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Ansastaia taught me how ot make sushi from scratch 

Planes Trains and Automobiles II

Anastasia, whom I came to visit in Lugansk, and I were about to leave my apartment the other day and I couldn't find my wallet.

Drama 3:  My wallet is gone.

Yup... if it were a movie, at this point you'd be saying "whatever... it's too much to be believable."  But it's true.  No trace of my wallet.  I think the folks at AT&T have field workers who stole it because they've made quite a killing as I tried to contact my credit card companies and cancel the cards.

And for those of you playing the home game "Don's Travels", be sure to note that not only do credit card companies disallow canceling cards from within your online account, but they give you a 1-800 number with which to call in the event that your card is stolen or missing.

Handy, except that 800 numbers do not work when calling internationally.  

So I poked around and finally found non-800 numbers to which I could call collect and cancel my cards.  However, as you know, any such process involves automated voice options and several transfers before you find the correct person.  This too, I believe was orchestrated by AT&T so that I would use more international roaming minutes at $3 a pop.  And if you have any experience reaching the correct person while navigating The Matrix (starring Keanu Reeves), and I know you do, you know that each call took about 30 minutes.  So I'm guessing that it cost me about $200 to cancel my credit cards.

In hindsight, it might have been less expensive to allow the new Ukrainian "Don Powers" card holder to have a spending spree.  $200 is a lot of mayonnaise!

And speaking of dollars... I was now left with the cash that I had tucked away in various other locations and my passport.  So first order of business was to take cash to a bank and exchange it for Ukrainian Hryvnia currency.  

So, with the help of Anastasia, I handed the teller 2 $100 bills.  After much Ukrainian blah blah, the teller handed them back and explained that they do not take bills with "marks."  Someone along the life of my useless bills had decided it was a good idea to stamp them with a very small ink stamp... like a date or something.  This of course intuitively makes the money no longer have value!

Seriously?  My return flight was canceled.  I was arrested in customs.  I lost my wallet.  And now your mayonnaise eatin' teller won't take my cash?

She smiled... the gold on her front teeth had the initials A, T, T.

I handed her my remaining two hundred dollar bills.  One was handed back.  "Too old."  She said.  I looked at the bill... yes, 2003 was a LONG time ago.

So many things are opposite here.  The coffee isle at the grocery store is 90 percent instant coffee.  People don't smile at each other or even speak on the streets or in the buses.   Cutting raw chicken is not treated here similarly to handling nuclear waste (as it is in the USA with our samonella-tainted chicken), and mayonnaise is king.

In the USA, people are suspicious of crisp new money (is it counterfeit?) but here, if the money has ever been used before, it is useless.

This would really make a good movie.  I think Keanu should play the bumbling clueless American who seems to be living-up to every low-brow eastern stereotype of an American.

Cue fancy movie voice...

"This summer... Keanu Reeves IS Don Powers"

Drama 2: Interrogation in Kiev airport customs

Drama 2:  So after I happily handed-over my bag of drugs etc and the customs agent announced that the pseudophed I  was carrying was illegal in Ukraine, I was escorted to a little room.

The custom agent said that she would have to fill-out a "protocol."  So she started typing on a computer and 3 or 4 people came into the small room and were speaking robustly in Russian.

I don't recall who they all were or how many because I had been awake for around 30 hours and my head was spinning.  I was wrapping my head around it... or trying to... I had unknowingly transported an illegal drug into a former republic of the USSR with a reputation for corrupt police (as I had read on the USA State Department web site) AND I had gone through the "nothing to declare" line in customs.

I was screwed.

As I regained consciousness and the crowd dwindled to two people, I came to realize that:

1.  The customs officer whom was filling-out the report spoke VERY little English.

2.  The "translator" who was there was, in fact, an attorney... and his English wasn't a whole lot better.

At first things seemed very dire.  They asked me if I had a written prescription for the two other drugs I was carrying... the Lexipro (which I take for anxiety and which didn't appear to be doing its job) and the Ambien (which I had taken one the flight and which wasn't helping my head at all at this point).  I tried to explain that I never had a paper prescription... that the bottle WAS the prescription and that the doctor had emailed the paperless prescription to the pharmacy, where I retrieved it.

Both are illegal in Ukraine, they said.  "We need to see paper prescription."

After about 15 mintues of hand-waving, rough translation, and pointing, they came to understand that the bottle itself was the prescription and we were back to the Pseudophed.  Somehow this was a relief.

They explained that the drug would be confiscated, that the "protocol" (report) would be made, and that it would go before a judge who would then make his ruling.

At this point I was, for the first time, VERY thankful for my 9-hour layover in Kiev before my next flight.

They attorney starting explaining about how people try to smuggle illegal things into Ukraine, such as drugs and iPhones.

Shit.  "I have an iphone in my pocket" I said... my vision narrowed to a dark tunnel with a light at the end which included  visions of carving roman numerals on a concrete wall while eating borsch and bread given to me through a hole in a wall.  There I was planning my "Shawshank Redemption" escape... hoping for someone akin to Sean Connery's character in "Hunt for Red October" as my Morgan Freeman sidekick.

But the lawyer explained that I could have one for personal use, just not to sell.  He said something about confiscating 40 iPhones from a smuggler previously.

It was about this time that I asked, "am I in serious trouble?"  And for the first time, the very nice attorney explained that it was ok because I had handed the drugs to the customs woman (also very nice) and that they were not crazy in the customs office.  Had I been found with this drug by the regular police, I would certainly have been in jail.  Or had I tried to hide it (or not presented it) I would also be in jail.  But that I would soon be on my way and that I would not have to appear in court unless I wanted my 23 tablets of Pseudophed back.

You can guess how attached I was to them... I would NOT be appearing in an Ukrainian court!!!

I asked to go to the bathroom and the attorney escorted me there and waited at the door, smoking a cigarette as I took care of my business.

I don't remember much else except that I had to hand-write a story about what had happened and an apology that "I did not intend to knowingly violate Ukrainian law."  Then I signed several documents, which were all in Ukrainian, I met with the customs department head, who attempted to explain what I was signing, I was given a copy, and released almost in tears from relief, by the very apologetic and sweet customs officer whom first "busted" me.

I was a free man.

Reflections on travel to Lugansk

Now it's Monday morning, I'm sitting on my couch in my rented apartment in the city center of Lugansk, Ukraine.  It's comfortable.  I wish I had an oven or toaster-oven, but otherwise it's fine.  My laptop is plugged into the wall old-school.  All is well... but the trip here is a different matter...

As I mentioned, getting through immigration was long and tiresome.  But after doing so in Kiev, it was easy to spot my bags since they were the only ones remaining at our flight's baggage carrousel.  If you'd traveled internationally you know that when you arrive at your country of origin, you have to collect your checked luggage and take it through customs before returning it back to the airline carrier for the remainder of your domestic (for whatever country you're in) trip.

So I was glad to see that my luggage was still there, I collected it, and happily headed towards customs.  There was a green line and a red line and since it had been a long time since I traveled internationally, I instinctively headed toward the green line (green = go, red = stop, right?).  I thought it was strange that I had not had to fill-out a customs card but whatever...

So then the very nice woman in the green line asked to x-ray all of my bags, no problem.  I even joked that maybe I should go through the machine superman-style (with body language, her English wasn't so good) and she laughed.  then after my bags went through she asked how much money I brought and whether or not I had drugs.  I told her and happily handed-over my one-quart bag of medicines, liquids, etc.  She proceeded to go through it item-by-item, carefully reading each package until she came across my 24-pack of Pseudophedrin. 

She said, "ah, Pseudophedrine... it is illegal in Ukraine.  Please wait here."  She walked away with the pseudophed and my passport.  

Mother shitter... shit shit shit...

As many of you know, I'm prone to anxiousness.  I even take medication (Lexipro) to help with it.  But this wasn't helping.  My life flashed before my eyes.  Specifically, my family and friends gathered around a TV watching the latest episode of "Arrested Overseas" starring me.

I quickly started digging through my bags, pulling out anything liquid or that might be perceived as a drug.  I think I found my allergy inhaler and maybe a small bottle of sunscreen.  

I waited.  This older man came out.  I don't really remember what he said... I was a bit panicked, but it was clear that I was going to have to go elsewhere and that I was in trouble.

As a side note, I had been to Ukraine once before.  

Why do we say "The Ukraine?"... we don't say "the China" or "the Australia" or the-any-other-country... so I'm trying to teach myself to say simply "Ukraine".   Am I the only one who does this?  I didn't even know it until my friend Anastasia (whom I'm visiting) asked, "why do you say The Ukraine?"

The last time I was in Ukraine, I was also detained along with my friend David Hoehner for being "foreigners in a closed city."  We had traveled to the resort city of Yalta (BEAUTIFUL!!!) and decided to pick another less-touresty random destination on the Black Sea.  We arbitrarily chose Feodosia because it appeared to be fairly large.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cohenscorner/Lechno/maps/feodosia.gif

To get there, we flagged a "taxi" from Simpheropol (north of Yalta) and asked to go to Fedosia.  A taxi at that time was anyone whom wanted to earn an extra dollar.  And the driver neglected to tell us that Feodosia was a "closed" city because it is a military port and thus foreigners are not allowed.  So when we tried to check-in to our hotel, we were escorted to the police station and interrogated for a couple of hours.  When they realized that we weren't spys, we were told to stay in our hotel until the next morning and to leave town as soon as possible.

Back to my interrogation in Kiev on my next post...

Sitting in a cafe in the Kiev airport

So Amy and Ethan took me to the airport this morning (thanks A & E) and that all went smoothly.  My bag weighted in at 49lbs (max without paying is 50... I was lucky, had no idea).

Flight to JFK went well.

Drama 1:  Got a call in JFK airport and my return flight from Lugansk to Kiev has been canceled.  I called the airline and they said "sorry, we've canceled all return flights from Lugansk to Kiev for the entire month of April... and we don't have any affiliated partnerships... your only option is to get your money back and find another way."

Awesome... so now I'll have to figure out how to get from Lugansk to Kiev in time... or I'll have to take another airline/path.

Flight from JFK to Kiev was interesting.  The people around me were nice and I somehow got two phone numbers.  One from the guy next to me who lives in Yalta (like the Russian riviera) and another from a woman across the isle who might visit Austin.

Oh, and there was a whole group of what appeared to be Fundamental Jewish men.

And they kept getting up and putting on clothes and hats, and taking off clothes in hats... like all 20 of them at once.  They would clog the bathroom area to do their prayers together and then this morning they did this odd ritual where they wrapped their arms in what looked like a long leather strap.  Weird to awaken to such a ritual happening all around in the aisles.  I felt like a peeping tom... like "this is WAYYY too intimate to be doing on an airplane"

See the dude in the white robe looking thing hunched over?

Here he is

Clogging the aisles... people couldn't use the bathroom

Here's dude wrapping his arm in what looked like a thin metal band or leather while standing in the aisle

Customs in Kiev was interesting and the signage and help was... well... less than helpful.  I asked "which line" and was told "any."  But after standing in a line for 30 minutes I was told "wrong line" and had to start over... only after I got to the front, of course.  Finally I made it through and picked up my bag to take for inspection... this is when it gets good...

First blog post of Don's adventures :)

Here's my first attempt at blogging :)