Here and Then

Now and There

May 19, 2023

The badrijani nigvzi and tarhoon had just been served when the air warning sirens started. I looked at my companion, a student of mine until Feb. 24, 2022 when he joined the military. He shrugged.

“We have twenty minutes.”

I love Georgian food, and am especially fond of badrijani nigvzi, which is walnut paste rolled up in thin eggplant slices and garnished with pomegranate seeds. I needed to overcome the memory of the awful ones I had in Krakow last week. I’m also a big fan of tarhoon, tarragon-flavor soda, and this restaurant made their own.

We finished our meal.

Krakow then. Kyiv now. Kyiv then. Peace time. War-time. COVID-time.

Last weekend I went directly—with a 17 hour train ride in between—from an Airbnb apartment in the heart of Krakow’s old town to an Airbnb apartment in the heart of Kyiv’s old town.

Not just any Airbnb apartment!

It’s the same Kyiv Airbnb apartment I was stranded in during COVID lockdown beginning March 2020. My three week stay extended to 9 months. Lockdown closed the rental market, so I could not find a more permanent apartment. Lockdown vaporized tourism, including Airbnb bookings. So, it was mutually beneficial for the apartment owner and me to extend my stay here.

I love the place, it was my capsule on a ride through hell. Who could not love the vivid parrot wallpaper juxtaposed with pastel-pink Japanese-y print wallpaper and florescent green paint on adjacent walls?

I was pleased to return to it, but didn’t expect the return of COVID terror, also. The view of the stairs as the apartment door swings open is like a horror-move scene imprinted in memory - the first time venturing out in a mask and gloves. Touch the banister or the door with your hands - and DIE.

I have to fight the feeling that I’m about to enter plague-land again every time I go to the corner for coffee. It feels wrong not to put on a mask first. It feels wrong that the stack of napkins I folded into homemade mask-liners are missing from the hall cabinet-top.

Self portraits, 2020, 2022, raising a glass to the camera in the Kyiv Airbnb apartment. — Then and now. Cheers!

These past fears come out unexpectedly. It’s like walking on Kyiv’s notoriously uneven sidewalks. I’m striding in the present, then suddenly I’ve dropped into the past. A different set of fears in each time.

This may be Ukraine in war-time, but COVID-time was more war-like. It was post-apocalyptic. Kyiv felt like an abandoned city.

On my many pandemic-era walks, I passed closed cafes, restaurants, shops, museums, cinemas, bars and nightclubs. Posters for past events slowly weathered on lampposts. Cobble-stoned Andrew’s Descent was devoid of the tourist mobs and souvenir shops, cafes and street-sellers that have now returned.

Sleepy

Sleep deprivation is a common feature across all three times and places. Krakow’s Main Square, also cobble-stoned and uber-picturesque, roars with revelry from mid-day into the small-hours. My Airbnb flat was a few meters from the square. Finding sleep was hard, and once found, frequently interrupted.

The Kyiv Airbnb flat is also adjacent to a big historic square but there were no revelers in COVID times. There was, however a street-dog, who I nicknamed “Grigory” after our street, Grigory Skovorody (18th century poet, philosopher and composer). Canine Grigory was very musical. He would serenade at three or four in the morning.

Grigory has gone the way of dogs. For night interruptions now we have air warnings, at least one a night, and some heavy missile/drone attacks. The sirens sounded twice my first night here, the first coinciding with the airing of the Eurovision Song Contest. By chance or design, the hometown of Ukraine’s contest entry was bombed.

Hypersonic hype

In the wee-hours of Tuesday, 17 May, there was a more dramatic raid. i could see air defense rockets rising up. I heard the explosions when they intercepted incoming missiles and drones. All were downed, we’re told, but falling debris caused some damage and fires. There were a few injuries, but nobody was killed, they say. However, one of the recently-arrived Patriot missile-defense systems was damaged.

The Russians are targeting Patriots as well as Storm Shadow long-range missiles recently arrived from the UK. Russia claims it shot down a number of the latter and that it destroyed a Patriot emplacement. Ukrainian official sources deny this. Nevertheless, Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration wrote of the Russian attack, “It was exceptional in its density—the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time,” as reported by Reuters.

Most impressively, Ukraine claims it shot down six Kinzhal hypersonic missiles that night using the Patriot system. Russia can no longer claim that Kinzhals are invincible —too fast to be intercepted. Still, I can’t help thinking that if they were all intercepted, yet a Patriot system was damaged, it must have been a near thing. That’s a story I’m curious to hear.

Krakow's Main Square at top, Kyiv's Kontraktova Square below.

Square to Square

Kontraktova Square, like Krakow’s Main Square, is at the heart of each cities’ old town section. They are about the same size, Kontraktova being a big larger. Both are flanked by historic, culturally significant buildings. Each has a market-building in the center. Both squares and nearby areas are big tourist attractions.

Alike, but not alike. Krakow’s Main Square tourist numbers are at industrial, oiled-machine-like Disney-land level. Kontrakova Square doesn’t have squadrons of school children and bus-tours in line to enter historical buildings. There is no solid forest of street cafe table-umbrellas on all four sides full of shouting Brits on holiday. No decorative horse-drawn carriages clop along the cobblestone streets.

It’s an example of how Ukraine and Poland are different. Krakow’s Main Square center market building is filled with booths selling souvenirs, amber jewelry, Polish pottery, etc. Kyiv’s Krontrakova Square center Host Building is closed off, crumbling, and is locked in legal disputes, like many other buildings in Ukraine.

Poland fared better than Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Largely that was due to the Poles, but also because the west, which had already been focused on Poland as a Cold-War pressure-point, poured on the support. Poland emerged as the model for how former-Soviet countries can attain a western-level economy.

I’m hoping victory will have the same effect for Ukraine. Kontraktova Square has the potential to be like Krakow’s Main Square, and maybe it will.

Not everyone is confident that Ukraine can clean up it’s act well enough to thrive like Poland. Over coffee a Ukrainian friend said he is pessimistic about reform. He said the judiciary was corrupt before the war. It has continued to be corrupt during the war, and, he said, it will be corrupt after the war.

He recognizes President Zelensky is doing a great job as Ukraine’s Churchill, but he sees it merely as good acting.

The post-war period may be as bumpy as a Kyiv alleyway. Regardless, it is likely the country will be swimming in reconstruction funds, and the economy will rebound. Kontraktova Square has the chance to be like Krakow’s Main Square.

I am in Kyiv for a short time to pick up my temporary residence card. It did not go smoothly. I found the card had been cancelled because my work permit had been cancelled. But, nobody had notified me or my visa agent/accountant. The agent/accountant is working on this, but it will not be solved in the few days I am here. Mine is not the only case like this.

The former student who is in the military worked with a drone unit. I sent them a donation, and you can too. Their Facebook page is here. You can find the donation link there, or use this one. Thanks! Let’s all try to keep my former student and his comrades alive and uninjured.

Bonus illustration: for Tribune Media.

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