Pidkamin 2011

The past two summers I have been enjoying volunteer work camps in Serbia and Estonia. Even though I have a full-time job now, I wanted to participate in such a project again. This year I went to the village of Pidkamin, in Western Ukraine, to help renovate an old monastery with a long an interesting history.

I went by bus to Ukraine and to prevent an 18 hour bus ride I stayed in Kraków for one day and one night. Kraków is a great city, I had a very nice time there and can recommend it to anyone. And if you are going there, be sure to ask me where to eat: I know a place in the Jewish area where you can eat really good zapiekanka (thanks Alex for reminding me of this name) and another place called "King Kebab", that really honours its name. There was a fat guy with a beard behind the counter, who kept on asking me "yes?" with every ingredient he wanted to use. I just let him have his way, because instinctively I knew that this guy was going to make me the best kebab I had ever had. And my instinct was right. Just take a look at this wonderful picture:


In the evening I got on the night bus to Lviv. It became a trip to remember. We arrived at the border with Ukraine at around 1:15. So far the trip had gone very smoothly. At the border we encountered a huge traffic jam, that we were allowed to pass at first with our bus, but we were kept waiting at the front of the line for a long time, with no information on how long it was going to take. In the end it took us 4 hours to even be allowed to enter the border area. After a lot of inefficiency and bossy customs we were finally allowed to enter Ukraine at 7:15, which was 1 hour after the bus should have arrived in Lviv.

Our bus felt at home on the bumpy Ukrainian roads immediately. Just like a working person stops pretending to be better than he actually is and gets rid of his fancy outfit as soon as he gets home, our bus let go of a light socket above one of the seats:


At the same time, drops of water started falling from the ceiling at several places in the bus. Yup, that's Ukraine: never fix anything until it's really, really broken.

In the afternoon I met the other volunteers with who I would be living and working the coming two weeks. Together we took the train to Brody. The train ride was quite uncomfortable for a person that wanted to rest a bit, but still that was nothing compared to the bus ride from Brody to Pidkamin. At first we wanted to get on the bus of 16:15, so we bought tickets for that bus. When the bus arrived however, it was so full that it looked impossible to fit in even one extra person without a backpack. So in the end we bought tickets for the next bus, which was (slightly) less crowded. I needed to get used to that for the coming weeks, as pretty much all buses were old and too crowded.

At the monastery in Pidkamin we were welcomed by Father Andrei, the priest who was in charge of the whole complex and our boss during the camp. The priest told us that he expected us to work really hard the coming two weeks. Maintenance man Igor, a thin bald man who looks like he walked straight out of a ghost story, thought different about that. The first working day the priest was away and we were working well, until Igor showed up, told us not to work too hard and gave us some instructions that were wrong, probably because otherwise we would made him look lazy. However, the priest already knew that Igor was a lazy worker and when he got back he instructed us to friendly nod when Igor was talking to us but ignore all of his instructions.

So now about the work. Our goal of the camp was to make the area near the big wall of the monastery complex, which was more or less a hill with a lot of weed and stones, look flat again. This was quite a hard job, because of all the rocks and the ground that needed to be taken down the hill to the dumping ground. We started off with a good mood and full of energy, as you can see here:


However, after two weeks, we looked like this:



Luckily there were also plenty of fun activities. As we were with a group of 8 foreigners and 2 Ukrainians who came from a different part of the country, we went sightseeing as well and visited a castle in Oleskiv and a huge monastery complex in Pochajiv. This complex was absolutely amazing. I could use 100 words to describe its beauty, but one photo says it all:


Moreover, in the first weekend of the camp there was an ethno-folk-rock festival on a field near the monastery. The first Friday night was alright, we met the monks, dressed in a traditional Ukrainian outfit, and took a photo with them:


Saturday was supposed to be the best day of the festival. During the day I had already met some people that were attending the festival and I met them again in the evening. It took quite some time to find them, and the rest of the group didn't want to wait for them, so I ended up alone, partying with my new Ukrainian friends. And I had a great time with them, as the picture below proves:


The next day I would meet up again with Olya, a girl I met the day before (the left one on the picture). Together we walked around the festival area a bit and after that we went to a nice and quiet place near a lake in the forest:


Finally we met some guys from the camp there as well and together we walked back to the festival area, where we said goodbye to Olya, who had to go home with her friends, and went back to the monastery for some Ukrainian lunch. Unfortunately the weather was not so good in the afternoon (the picture above was taken later), so the group didn't feel like going back to the festival after that lunch.

After two weeks I had to leave Pidkamin again. In Western Europe a travel of about 100 kms (to Lviv, in this case) would not be special enough to mention in a travel report. However, in Ukraine travelling is still a real adventure. First I had to take a bus from Pidkamin to Brody. It's normal that such a bus is crowded, but this bus was really surrealistic. More and more people kept getting on the bus and it became incredibly hot inside: after 15 minutes I could not see through the windows any more because of all the steam and my whole body was wet from all the sweat. After 40 minutes on the bus, it felt like heaven to get on the train again with the uncomfortable wooden benches. Also the train ride was an adventure, as the soon-to-be babushka (=grandmother) with two golden teeth that was sitting next to me started asking me questions in Russian. My answer that I didn't understand was not sufficient for her, this lady wanted answers. So I did my best to guess what each question meant and tried to answer them in a mixture of Ukrainian, Czech and English until she seemed to understand.

After we had more or less finished our conversation I put on some music and closed my eyes for a while. However, after a few minutes some really young gypsy kids entered the compartment. One of them started playing a song on his guitar, while his younger brother enthusiastically started dancing to the music. Another thing you would not often see in Western Europe.


In Lviv I met up with Olya again, who would show me her home town in the coming days. We visited some very nice places, including an underground bar where Ukrainian nationalists used to gather. In order to get in, you would have to know the password, in order to prevent Russians from coming in. Right now it's mostly a cool place to hang out, but the atmosphere of the Ukrainian nationalists is still there, which makes it a great place for a tourist to visit. If you're interested, just ask me for the password. :)

After two days in Lviv I moved on to Kosice: a city in Slovakia that was on my way home. I took the train there, which was a train ride of almost 12 hours in total. In my compartment I met Luda, a 52-years old nurse from Odessa, with who I set up a conversation. In the end, she must have felt like we became real friends, because just when I was out to stretch my legs a bit and look out of the windows on the hallway she called my name. I looked behind me and saw that she made lunch for the two of us. Luda smiled at me and said: "eat". I said that I was not that hungry and thanked her for the offer, but now the smile on her face was gone and she said to me:
"eat!". So I had lunch with her, and afterwards she even showed me lots of pictures of her son and the rest of her family.

When we arrived at the border we got into trouble again. The train was broken and it was being repaired with us inside of it. So for in total two hours I could do nothing but watch those mechanics, who most of the time were doing nothing but looking at the train like this:


Right. And then one of them pointed somewhere, saying "maybe we should try this button", another would walk towards the train, push that button, and walk back to his old position and watch the train again for one more minute only to find out that the train was still broken. After two hours, it looked like they had fixed the problem (something with electricity in the train), but before the night fell the electricity was gone again, so when we arrived in Kosice at around 21:30 I had to find my way to the exit of the train in the dark.

In Kosice I met my friend Gabika, who would lead me to my hostel and be my guide for the next 24 hours. Kosice is a city with a very nice atmosphere (like all cities in Slovakia I think) and a beautiful fountain that actually plays music and moves to that music. Moreover, there are some very nice parks in the city, where we spent a lot of time, because Kosice is not so big and it was too hot to walk around all the time anyway. Also, the best moment of my travel was in Kosice, as I found a Pizza Hut there:



You really can't imagine how happy I was to eat pizza there again. As a kid I used to go there quite often and I totally loved the pizza's there, but then the Pizza Hut in Utrecht closed and I never went to the Pizza Hut in the past 5 years for sure... So seeing this place in Kosice made me feel like a little kid again and... Ok, this is probably not a story you guys are interested in.

So after only 23 hours in Kosice it was time to go back to Prague again, because it was already the 2nd of August and I had to be back in the office the next day. Now, 4 days later, I have moved back to my old routines again, but I certainly feel like a different person after this travel, it has really opened my eyes in multiple ways.