September 25
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s one of those reflector bands for a bicycle. You should pick it up”
“Nah, I don’t like riding at night anyways”
“It’s not for riding. Here it’s required by law for pedestrians to wear at night”
“You serious? Even pedestrians need to wear a hi-vis reflector band at night? Are people here that paranoid?”
“But it’s for safety!”
...
September 24
“Have you tried Estonian food yet?”
“No, I just stuck with cheap eats. What’s traditional here?”
“You’re not missing out on much…meat and potatoes, mostly”
“Yeah but what makes meat and potatoes here especially Estonian than the rest of Eastern Europe?”
“It’s more expensive here than the rest of Eastern Europe!”
.
.
“So what is Estonia generally known for? I mean, as an export, what’s the main industry?”
“IT, or that’s generally how we sell the country as an economy. Lots of IT jobs around”
“Wait…how do you all know each other?”
“We’re all classmates at Tal-Tech”
“Tal-Tech? Tal-Tech like…”
“Cal-Tech, yes. They officially rebranded it a few years ago”
“Wow, cashing in on American buzz names…I love it. Do you also have any neighborhoods named SoHo, BoHo, NoMa, SoBoHa, or the like? They’re getting very popular nowadays to make otherwise boring neighborhoods more hip-sounding”
“No, but where we’re taking you right now is in the so-called hipster area of town, called Telliskivi. By the way, all the people at the restaurant are also in our cybersecurity class”
“Wait, will I be the only non-cybersecurity person at the table?”
“Yes”
...
Riga
September 21
“Excuse me, I’m looking for all the Art Nouveau buildings”
“Yeah, just look up”
...
Vilnius
September 19
“You know when we travel to places in Western Europe it’s not such a good thing to be from Eastern Europe”
“Wait, why?”
“People there just think that Eastern Europeans are just prostitutes or criminals”
“Is it just Western Europe or is it elsewhere too”
“No just in Europe”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t receive that treatment from where I’m from. Lithuania benefits from obscurity, they’ll just lump you in with the rest of the white people, so you’ll actually be at an advantage”
...
September 18
“You know, people here in Vilnius are noticeably more well-dressed than pretty much all the countries I just came from”
“Haha my Lithuanian friend was just remarking about how terrible Americans look the other day”
“You’re on a college campus...it’s to be expected”
“SF etc he's been traveling around”
“SF in particular is not the best dressed city in America”
“His 4th time here, I believe, but forgets every time”
“People deliberately go for the ‘I’m too busy working on my supposedly multimillion dollar startup idea to worry about how I look’ look”
“Yeah all over, all my upper east side GF friends would look like Russian bums around the market”
“It’s actually a thing. People consciously avoid dressing well for fear of giving the impression that they care too much”
“Yep yep. Very different signaling, they completely didn't understand where I was coming from”
“What’s more, their shitty look actually costs a fortune”
“Those are $200 hoodies and $100 shorts you’re seeing”
“Hahaha, true people back home really don't do brands as long as it looks stylish all good”
“And yeah, the standard of dress here continues to surprise me. All the schoolboys wear suits and even construction workers and traffic cops have fitted clothing”
“Yaap ;)”
...
Brest & Minsk
September 17
“Where is your insurance?”
“Right here”
“No, this is insurance for you. Where is insurance for motorbike?”
“They let me go through the border when I crossed from Ukraine because they did not sell insurance at that border?”
“Green card. Green card”
“I don’t have a Green card, I by separate insurance when I cross the border into a new country, they didn’t sell insurance at that border so they let me go”
“Hold on one moment…read this”
“What’s this?”
“Read”
“‘You have violated the legislation of the Republic of Belarus and must be taken to administrative responsibility’”
“Yes. You have violated the legislation of the Republic of Belarus and must be taken to administrative responsibility”
“What does that mean?”
“Come with me”
“No, wait. What does that even mean?”
“It means you must pay penalty”
“I’m not paying a damn thing. It’s not my problem they didn’t sell insurance at the border”
“Yes it’s your problem. You have violated law of Belarus”
“I’m not paying a penalty if the law I broke was a law that the border patrol did not help me follow”
“We will let you go across the border now, but you must sign these papers. And if you do not pay within forty days, you will no longer be allowed into the Republic of Belarus”
“I’m perfectly okay with that”
...
September 15
“This is my dream to do what you’re doing…with the motorcycle. I am taking a class for license”
“Oh nice, you’re going to have so much fun. You know if you want, you can practice on mine”
“Oh no, no I can’t”
“Sure you can, we’ll just go around the parking lot, you already know how right? It’s just practice”
“Yes, but it is forbidden”
“Are there any cops patrolling the parking lot behind your building? It’ll be okay”
“No cops, but I can’t until I have the license”
“Ah, you’re just generally a very rule-following person?”
“Yes, I follow the rules”
“Is that common in Belarus?”
“Yes, I think so”
...
Kyiv
September 13
“So did you all grow up in school learning three different languages?”
“Yes. Ukrainian, Russian, and English”
“You know, I didn’t even know Ukrainians had a separate language. I always assumed it was Russian from the beginning. Or, I even thought that the Russian language originated in today’s Ukraine”
“No, it’s totally different”
“When I crossed the border a few days ago, anytime I would say spasibo, no one would respond with pozhaluysta, and I would get really confused”
“Yeah, we don’t even use spasibo. You’ll hear more Russian in Kiev, but in Western Ukraine it is mostly Ukrainian”
“Where do you hear English?”
“Mostly here in Kiev. We learn in school but don’t spend nearly as much time on it as the other two. I remember there was this one passage that all of us had to remember and recite. Let’s see….it was ‘London is the capital of England and it is situated on the river Thames”
“Oh my god, that is hysterical. They’d make you repeat that?”
“Yes. ‘London is the capital of England and it is situated on the river Thames’. We practiced like it was scripture”
“You know, that sounds like something that they’d train aliens to say if they’d be observing from afar for a long time and they’re ready to send their first alien down to try and blend in with us. It’s something that overtly formal and studied but no one would actually say….like no one ever says ‘it is situated on’….they’d just say ‘it’s on the Thames River’”
“Hahahah, right! But that’s the way we learned it back then”
“It reminds me of this meme captioned ‘when corporations send their PR representatives to gay parade’ and it’s a picture of Steve Buscemi in a rainbow shirt looking around saying ‘how do you do, fellow gays?’”
.
.
“My mom wants you to know that the war that is going on in Eastern Ukraine is not a civil war like the global media says. It was an invasion. Russia just muddied it up with propaganda to make it look like we’re at war with ourselves, but that’s not the case”
“I didn’t even know there was a war at all going at the moment. I thought the Crimean conflict ended a few years back”
“No this is different, this is in Donbass, on the far Eastern border of Ukraine. We were driven from our village, that’s why we are here”
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry”
“It’s okay. She just needs you to know that Putin is pure evil”
“Well, I already though Putin was pure evil. Didn’t he have all his political rivals assassinated and then planted the war with the Chechens by blowing up apartment buildings?”
“Yes, you know about that?”
“Well, it’s old news by this point, but yeah I never liked the guy. So you’re not in Kiev by choice, you fled here”
“Yes”
“How long have you lived in this apartment?”
“Almost four years by now”
“And do you like it now? If you had the option to return to your village in Donbass, would you do it?”
“I’m not so sure…my dad is a definite yes”
“Why?”
“He’s a teacher, and he says that the students in the village are so much more well behaved. He says kids who grow up in the city have no respect for older people, or teachers in general”
“I think that’s the case where I’m from too….what about your mom?”
“She’s not so sure either. I think we’ve finally gotten to the point where we feel settled. I have friends here”
“And what about the house in your village, has it been seized by the military?”
“No, we have a family member… my uncle, who’s living there to keep people away”
“And how is he able to stay there? I thought everyone was driven out”
“He’s pro-Russia. So they let him keep the house”
...
Lviv
September 10
“Do you know what the average salary in Ukraine is?”
“No”
“Guess”
“Okay, um…I don’t know how much it’d be in hryvnia...600 Euros per month?”
“About 200 Euro per month. And the minimum wage is 100 Euro per month”
“Get out of here, how can you live like that?”
“Well, thankfully we don’t live like that. We work with the tech companies, so they pay us in Euros directly. We don’t have to deal with the currency collapse like other everyone else”
“Yeah, but for people not in tech?”
“Rent would be about 180 Euro per month….so they’d have 20 Euro to spend for the rest of the month”
“That’s impossible”
“Yeah”
“So I’m guessing you guys are relatively rich compared to everyone else, then”
“Yeah, tech people are just rich bitches”
.
.
“Which country likes to visit Lviv the most often?”
“Turkey”
“That’s what I figured. When I was sending out Couchsurfing requests in Turkey, everyone’s profile said they’d been to Ukraine”
“Yeah, every Thursday there’s a Turkish airlines flight from Istanbul to Lviv and the streets are just full of Turkish men. It’s like a clock and they come”
“What makes Ukraine so popular with the Turkish?”
“Uh, they just want to sleep with a white girl”
“Wait, that’s why they come here?”
“Yes. Sadly, that’s the main reason. Every Thursday, I get requests on Couchsurfing that sound something like ‘heyyyyyy girllll, what are you doing tonight? Wanna have a good time?’…or something similar”
“Oh my god! Do girls here actually fall for that? I would think it’s so obvious”
“There’s a lot of stupid girls here. But always girls that have not been in Lviv for very long, they’ve always come from smaller villages in the countryside…it’s sad but it happens”
...