Anka's Place

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21st April 2012

Krtek, the little mole

So, I got to meet Krtek in Prague.

You can imagine that there are quite a few of this little guy around, considering he's a 56-year-old cartoon character. But I got to meet one of the newer ones, in fact, the little mole who tagged along on the Space Shuttle Endeavor's final mission last year. Sounds like he made lots of friends both times he took a ride in a rocket.

Krtek the Astronaut now lives in the American Center in Prague, which is where I met him, and where you can meet him next time you're in Prague!

As soon as I mentioned Krtek to Igor, he started reminiscing about the first Krtek cartoon he remembers, Krtek and the Chewing Gum.

It's from 1969, but Igor would have first seen it in the late 70's. He said he loved the episode so much because he was fascinated by the chewing gum - a novelty in the Soviet Union in those days.
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10th April 2012

Stalin Museum to get a makeover?

When I visited the Stalin Museum in his hometown of Gori, Georgia (four years ago! good grief), what struck me most, and what I found extremely offensive, about the place was the complete and total absence of any mention whatsoever that he might have done something even a little bit bad in his life.
It's good to hear the Georgians are going to be making some changes.
Voice of America: Georgia's Stalin Museum to Focus on Dictator's Crimes

About time.
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30th March 2012

Euro 2012 - get your tickets quickly!

We just found out that you can still get tickets to Euro-football!!!
http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/index.html

Click on the tab for “tickets.” Then click on “ticket portal.” It’s the official ticket resale. Portal closes on April 10th
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30th December 2011

Christmas in Lviv

We took one last trip in 2011 - together this time - and spent Christmas #1 in the beautiful and historical western Ukraine city of Lviv.
We were just in time for the awesome holiday market.

After much sampling from many vendors, we selected the best gluhwein stand, and became regular customers.

We couldn't quite bring ourselves to try the hot spiced beer. There are even orange slices floating in there. Egads!

New to Lviv since our last visit is the Salo Museum/Art Cafe.

Salo is pork fat, and it is a Ukrainian passion. The museum entrance fee also gets you a sampler plate in the cafe after your tour of the exhibitions. Lucky Igor, he got to have both his and mine. That's a lot of salo!

And a very happy Ukrainian.

All in all, a lovely Christmas in Lviv!
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30th December 2011

A Legal Alien in Ukraine

The two people who still read this blog (Hi Jayne and Marybeth!) will recall that I've been "officially illegal" in Ukraine since September - no visa, no work permit. Well, good news - as of yesterday, I am officially legal again! And not the old kind of temporarily legal, but permanently legal - I am now a permanent resident of Ukraine! (But always a Buckeye at heart!)
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22nd December 2011

Happy Holidays!

Yes, we're alive. This fall kicked our butts even more than last year, I think. Although we didn't have the apartment renovation to deal in between our various work trips, our apartment seems to be on some Kyiv B&B list - some days the sheets barely had time to dry before the next guests arrived! We love having company, and are ever so grateful that our friends enjoy our apartment as much as we do - it was just a hectic fall!
But, the insanity is winding down, we're both done traveling for the year (yeah, yeah, I know, there's less than 2 weeks left in the year, but still).
We put up our Christmas/New Year's tree the other night, and I took some pictures of our neat ornaments from all over. When I went to upload the photos to Flickr, I realized I have photos from way back in September that I hadn't posted yet. Good grief! I'll work my way through them soon, I hope.
In the meantime, Happy Holidays!
Our international Christmas/New Year's Tree, with ornaments from Ukraine, Crimea (yes, part of Ukraine, but Crimean Tatars are unique ethnic group), Germany, Russia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, the USA, Serbia, and Azerbaijan.

The newest ornament - picked it up last week in Baku
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21st November 2011

Kiva - loans that change lives

Join me on Kiva.
I loaned $50 today to 2 women who are small business entrepreneurs in Ukraine.
A great way to start the week!
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3rd November 2011

Client services

Aeroflot has called me twice as well as emailed me to make sure I know the time has changed on my upcoming flight. Nice!
Delta, on the other hand, didn't even bother to notify passengers when they cancelled an entire route, as happened this past June. Hundreds of passengers were stranded when they nixed their Kyiv-New York flights this summer. They supposedly re-booked people onto other airlines' flights, but also didn't bother to notify they other airlines. Way to go Delta!
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2nd October 2011

Happy Birthday darling!

Igor's Birthday Extravaganza continues... he "discovered" his present on Friday because I did a pretty bad job of hiding it. Probably sounds weird that I bought my husband a heavy-duty blender for his birthday, but his reputation as Bar Man Extraordinaire was in jeopardy when our crappy blender during our last party.
Yesterday's part of the b-day celebrations was an afternoon at the banya, with a massage. We tried a place that a friend recommended, and it was actually a "hamman", or Turkish sauna, which means steam bath instead of the dry Russian or Finnish-style. Hit the spot!
Today is his actual birthday, with special treats to be revealed later. His one request was for "chocolate death", aka Chocolate Mousse Tort. It is definitely _to_die_for, and all his today!
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In other news, the visa situation is still a confusing mess. We decided to go a different route, and I submitted my application for permanent residency on Thursday! It took awhile to get all the necessary documents, and translations, and certificates and more documents, and all the required stamps, collected, but we finally did it. The inspector at the registration office tried hard to find something wrong with our stack of papers, and even looked slightly disappointed that we had it all in order. But, she took my application and in 2.5-3 months we can call to check the status, and if all goes well, I may be a permanent resident of Ukraine by the end of the year! It's actually a much simpler process than obtaining American permanent residency, much to my surprise. And the best part is that I won't ever have to deal visas here again. So, cross your fingers for us that it all goes through smoothly!
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2nd September 2011

Officially illegal

As of yesterday, I (and many of my colleagues) am officially illegal in Ukraine. As of September 10, many more Americans will join me. The Ukrainian government "reformed" the visa policies, and eliminated the category of visa that ex-pat employees of technical assistance programs have been issued for years and years, the service visa. This effects Peace Corps (300+ PCVs plus staff); USAID contractors; ex-pat employees of Fulbright, IREX, American Councils; not to mention other countries' organizations in Ukraine. While the idea of the reform may have had it's valid pros, the implications were not, as usual, fully thought out. The Ukrainian government doesn't yet know what kind of visa to give us all now, and doesn't know when they will figure it out. In the meantime, we sit around hoping someone will have a brilliant idea sooner rather than later.
The U.S. Embassy is supposedly sending a list of effected Americans to the Border Control with a request to not penalize us if we leave the country. Technically, fines accrue for each day you overstay your visa, and you also can be put on a black list and denied future entry into the country. (Ah, it just gets better and better!) So, there should soon be a stop-gap measure in place to allow us to leave the country without incident, but still no idea if or how we can re-enter Ukraine. Which means my upcoming trip to Copenhagen has to be cancelled (I could go there, but not sure I could come back!). Not altogether a bad thing - I'm always delighted to get to be home more with my fabulous husband! But it doesn't make my bosses very happy.
*Sigh* Never a dull day in Ukraine!
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