Ukraine Calling

We recently had some training at work and a couple of colleagues from the British Embassy in Kiev joined us for the two days. I got chatting to them about life in Ukraine and their impressions of Poland and was rather interested in their replies.

They said that Warsaw has a very modern transport system that was highly organised. They said there didn’t seem to be so much bad traffic as in Kiev. (Clearly their whistlestop tour of Warsaw hadn’t included Dolina Służewiecka or any other major arterial road at 5pm on a week day) and that most importantly the quality of the roads was significantly better. To them, it was a salutary lesson of the benefits of joining the EU. Poles agree, given their support for the EU is consistently 80% plus, but Ukraine’s relationship with ‘the West’ is a bit more complex.

I know very little about Ukrainian politics, except for the headline stuff about Tymoszenko, or life in Ukraine in general, so I was really very interested to explore with them the tensions between Ukraine’s Western half and Eastern half.

Take for example a conversation we had at lunch. One of my Polish colleagues was asking where one of the Ukrainians came from. Lviv, she replied. You mean Lwów, corrected my colleague. A fascinating snippet which, if you didn’t know anything about Polish and Ukrainian history, would be unrevealing.

I used to think the geo-politics of England and Ireland was complex, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Poland and its neighbours. The social seismic cracks that resulted from Poland’s shift eastward (**westward) at the end of the Second World War are all around us – many Poles I know have parents that were born in present-day Lithuania, Belarus or Ukraine. Once again in Poland the power of history is so tangible, even today.

But I don't want to suggest I was sitting there gloomily thinking about history. Chatting with them got me quite enthusiastic about visiting Ukraine again, something I’ve been toying with doing prior to Euro 2012 (assuming England get any qualifying group games there). I was impressed by the pride they have in their country.  I wanted to show them the same spirit of Polish hospitality that i've been lucky enough to experience, so I took them off to Cepelia for trinket buying and then to the Frederyk Czopin Museum. After, I went straight to a book shop and got a Polish-Ukrainian rozmówki (phrase book) and I set myself a goal of at least memorising the sounds of the alphabet by next June.

Getting by on Polish and English should be easy enough for next year, but I can already see myself falling in love with the Cyrillic alphabet and Ukraine’s deeply melodic language.  I haven’t been this excited since I wrote Bengali Sanskrit lettering just for fun back in 2006. Next stop, Ukraine?

A little teaser- pretty soon me and TEFLSecretAgent will shortly be issuing our insier's guide to Poland and the Ukraine for 2012. Stand by and watch this space!