Ukraine List

This site is first and foremost a list of web-based travel and living resources for Ukraine, but it is also a blog. Basically, during the winter months the blog is more prominent, and when travel picks up you will see more of a travel focus. The blog posts are fairly random, and I probably only have two very loose rules: 1) I try to write about topics that travelers or expats may be interested in and 2) I try NOT to write about the minutia of Ukrainian politics or anything related to gas supplies and pipelines. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the site, and if you are looking for travel resources, you may want to start by browsing the site map.

_______________

I have been a bit addicted this morning with the Agrarian Marketing Project site. This site is a sort of agricultural news and price clearinghouse for those in the food industry in Ukraine and Russia. You have to read Russian or Ukrainian to get the full effect of the site as the English portion is somewhat outdated in parts and limited to selected pages. Also, unless you are registered with them as a food producer/buyer, you won’t have access to the full market reports, but it still can be rather interesting without these extras.

The reports are the most interesting (and many are in English). I like the explanation of why the lettuce market is weak in Ukraine. Basically, lettuce requires exceptional care in handling, which wasn’t the strong point in a socialist system that tended to focus on vegetables that could take a ‘beating’ in transport. But the lettuce market is now apparently getting better.

You can also find out that Ukraine’s carrot supply is poor this year but its onions are cheap and of high quality. Also, in late September, citrus fruits from Turkey will for the first time be imported. On the price side, both tomatoes and cucumbers are about 50% higher in price this year over last. I also liked the report noting that many of the ingredients for making borsch are at record highs meaning that households are now paying much more to make their borsch.

I even found the price section of the website interesting. It gives prices for the different wholesale (not retail) markets in Ukraine. You won’t find Besarabska on the list, but you can select a wholesale market, a date range, and a fruit or vegetable and it will give you the price fluctuations in a graph. I also like how there is a graph on the upper right corner of the website that gives you up-to-date vegetable prices for such things as “Standard Cucumber II” and “Tomato I”. I’ll try to buy these next time at the market.

For those interested, the Ukrainian Guide has a market post that has some useful information about Kyiv markets. Also, Go2Kiev has a shopping section that has useful information about supermarkets and other types of markets in Kyiv.

_______________

I apologize for this site being down as of late. The Pidmanula post and the Swicki search didn’t like some new updates and decided to boycott the internet. I will also be updating to the new Wordpress version when it comes out, and that may also entail some down time and transition in formatting.

Regardless, the good thing is that I am now getting settled in Kyiv and will be maintaining this site more. I will also be streamlining the content of UkraineList. Excellent sites like TryUkraine and Go2Kiev are such a great service that there is really no need to duplicate what they are doing, and to try do it better would take more time and effort than I have.

With that said, these are some of the topics you can expect this site to cover in the future.

• Best Websites: I will still be searching out the best and most useful websites and passing those on.
• Children: Parks, restaurants, and events for children. I have a toddler, so this is logical as I often use these services.
• Blog: I will still be writing on events of interest, history, or anything that piques my interest.
• Wine: Drinking good wine here without paying a lot of money is not easy. I’ll try make that easier.
• Green Tourism: Agrotourism, adventure tourism, and eco-tourism. It’s fun and should be promoted.
• Photography: People all the time take interesting, creative, and beautiful pictures of Ukraine. These should be highlighted and shown more often.
• Food: Restaurants are so plentiful here and a comprehensive review would simply turn into a futile encyclopedic endeavor. I will, however, try to highlight good value restaurants that have reasonably priced food and wine.

_______________

So elections are coming up in Ukraine and the one I am going to be watching is the local election on Serpent Island in the Black Sea. In an attempt to give the island a more substantial status (a democratic one), Ukraine’s Vice Premier, Aleksandr Kuzmuk, announced that there would be local elections on the island for the small settlement of Belyi.

Earlier I posted on the history of the island/cliff and its current dispute between Ukraine and Romania. This dispute is rather complicated as it involves gas reserves located in and around the island and whether or not the island is an island at all or just a cliff in the sea. Oh yeah, and Greek legend has it that Achilles was buried there too.

Apparently an inhabited island with democratically elected leaders may mean that international boundaries are drawn differently than if it is just an undemocratic, uninhabited cliff.

Anyhow, the island has a small population — maybe around 50-100 people depending upon how you count them and how long they stay. I am sure polls will open early and close early, so expect preliminary results fast. It would be interesting to know if Serpent Island/Belyi voters have given up their voter status in other ‘land-based’ jurisdictions and what parties are registered on the island? Or better yet, what were the campaign themes? Island versus cliff. Tourist development versus energy sector development. My bet is that the candidate who offers the most boat trips back to the mainland will win.

Both What’s On and the Chinese People’s Daily reported on the election announcement.

_______________

Well, for those who have seen the BBC travel shows that feature Michael Palin, he is back with a travel series called Michael Palin’s New Europe. The series starts on 16 September on BBC One and the show covering Ukraine will air on 7 October. You can get the schedule on the BBC website or the Bradt Travel Guide site.

In this series Palin visits twenty former communist countries and crams them into seven episodes. The episode (no. 4) on Ukraine is shared with Hungary. There aren’t many details about what will be in the show, but this BBC article mentions a couple of the Ukrainians who were interviewed for the series, one of which justifies why a Lenin statue is kept up in Yalta. And it also appears that Palin interviews Sean Carr who a couple of years ago married Evgenia Timoshenko, the daughter of Yulia Timoshenko. I guess the rock singer/cobbler/key cutter from Leeds, UK married into the travel series too.

Previously, Palin had visited Ukraine in the summer of 1991 in his Pole to Pole series. He visited Kyiv, Chernobyl, Odesa, and took a barge down the Dnieper. It is sort of like a time capsule. I like the part when Palin asks someone if Ukraine will ever be an independent nation. Apparently the person being interviewed couldn’t quite imagine a quick succession from the USSR, as Ukrainians weren’t like those crazy Lithuanians. Of course a couple of months after he said that Ukraine was independent. You can browse all of Palin’s travels on his official website, and Palin’s travel series are often re-run on the BBC channels.

Lastly, The Guardian has a piece written by Palin describing his motivations for the travel series. I like the part where he says that at 63 years of age he thought any new travel show would probably involve him sitting around in a lot of deck chairs. There is also a fan site for Palin that has all the information one could ever want on Mr. Palin.

The DVD of the whole series will be released on 22 October, and you can pre-order it from the BBC shop. I imagine it is a region 2 DVD. There is also a book by the same name, and it is set to be released on 13 September. You can order it from Amazon UK.

_______________

First of all, I apologize for the neglect of this site in the last several months. I will finally be relocating to Kyiv in about ten days and hopefully things will improve.

With that said, Gogol Bordello can always bring me out of my hole.

The band has been all over the TV and radio in the US as of late promoting their new album Super Taranta. Last week they were on The Henry Rollins Show on the Independent Film Channel performing ‘60 Revolutions’. The IFC website doesn’t have a link to that performance yet, but there is a performance of ‘Ultimate’ and an 11-minute interview with Eugene. Both are good. Eventually, they should have the ‘60 Revolutions’ clip on the site too, just check back in the next week.

Gogol Bordello also performed ‘Wonderlust King’ on The Late Show with David Letterman on 31 July. Once again, the clip isn’t up on the website yet, but probably should be there in a the next week. Until that time, you can see a lower-quality clip of the band’s performance on YouTube.

Lastly, National Public Radio (NPR) has full audio of a July 18th Gogol Bordello concert from the 9:30 Club in Washington DC. The performance is almost two hours long.

_______________

I apologize for the lack of maintenance on this site. I am in the process of relocating from the USA to Kyiv, so this site will see little in the way of updates, blog posts, or anything else for that matter until July. Thank you for your understanding, but feel free to continue to browse the travel-related pages. — Host

_______________

This is just a notice to inform readers that for the next two weeks there will be no new blog posts. — Host

_______________