Signs o' the Times

In the half year that we have been here, the world economy has radically changed and as well reported in global media coverage, Ukraine has been a little hit......
How do we feel it? In our daily life, we are spared direct impact, but we can see people around us being hit. The upward feeling that was there when we came (growth, ever-increasing variety of western goods, European perspective, etc.) has gradually changed to a feeling of disorientation.
Imported food is slowly disappearing from the shelves. Dried tomatoes (2 Euros per glass in Austria) cost 12 Euros per glass over here. Shredded cheese has gone. Nuernberger Bratwuerste (only at Auchan) are rarer. The Expat Magazines (Kyiv Post and Kyiv Weekly) that were formerly distributed free of charge are now for sale on news-stands. The concert hall is less full ...... or was it simply because we had chosen strange music for our last concert (Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and Silvestrov' Symphony No. 5)? The ads along the metro-escalators are becoming less, the people offering their work with a cardboard around their neck are becoming more. People we know can't get their savings out of the bank and revert to massively purchasing tangible values via their credit cards (which boosts consumption at the moment). Expats with children are moving back to their country of origin in the middle of the school year because some investments are stalled or cancelled. But surprisingly, others came in the middle of the school year... so what do we make of this?
Some investements are scaled down to a minimum without total withdrawal. A lot of building sites (there are many here!) have stopped all activities. The house being built across the street from ours stopped all activities, then they hooked a diesel-generator to the tower crane they are using (apparently, their power supply had to be reorganized) and now............... they are attaching insulating panels to the outside walls! Very surprising move that we hadn't expected.
So we can report mixed symptoms to an unclear economical situation.
And people tell us: "this is nothing compared to our situation in the early nineties, so don't worry!"
The poltical situation seems to be clear:
A recent poll shows that 85% of the interviewed see the country going in the wrong direction. 42% are ready to go to the streets for political rallies and that number was only 26% 2 months ago.
The former speaker of parliament Yatsenyuk seems to be the man on the rise (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arseniy_Yatsenyuk. In recent polls (http://www.rb.com.ua/eng/), he comes in well ahead of the other candidates for the presidential elections due to take place in January 2010.

Bowling with a snake

Alioscha, the bowling pro, brought an unfoldable "snake" to be used on the childrens' lane only (unfortunately only there......). Result: the kids loved it!

The rest of us had a great time, trying to stay on the lane and making them cones tumble over.

Pirates in Kyiv

Isabelle's 8th birthday was duely celebrated with her friends after our vacation with a wild pirates' party.

Happy pirates, a few broken swords and a successful bounty hunt.

Visiting Essen

Directly from the ski slopes, the two younger girls took the plane on their own and stayed for a long weekend with their respective god-parents (and fiancé, in one case....). For Nathalie, this visit was happily extended for some days, because (when the girls were finally joined by their mother) we were all graciously invited to stay in the "granny-unit" of their flat for some days(thank you!).
One day, we were joined by Omimi and had a real city day including a visit to the movie theater (Hexe Lilli).
At the end of the week, we flew back home and were greeted by snow flakes on the runway.

Alpbach under the snow

Coming back to this fantastic ski vacation:

we went to Alpbach, close to Innsbruck. On the invitation of Inge and Anders, we stayed in their extra-flat, that was fully equipped and super convenient for us.

On our first day, we celebrated Isabelle's 8th birthday with a Sacher Torte and she proudly wore her pirates' costume. Pirates are THE thing at the moment!

There was so much snow (falling all the time, except one sunny day), that we always put on our skis in the driveway of the house and skied down to the first lift. What a luxury!

The kids went to a very good ski school (Alpbach Aktiv) and were happy with their groups and instructors. They learned how to ski in the deep snow and they now always look for the bumps to jump on. The race saw them take all the turns without missing a pole :-) The award ceremony shows the rightful reward for this feat.

Future is looking good!

On the way back to Kiev after a phantastic ski-vacation, Peter reads "Kyiv Weekly", the only remaining Ukrainian newspaper that's written in English.

Apart from all the crisis -talk, there are also 2 interesting articles about the "rules of the Game".

1) Ukrainians never give in, and whatever happens, it's not bad, so don't worry!

So when the article writes about when and how, not IF the government should declare bankruptcy, the conclusion is simple: The outcome will not be that bad. People might maybe even not realize something has happened.

2) Inflation will be tamed by strong measures taken:

There is a lot of discussion about the inflation effects coming from the devaluation of the UAH versus the USD. Since Summer last year, the UAH has lost about 50% of its value compared to the dollar, which is the main currency for selling big-ticket items or renting flats, housing and the likes. So the described measure which "limits" bribes to judges to below 10 kUSD (If they accept more, then they will maybe get punished) is really good news! Will this bring down real inflation by up to 1%, as well-informed sources say over a couple of Vodkas?

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.