Vlad's Wild Ride

Vlad's Wild RideMonday October 26, 2009 I’ve ridden in two cars in the Ukraine now. In Kiev, Constantine was my driver in a fairly new model something that he kept quite clean. We had this silent battle. I would sit in the back seat passenger side and move the headrest in front of me to rest right on top of the seat back, no clicks up. When I got back in the car, it would be moved up again to block my view. I’d move it down again until the next time I got back in the car when it would be moved again to its original blocking my view position. We did this for three days. In Kiev, there are still cobblestone roads and some hills and as such, Constantine’s car has lost it shock absorbers. We would bounce along in the back seat on the cobblestones and sit smoothly on the paved roads. Always fun for a bounce as long as it’s not too long of a bounce. In Kharkov when I disembarked from the train, Vlad is my contact and I am riding in his car which is a much earlier sickly red color Peugeot. There are no seatbelts in the back seat, the front windows are power but he has to pull his side up by hand, there are no shocks, again but then there are so many potholes in the city that they probably went out the first week he had the car, and there is stuff everywhere in the car in the door wells and the glove box and the back window. My ride home from the train station was a lesson in how to hold onto the back seat chicken bar. Vlad specializes (I hope and I hope that he is an expert) in zooming up to stop lights and braking at the last possible moment or making a third lane at the stop light where none exists and then charging forward to cut in front of the first car in the real lane. I figured it was 11:30 at night and he was just in a hurry to get me to my apartment and go home to bed. Today I was picked up at 9:30 and got into the backseat next to my guide. Vlad and his partner in business, Svetlana, are in the front seat. We are going out of town to see the landlord estates. Seconds after being introduced to my guide I realize he doesn’t speak English (not hard to do the minute he opens his mouth to start speaking) and Vlad is going to be my translator. Oh goody, not only does he get to drive the car but he has to listen to Mikail (the guide) and translate it back to me, oh, and yes, he has a cell phone as well which regular rings and he answers and talks for a bit. I do hope he is an excellent and efficient and proficient multi-tasker. I’ll get to the stories of Mikail in another blog but for now, let me tell you about the ride out of town and then later back into town. I’ve already mentioned Vlad’s drive from the train station to the apartment last night. He goes out of the town by the same method, zooming up to stoplights, zigzagging around cars already waiting at the stop light, and finally pushing the limit at the stop light by going through when it turns to yellow (stop lights in this part of the world are red and change to red and yellow when they are about to turn to green. Drivers know this and will start through the stoplight sometimes on the red/yellow combination). Once we are out of town, Vlad floors his Peugeot and we are speeding down the highway and swerving frequently to avoid the potholes of which there are many or to zoom around a truck or car that isn’t going as fast. Vlad must believe that this is like a German autobahn where there are no speed limits. The one thing that keeps me from speaking up and asking him to slow down is that his highest speed seems to be only a bit above 60 mph. sometimes a rickety old almost broken down car is good as it isn’t going anywhere fast. It must be frustrating for Vlad though as his foot is pressed to the accelerator hard enough to smash through the floor. After a few miles he asks me if I can hear him well enough on the translations. As it is a strain I say not really so he screeches to the side of the road and Svetlana and I trade places, she gets into the back seat and I get into the front where gratefully there is a seat belt which I put on and cinch down as tight as I can get it. Now I am having a really scary ride as I can see where Vlad needs to swerve to miss the potholes but also can brace myself when it is obvious he is not going to bother missing it. So bumping down the road, swerving to miss potholes or not and screeching to halts when he has missed a turn, which is frequent. There is a lot of discussion between Vlad and Mikail and Svetlana on directions so there is a lot of driving back and forth between villages or stopping to ask locals. There is always someone standing by the road hoping to hitch a ride. I feel bad that we pull up to them and their bags and then just ask for directions and whiz off again. Finally we are way out in the country, aproximately100 kilometers from Kharkov and find our first stop of the day. It has only taken us 2 hours to get here which wasn’t a factor in speed or distance but more a factor in Vlad not knowing where it was. The rest of the day goes on the same. Driving back and forth up and down the same village roads until someone finally points us in the right direction. Bumping up and down on dirt roads that are more ruts (like Vlad said, the road must have been a lot better 100 years ago when it was made), bumping up and down without shocks on paved roads with plenty of potholes, and swerving around traffic and geese and dogs and screeching to a halt when he’s passed the gate or entrance. At the end, I am again in the back seat because I don’t want to see what’s coming as we race back into town (again top speed about 60 mph) and I just hang onto the chicken strap and keep my eyes closed and chant a mantra that I will make it ok. I did.