First Christmas abroad

Christmas time... For the first time not in Poland, first time not with the family, first time not feeling pre-Christmas and Christmas atmosphere (orthodox Christmas are on 7 January, and people here celebrate more New Year than Christmas). I wasn’t thinking about Christmas before as I knew from the beginning that I will be in Ukraine and I’m not coming back home. Daphnee also stayed and we decided to organize Christmas to feel more like at home.

We bought Christmas tree, then had a lot of fun making the decorations by ourselves (as I said we are still children in our souls :P). Then the most frightening day Christmas Eve, I say frightening because I was afraid how I will feel for the first time without closest people. But actually I didn’t have time to think, because I was too busy with cooking all Polish Christmas specialities. I am so proud of myself, I did everything for the first time absolutely alone and it was eatable. With dumplings I wouldn’t manage on time if not my great helpers – Daphnee and Daniel, our homemade pierogi were almost perfect :D

Our Christmas Eve was international, for the first time in my life. French, Ukrainian and Polish. I’m not religious, and this holiday doesn’t have a religious, or spiritual meaning for me (and honestly it was better without prayers, reading the Bible and all religious accents this time), but it is important day for me, I think for all Polish people it’s the same. And being alone, maybe not alone but just separated from country and family is very hard, normally I call my parents once per week, during Christmas period each second day. For my parents for sure it was much more difficult, for the first time they were alone, without me or my brother. But let’s finish this melancholy. This was great evening and I had some Polish aspect as another Polish EVS volunteer –Daniel accepted my invitation for Christmas and came to us from Kharkiv. For this occasion he even widens his cooking abilities and prepared noodles with mushrooms himself. I think that in total we have even traditional 12 dishes (if counting cakes and water :D)

I think Poland is the only country (if it isn’t true, I’m sorry for my ignorance and lack of knowledge, but for sure people from Western Europe don’t do it) where people before Christmas supper share the wafer and say wishes to each other (the symbol of bread, forgiveness, willing to be together).  Generally I think it is very nice tradition, but I don’t like it that much as mostly it looks very “artificial” not honest. But of course we had to show this tradition to foreigners, and they liked it very much, so it was quite nice this year.

Unfortunately we missed the mass at midnight (pasterka) which we didn’t know about, and it was even in Polish language, and it would be very good to walk to the center after such gluttony :D

Our Christmas supper – Polish beetroot soup with dumplings called uszka, dumplings (pierogi), Polish version of kutia, herring salad, noodles with mushrooms (Toruń speciality)  and paella made by French “organizers”

And our "Christmas family", from the left Yarik, Dima, Daphnee and Leo, Masha and me. On the picture below Daniel on the left.

Меджибiж, hitchhiking and Spanish humour

In the beginning of December we hosted our first guest – little Victor. After seeing our lovely Vinnitsya on first day, we felt like discovering some other places. After some discussions and analyzing all possibilities and time which we have, we decided to see small town Medzhibizh (we saw the pictures of old fortress and it assured us to travel there).

We started our journey quite late in the morning, but all was fine until we didn’t leave on wrong stop. It was my fault as I didn’t make sure its proper stop, just influenced by Daphnee saying that it looks like description of our stop. I admit it was very stupid, but it also brought us some adventures and I’m sure thanks to this mistake we will remember it long :D

After leaving the bus, and we asked one (“very willing to help and give information”) local where is our destination (Меджибiж), we got very informative answer – quite far. So we tried hitchhiking, I must say it’s quite easy, but when you are only two – track drivers can only take two people, but they stop very often, so its possible to hitchhike in Ukraine (for sure it’s much easier than in UK, where it’s almost impossible that someone will stop, even tracks). Anyway, we were lost as we were three, and separating was impossible. In this way we had quite long walk to next bus station (I don’t remember the name of the town). On the way we had one proposition of a lift to this station for some ridiculous amount of money, and after refusing we were called niggardly Jews. Finally we reached the station on foot and catch the bus to Меджибiж, this time we set off on good stop and were instructed how to get to the fortress by few nice ladies, and one even walked with us half of the way. Before visiting the castle we went to see one church, which we noticed near the road. It was closed, but after few minutes batiushka came to us and offered to open it for us. He talked a lot about history of the church and other facts (actually I think that Victor’s beard and looked helped us to see this and had such a good guide, because batiushka said that he was sure that Victor was a monk :D), Victor was even that lucky that he could see the altar (in orthodox church altar is hidden behind the iconostas, and only men can enter this part). Batiushka seeing we are cold and a bit tired already invited us even for tea, but we had to refuse as we wanted to see a fortress in daylight, we only got pictures of Bogorodica.

 

 Trying, trying....

Меджибiж is very old town, famous from its fortress and Hasidic movement. In this town in XVIIIth century lived the founder of Hasidism – Israel Baal Shem Tov. Jewish community existed there from XV-XVI century, and became one of the biggest in Podole.  But town started to be “famous”, when the Hasidic movement started and it became the place of living many known “cadyk” (Hassidic leader). Jewish people were more than 50% inhabitants, and in the beginning of XX century 10 synagogues were working and 6 cheders ((traditional religious school). Nowadays there is old Jewish cemetery (which we didn’t manage to see, because it was too late and getting dark). From 80s Меджибиж became the place of mass pilgrimage for Jews – there is still the grave of Baal Shem Tov.

 The fortress gave the town its name as it’s built on half-island between two rivers-Buh and Buzhok (the name means between Buhs). The castle is huge, making great impression when you are inside, and when you only approaching and admiring the view outside. We climbed on one reconstructed tower, or rather Victor climbed, Daphne and I gave up on the way, too scared to continue. In the courtyard there is old church, but unfortunately closed, we saw also the old palace part, totally devastated and destroyed, but despite of this beautiful. Whole castle is still under restoration, so in the palace part you walk on some wooden planks, which aren’t very stable. From this part you can also come into old tower (perhaps) and the view from there is unbelievable. Some magic added the fact that it was already sunset when we reach this place. Pink-violet lights playing on the old white-grey wall, and the river at the feet of the castle were amazing. This very place had some kind of power, hard to describe, but I wanted to stay there for long.

 After so full day we came back to Vinnitsya late in the evening and finished our day in Georgian restaurant, exploring some new tastes.

 Our paparazzi was very active even when we were already a bit freezing waiting on the empty,dark road for our marshrutka :P

The last day we spent walking again in Vinnitsya and visiting the churches. Especially interesting is the oldest little church in Stare Misto (by the way it’s the only old part of this district, in the past here the first town was created, but now it’s more like a village).The Saint Nicolas Church was built in XVIIIth century in the place of old church existing there since about XIIIth century. What is interesting, cerkva was built without using any nail, wooden logs are connected like puzzle but in 3D (it isn’t good comparison, but the construction is very interesting).

I’m always astonished by orthodox churches, I find them more interesting than catholic, each is different and always so beautiful and the atmosphere is more spiritual (it is of course just my subjective impression). I’m not religious person, but I like visiting churches very much. I won’t write here long descriptions of architecture of orthodox churches, uncle google will help the interested ones to find a lot of information; I will just limit myself with few facts about visited church. It’s typical three-part orthodox church, Ukrainian type in baroque style, , on the plan of 3 octagons, painted in bright blue, which make it more vivid and a bit like fairy tale,  the construction seem very light and indoor is very cozy. Picture will tell more:

Our little mushroom;)

And the last part of the post. Our lovely weekend wouldn't be so good without some bitter humour of our Spanish guest. Generally I want to say thank you Victor for good time, we know perfectly what is under your sarcasm and I hope we will have a chance to meet in the future:)

On arrival training

I haven’t been writing for a while, and now I have quite a few posts to write as many things happened. I will start from the oldest event – on arrival training. Such trainings are organized for all EVS volunteers. The aim of such session is to gain information about EVS, support during the project. Our training took place in the end of November in Slavske, nice small town in Carpathian Mountains. In fact most of information I already received from both my Host Organization and Sending Organization, so I listened to it for a third time. It doesn’t mean that the whole 5 days were boring and useless, as we got more detailed information, it was a great opportunity to get to know other volunteers and exchange our experience, ideas, fears, disappointments, just anything, and also we can got some cultural information from first hand, talk more about cultural differences, so called cultural shock, and analyze/simulate some crisis or conflict situation which can be useful in our work on project.

First impression hearing the stories of other volunteers was that we (me and Daphnee) are very lucky, because we don’t have any problem with a flat, we live in really great conditions, we even didn’t expect, we have good communication with organization and people. I don’t want to present some idyllic dream we are living here, that’s too much of course, but this training let me realize that we should appreciate what we have here very much.

We met a lot of people who do their EVS in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova and are from various European countries. the biggest group was from…PolandJ And unusual for me for the first time I was happy to see so many Polish people abroadJ J On such events people quite fast create relation with each other, somehow get attached, and it’s always quite sad to leave. It’s obvious that we won’t stay in touch with all people, its’ impossible, but I hope that some acquaintances will survive. Anyway, just meeting all of these people was very good and interesting experience, I’m always very happy to get to know foreigners and learn something about their countries, see the differences. And now our travels to some places in Ukraine are easier as we know people there. And writing from perspective we had already two visits from our training friends, but about it I’ll write in next posts.

Some pictures from Slavske:

Plan of our activities

and plan after some creative changes :D

 Pictures from our exploration of the town. We had to present the photos and get to know some practical information from locals

 We are still like children in our souls

Polish group