stamped it and she was through.  she waited on the other side for me, beyond the plexiglass booth, so i could see her staring at me as the green light came on and i easily pushed the gate and approached passport control.

the man seemed completely confused.  what the hell was i doing in his line?  the other line was for EU passports, not his.  since ukraine is not in the EU, i imagine he sees fewer EU passports than other European border crossings, and he did not seem equipped to deal with overflow from the other line.  of course, all of that is known in retrospect — at the time all i could see was that there was a problem.  he rifled through the pages of my passport, stared at my picture, looked through it all again, then got up and went to his colleague in the EU booth.  the door to his booth was behind his seat, so he opened it right into the general area of my mom, who jumped right into explaining that i was her daughter and i didn’t speak very good Polish and was there a problem?  he waved her off with a mixture of annoyance and uncertainty.

i waited by the space where he had been, watching him confer with the woman in the other booth.  she barely glanced at him as she was checking the last passports in her line, and then eventually waved him off in the exact same way he had waved off my mom.  fine fine, scan this part here.  he came back, looked through everything once more, and handed the passport back.  forgetting that i was just clearing Polish immigration here, i expected a stamp.  my mom had gotten a stamp, where was mine?  i attempted to ask in Polish.  “nie potrzebuję …?” the word for stamp would not be conjured, so i made a hand motion that i hope defined “stamp stamp stamp” and not, as it surely could have looked, “stab stab stab.”  he shook his head.  i took back the passport and met my mom on the other side, breathing a sigh of relief.

as i said, i had forgotten that that was just the first part of the process.

last view of poland, through metal

we exited through the doors and found ourselves back on the gray path, but this time the tall green fences cut us off not only from the fields around us, but also from the people coming through from ukraine.  claustrophobic.  we were joking about the fact that i really hadn’t thought my EU passport would be the problem, but at least it wasn’t really a problem, after all, but, boy, had that felt scary!  to our right we could suddenly see the vehicle entrance to Poland, lines of cars with their engines running, not moving.  my shoulders drew up involuntarily.  turn off your engines!  and then these words from my mom’s mouth, “ukraine welcomes you,”  i looked up and saw the sign she had just read, and my heart sank when i realized that it wasn’t over. yet.

ukraine welcomes you

my previous run-in with ukrainian customs and border control included darkness and waiting and yelling and giant guns.  repeat.  repeat.  so i was decidedly nervous as we entered the tiny shack with the poorly-fixed welcome sign. no revolving doors nor green lights here, just a line up to one window, on the other side of which sat a young man with humorless yet somewhat nervous eyes.  my mom approached him first and he barked a command at her that was incomprehensible in its suddenness.  “i’m sorry, could you repeat?” she said in Polish, thinking it safer to stick to a language she knew well instead of attempting his language.  he repeated, again too fast.  she leaned closer.  and again, this time a pause and then it got through. “oh!” she exclaimed, as her hand flew to remove the sunglasses she had forgotten were covering her eyes.   he stared from her picture to her face, back and forth, and then stamped her passport and let her through.

i tried not to pay attention to the woman in uniform, who was pacing back and forth in front of the door to freedom, ready to pull aside those whose bags seemed suspicious.  she really looked like she was half a wardrobe malfunction away from being in a david-lee-roth-era van halen video.  my mom was forced to wait near her as it was my turn at the window.  it’s really hard not to flinch when someone that serious is staring into your eyes, trying to determine if your identity is true.  it felt less like he was trying to catch me in a crime and more like he was trying to find out if i had betrayed him personally.  i wanted to apologize for whatever i may have done, for lying, for breaking his heart.  whatever.  anything.  my only reprieve was when he looked back to my picture.  but then it was back to my eyes.  picture.  eyes.  finally, after what seemed like decades, a stamp.  here you go.  have a nice day.

i tried not to look the van halen guard woman in the eyes as i pulled our small suitcase behind me and we made our way to the last section of gray sidewalk.  she moved to intercept a man behind me and i slipped out the door, immediately stunned by the sheer numbers of people waiting to be let in the other way.  no small line before a revolving door here.  no, on this side there was a locked gate, far back from the building, people shoved up against it clutching their bundles of possible contraband.  there was something terrifying about the cage, the closeness, the faces waiting with resignation.  such a long line.  when would they start letting them through?  did anyone know?  i turned my attention to a small cat, who seemed to be singing us into the country with its purrs of pleasure.  it didn’t seem abandoned, but rather just there.

to one side running cars, to the other people in cages, behind us bureaucracy, ahead of us a beautiful, happy cat.

welcome to ukraine.

(1)  i am not 100% positive that it was a biedronka, which is a discount grocery store (think grocery outlet rather than trader joe’s), but that’s what i remember. more importantly, there is photographic evidence to support this idea (read on to the grocery carts, dear reader). but, really, if i were going to choose which grocery store to put on the Poland-Ukraine border, it would be biedronka.

(2) see, proof!  biedronka shopping carts!