Skiing in Ukraine and Shashlik for everybody!

It didn't take a lot of convincing to get most of the people in Peter's team to leave the office for a long week-end and go skiing to the famous Carpathian mountains in the west of Ukraine together with their families. So on Thursday after lunch we leave in 4 cars and hit the road towards Bokuvel (http://www.bokuvel.com/), the most prestigious ski resort in Ukraine.

The way proves to be a real adventure: we have to go approx. 650km over Ukrainian roads that offer lots of holes in the asphalt, no lights, no reflectors along the road, but in return a lot of police and horse-carriages. If you're on a main road, you might have 2 lanes of which one is used by the horse carriages, this adds considerably to your safety. Round midnight we have to make 1 hour detour because a bridge has just fallen into a river shortly before we arrived. We're lucky today!

The highlight of this day in the car is "Kafe Kaska", a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. There we get the best Shashlik ever (a lot of grilled meat on a sword) for unbelievably low prices. The foundation is laid for a weekend during which we will eat almost only Shashlik, but Kafe Kaska proved to be Simply the Best!

We arrive in our hotel at 1:30 after 10 hours driving, but there is still time & power for a couple of beers, while we wait for our 4 snowboarders who had left Kiev later.

When you ever come to Bukovel, you'll understand why Yaroslav, who had organized everything

(many thanks again, Yarek!) dreams about another car for such occasions...

Friday & Saturday we go out to the slopes. The ski resort is actually quite nice, offers some 50km of slopes of all levels of difficulty. Isabelle and Nathalie who have become good skiers during our last vacation in Austria enjoy themselves skiing over every "Buckel und Sprung" they can find. Their proud parents get many questions from admiring locals about the kids' age.

Our friend Anders will love the pictures of all those snow canons (they are needed, the ski resort is quite low at 900-1400m height). The rumour has it that the Austrian Chamber of commerce has donated the first of all those Doppelmayr lifts that were installed during the last 5 or so years. Overall, we enjoy great skiing and a great company.

Saturday evening we finish a phantastic weekend with - yes, you're right! - a round of Shashlik. The hotel owners finish the open fire place for us and grill a couple of kilos of Shashlik. Our mood is great again, although Kafe Kaska remains unbeatable ... The kids have become friends and play cards all evening.

Sunday morning we hit the road to go back, and we make it 2 hours faster, with only 8 hours driving! So we almost get home in time to bring the kids to bed, they'll anyway be tired when school starts again on Monday morning.

Philharmonia and Ballett

The Cultural program is taking shape:


1) Philharmonia is a great place to listen to classical music.
Sylvie and Peter went to listen to one of the local "great names", which proved to be a great event. Sylvie accused the Ukrainian solo-singer for too much decolletee, this view has for sure not had a negative influence on our total impression (sorry guys - no photo allowed).


2) The week later we listen to Mozart and Mahler. This time the complete "Ukrainian National Philharmonic Orchestra" is on stage, including Solomia, Nathalie's violin teacher. What we did not know: This concert was sponsored by the Austrian Embassy. So we met some well-known fellows: Mr. Wuketich, the ambassador and his familiy, whom we know since our visit to the German church (Mrs. Wuketich is the red-haired lady sitting one row in front of us). Also the riddle of some well-known faces without name from the Austrian Stammtisch is solved by the Kulturattache and other people from the embassy. This time the solo singer is Austrian, Ms Wallisch, no Ukrainian styling on her, but also a good voice and nice to talk to after the concert.

3) Kid's opera and ballett: There are probably few places in the world, where there is a big theatre for "serious music" only for kids, on Kontraktova Ploschad in Podil, a famous part of Kyiv. We saw Tchaikovski's Dornroeschen. The kids took a close look at the Orchestergraben before the performance. During the break we went up under the cuppola. We find a huge empty room with a red piano which is used as atelier for the painter of the next scene. Whose shoes will these be?

Award for the best performance goes to the "boese Fee" who wished death to Sleeping Beauty. Isa and Nathie think it was very unjust that she did not get flowers in the end, so we have to goback with flowers and give them to her next time.

Ice-Skating in "Arena Bolshevik"

Weekends we usually go skating, and the arena in the shopping centre "Bolshevik" has become our favorite place, Saturdays 11:00-12:00 before the big crowd wakes up.












Nathie and Isa both love this little sports activity and last time we brought "the bigger family", with Marie, Nathalie's puppet, and Simon, Isabelle's friend from school with his papa and brother. All these new-joiners had some more hardship on the ice, but enjoyed their time. And the little "Puppen-Mamas" are dedicated skating teachers.