BUSted: Tapping into my fear of public transportation

After 2 days of Mike’s expert handling of the typical Ukrainian run-around, we had signed a “lease” on the Pretty Apartment. Quick as lightening, we moved all of my belongings (including the washing machine that we’d just had delivered and put into place) to the new apartment and canceled the lease with Mr. Wanted-to-spend-the-night-and-thought-it-was-fine landlord.

The new apartment was not only aesthetically nice but infinitely safer. The building was much smaller: only 5 stories, and my apartment was only on the 2^nd floor. Instead of one door from the landing into the apartment, mine had TWO doors with 4 locks and 2 deadbolts. The apartment was immediately christened “Fort Knox.” My first night in my second new apartment was not clouded by tears and fears.

Having cleared the hurdles of moving and settling me into Poltava, the Rays returned to Dnipropetrovsk, as they had their own lives and responsibilities to tend to. As I watched their car pull away, I had a moment of panic: What AM I doing? In a foreign country- by myself??

I calmed down quickly, though. I was armed with quite a stash of cell phones numbers, including Ira’s and two other English-speaking girls, Nastia and Maya. I would have to call one of them in the very near future because I had a pressing need: how to use the transportation system.

I was extremely nervous about this. Public transportation in Ukraine isn’t like public transportation in other European countries. I knew that they don’t post routes or schedules AND that I’d have to learn the areas of the city AND how to read the signs in Russian. All of that was enough to make me sweat. Thankfully, Ira was proactive and contacted me about setting up a time to go over Transportation Orientation 101.

The afternoon after the Rays left, Ira met me at my apartment building, and we went for a walk. We stopped in a small park and claimed a bench to use as our classroom. Before sitting, Ira spread two of her notebooks on the bench, explaining to me the Ukrainian belief that sitting on cold surfaces would cause infertility in women. I tried not to gape at her and sat- rather uncomfortably- on her notebook. Ira began to draw a map of Poltava. She explained the differences in trolleys, buses, and marshrutkas and their respective prices. Thankfully, she clearly labeled the map she was creating for me with the Ukrainian names of the different parts of the city. We made a quick list of some of the places I would need to go on a weekly basis, and she made a list of the different options I had for traveling to each location. I began to get confused, though, when she explained that it was very easy to get on a bus going to a certain sector of the city- by way of the longest route possible. She said it was important to pay careful attention to the order of the stops listed on each sign.

My nervousness returned; I’d seen the signs propped in the front windows of buses and knew that I’d have to be a speed reader (in Ukrainian, no less) to catch all of the places listed. I was just going to have to do some quick memorization.

After our crash course on transportation, we headed off together to Thursday night prayer meeting, which was a new experience in-and-of-itself. Following prayer meeting- with my brain turning to mush because of culture/language overload- a large gang of young adults from the church informed me that we were all going to head downtown, as a practical lesson in transportation.

I thought this was an excellent plan…until we got to the bus stop. I realized that it was exceedingly difficult to read the signs in the dark, and most of the vehicles were zooming in and out so fast that I couldn’t even begin to sound out the words on the signs in the front windows. Trolley #12 pulled in, and we got on. Ira began explaining to me how payments work and about basic trolley etiquette. I was immediately overwhelmed. There were no seats available, so we were all standing. In my case, “standing” translated into rocking- splay-legged- desperately hanging on to the overhead bar (which caused me to swing around like a kid on monkey bars). If trying to remain vertical wasn’t enough, I realized that I was going to have to dig in my purse and find money to pay for my ticket. I still wasn’t terribly familiar with the coins and bills, and I was wary of releasing my hold on anything stable to search through my wallet. In the dark. As I was rummaging around in my purse and frequently falling and bumping into other passengers, I realized that my time in Ukraine was destined to be fraught with humiliating experiences.

And, I discovered all of this before we even hit the tumultuous surface of the cobblestone road. I will leave up to your imagination the image of my attempts to remain vertical on that road...