The road to Odessa

To continue where I left you last time: the wodka evening in Sarhorod. We had a good laugh when Tonya (the older lady, second from left) asked me what "my president" is called. I put this between inverted comma's because I don't feel that way about him, but in order to answer her question I thought that 'Balkenende' would come out horrible, so I chose his nick-name: Harry Potter. That stirred quite an outrage. "Harry Potter! Well, Harry Potter gut, Yushchenko kaput!" Tonya cried out, as she flood herself with laughter.

That night, Sergey told me that I had to go to Uman', the city of the Sofiyifka Park. (Sergey is the guy holding the shot glass filled with Coke in the left-hand corner of the picture)
Actually I had determined my route for the next couple of days, and my plan was to cycle to the southeast, than make a right turn around the corner of Moldova, and to cycle in more or less a straight line to Odessa, using the small roads (my map distinguishes between white, being the smallest (some would say crappiest) roads, yellow, red, and double red with yellow in the middle, being the highways (there are only a few and they generally have two-way traffic in both directions, a bit like the stretch of motorway between Tilburg and 's Hertogenbosch, but then without the camera's). Going to Uman' would mean that I had to cycle approximately 160 kilometres further to the east, and then go south in a straight line, to make it to Odessa. The Pythagorean theorem tells us that this is a lot further.. But then again, Sergey was the only one not drinking wodka, because he planned to go on holidays the next day at the Black Sea coast, so I tended to believe him. Besides, I had promised myself before I left that there are no detours on this travel, only new places to discover. So Sofiyifka it was, and I altered my route.

(Picture shows the end of the market.) I did cycle passed the town of Jampil, a market place at the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, but kept on going eastwards from that point. Actually, during this bit, I had a fantastic experience in a small village where I had lunch. I believe the place is called Babchintsi, but I had to translate this name from cyrillic, so I might be wrong. What I do know for sure is that it houses some of the most hospitable folks in the whole of the Ukraine! I was sitting out on a bench (to tell you a bit about the regular countryside houses in the Ukraine: most of them have only a ground floor as the people build them themselves. There is however a pointy roof so I guess there is a small attic as well. They all have a barn where chickens and/or geese and/or ducks and/or turkeys waddle around, sometimes a well, and most of the time some fruit trees (apples, pears, prunes). All this is surrounded by a wooden or iron fench, and outside the fench you find an improvised bench, where old people sit at night chatting. Here and there you see the remains of what I think used to be big, industrialised farms built by the Soviets. These come with three or four story buildings in which I guess workers used to live.
Without exception these flats are abandoned. The doors and window-stills have been removed and the concrete skeletons are a silent reminder of a time long gone. I think it's remarkable that people don't consider to patch up these spacious flats. Being a house owner, no matter its size, and having a garden, some trees and some animals ('huisje, boompje, beestje', is an appropriate Dutch saying: a 'little house, little tree, little animal' is what people want) is considered more important than building up industries and sharing your living space with the neighbours. Well, with these small dwellings they still share the living space, but at least the fench makes clear where one property starts and the other ends. Is this still between brackets? Than I'll stop this right now.). Anyway... I was sitting on a bench, one of those old people benches, as a man shuffled by. When he saw my bike he stopped, gazed at it, and from the bike he looked up at me. He spoke in Ukrainian, but in a way that I could understand him. There are certain words that are similar in many languages, and 'expedition' is one of them. If I was on an expedition? Well, I haven't called it that myself, but yeah, why not. I am on an expedition from the Netherlands to ... the Ukraine at the moment. "Hmmm, interesting...", the man mumbled. He observed the bike for some time, until he suddenly looked up, as if something had struck him. He swiftly moved towards me, eyes wide open, tapped me on the knee and signed me to wait (holding his hands in front of him, with the palms pointing at me, and moving them back and forward). "Pomidory!", and he rushed away, half walking, half running.
So I waited. In the meantime one of neighbours, who had already shouted something at me but whom I unfortunately had to tell: "Ukrainski nije", came to me, holding her apron in front of her. When she got close enough, I saw that she was carrying six eggs. "Djakuju!", I thanked her, adding that I really couldn't take raw eggs (signing eggs that get smashed inside a backpack is a fun thing to do!). "No, of course", she understood, that's why she was going to boil them for me first! Great! Than the man, who I started calling 'Golden Teeth' in my head (because he had a few and by giving people names I manage to keep track of the many faces that cross my path) came back with a hand full of tomatoes. "Wow, djakuju!", I cried out, and eagerly accepted the tasty fruit. The tomatoes are incredibly rich in taste, and nothing like the 'Wasserbombe' (the red shell filled with one big H2O molecule) that you find in West-European supermarkets (and originate from the gigantic greenhouse that fills the southeastern part of Spain). But that wasn't where the feasting stopped. Whilst boiling the eggs, the neighbour took the effort to bring me a boiled potato with a handful of salt that she put next to me on the bench. "Here, eat", she must have said. Than the lady whose bench I was actually sitting on came out, with.. A full blown-meal on a plate! Or actually, two plates. One had two types of meat and bread, and the other a mayonaise salad with spam and vegetables. Ai, I thought, all meat.
How am I going to explain this without hurting her feelings.. "Vegetarianets'?", I tried, and one of her grandchildren understood. The look on her face.. Heart-braking. I normally don't do this when people offer me something, but in this case, with all these tasty vegetables around me and all those people that would clearly have no problem eating some of the cooked meat, I thought it wouldn't hurt. They would enjoy it much more anyway. In fact, I hadn't spoken the word, or 'Six Eggs' grasped a piece of meat, took a firm bite out of it and then asked me: "Nije?!" I hadn't noticed it, but Golden Teeth had gone home in order to come back with a plastic bag full of sugar, a string of garlic and an onion. "People, people", I signed, "by the time I leave you I will be thiiiis big" (drawing a big belly in the air). But that wouldn't change a thing in the dynamic of this meeting, because after Six Eggs brought me the eggs, 'Two Plates of Meat' came out with a take-away lunch of fish, bread and tomatoes and a plate full of grapes. Than Golden Teeth came with four gherkins, in order to surprise me when I had already said goodbye and cycled away with a bag of walnuts and some more tomatoes. If this is what it means to be on an expedition, than yes, I am on an expedition.

The road to Uman', a yellow one, was plain and easy. Not too much traffic, tailwind during the first 60 or so kilometres and nice villages to pass through. Just outside Uman' I found a very pleasant spot near a village where I pitched my tent and that night I slept like a baby. Here again, villagers came to have look and brought me some fruits. The next morning I wrapped up (fifteen minutes faster than the first time) and cycled into town, where I found the Sofiyivka Park. Nice park, but it didn't reach the expectations that the information brochure had put inside my mind: "Sofiyifka is a wonderful world of legends and fairytales. People are usually excited emotionally after a visit in the park, and leave it with a big desire of coming back." Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I cycled about 300 kilometres to get there, but excited emotionally, no. But I did like the ensemble playing in the Flora Pavilion:


And then the going got tough. Because finding my way south proved more difficult than I imagined it would be. Looking back I realised that the first turn I took was wrong (although the map does leave room for interpretation... but like computers, cartographers are always right).
Than I cycled for an afternoon and a morning on my compass (cycling on your compass through rural Ukraine brings you to the smallest field roads imaginable; sometimes there aren't even roads and you just cycle on fields) and then I found the way again. In order to make again a mistake with the first turn and so it could happen that I wasted three hours riding up and down a very rocky dirtroad that led me to nothing. Well, it led me to a nice store where I had lunch and where the store owner's daughter asked me for a picture (being a cycleceleb comes with driving three hours in the dust for having your picture taken). Afterwards I had to reconcile with a 'double-red with yellow in the middle'-road for hours, which was horrible, but at that point I had enough of 'small and picturesque'.

But the lowest point in my spirit was yet to come. A few nights back I tried to find a place to camp. Sometimes, when I see what appear to be nice people, I ask them flat out if I can put my 'palatka' (tent) in their garden or on their barn. Like this you don't have to worry with a bunch of drunken farmers finding your tent at night and doing god knows what with it and its content. So I see this couple of grandmothers and ask them, with hands, feeth and words if I can camp on their property. The more the idea got to them, the more appalled they got: "nije, Nije, no, NO!" So I cycled on and found a stretch of wasteland, where I tried me luck again. Bits and pieces of concrete and rigid grass made it difficult to pitch the tent, so I walked on with the Black Diamond in my hand, which was difficult in itself due to the terrain. Suddenly I heard: rumbadabum badabum! I looked over my shoulder and saw a mad cow galloping straight at me. It must have been a comical sight to see me hurrying away with the heavily packed cycle (don't forget, the whole thing weighs about 60 kilos) through the rubbish and bushes. Then I heard a high pitched 'tsjing' and understood that the animal was chained. Pfew, and my heartbeat went down again. She gave me a loud "woo" to tell me to get lost, and so I did. But still no place to sleep. So I stumbled back to the road where I found a farm. I entered the barn where a lot of heavy machinery was parked and waved hello to a man that I saw further down the property. Let's see if he knows a good place to camp, I thought, while thinking at the same time that the dogs guarding his stuff looked frightening. I signed the usual palatka (making triangle with two arms and pointing at the pole bag that is attached to my frame) and indicated that I wanted to sleep (folded hands underneath one ear with head slightly skewed). Somewhere here if possible. Capice? Yes, he understood, but it wasn't possible because of all the heavy equipment. "Dobry", I said, and I turned around, got on the bike and set off. And then it hit me, like a sawblade hitting my leg in full motion. Ai! One of the vicious animals had bit me in the right leg, without a warning (it's true what they say: barking dogs don't bike, it's the silent ones you have to be very wary of). The guy came running at me, looked at my leg, and decided that it wasn't so bad. "Go go go!", he said. It hurt like I don't know what, but there was only one thought on my mind: "protect your one manpower and get out of here, you'll need them a lot longer than today!" Manpower as opposed to horsepower that most of my fellow road users have, be it cars, trucks or traditional 1 or 2CV's: horse and trailer. I cycled really fast, away from the dogs and eager to find a place to sleep because the night was about to fall. A few kilometres further I found a spot. The next morning, six o'clock I heard a tractor, which made for the most sudden (and early) awakening in a long time. I must have knocked another quarter off the packing-up time.

Denied, woo-ed at, bitten and lost. This journey must just have started. And I didn't even speak about the tiny little spike that bugged me for about a week and caused three punctures in the rear tire (almost too small to see with the naked eye, 'cause I can assure you, I've looked for it), and the big nail that completely ravished the tube after I found the small spike...

Luckily there are also good things happening. Like yesterday night, when I met Slava and Alisa, who did invite me to sleep at their couch (located on their front porch, surrounded by plants). Not only was it nice to speak with them (Slava speaks some English because he has family in the state of New York and Israel), but it also made me feel at ease again. And I got to taste their home-made wodka. ("Milk business: little, snaps business: good!") Slava discussed my cycle plan with me: "Rostov-na-Donu: good (big eyes, confident face), Volgograd: good (same expression), Kazakhstan: êêêihhh (very doubtfull face and horizontally hold hand that wiggles from side to side, like a plane under heavy weather conditions). I thought this was terribly funny.

Good supper, delicious breakfast, fine atmosphere. Great people that crossed my path at the right time. (That's the couch.)

Next track on the OST: 'PDA' of the band Interpol. I like the lyrics and I like the symbiosis of the three guitars, bass and drums in the end even more. And aside from this I was hoping for a Odessian couch the last couple of days, and today I learnt that somebody offers me one! (Thanks to Kasia from Tarnow (really excellent!) and not through couchsurfing, although there must be more than 200 couches in Odessa, wouldn't you say?)