There’s Something Different

By Walter Kish

It’s been over a year and half since I’ve been living in Ukraine and, in most respects, it has been a fairly easy adjustment.  Kyiv is a modern, cosmopolitan city that does not lack in most of the amenities one finds in Toronto, New York, Paris or any other major city. 

I can find most anything in the stores here that I could back in Canada.  The people dress and look mostly just like those back home.  A Big Mac® in Kyiv tastes identical to and just as bland as in any McDonald’s in Canada.   I can have a tasty, gooey pizza delivered to my door here as easily as I could back in Pickering, and Ukrainian beer is as good as or better than anything Molson or Labatt has to offer.

Yet, there are certain things here that make one pause and realize that certain habits, traditions, values and perspectives are disconcertingly different.  For example, the first time I had to look up a date on a Ukrainian calendar I couldn’t make sense of it until I realized that unlike the calendars I had become used to, with columns representing the days of the week and the rows the weeks of the month, the standard calendars here have the rows representing the days and the columns the weeks of the months.  I still have not gotten used to this inverted structure, and am momentarily confused every time I have to check the calendar.

Another difference that I have not gotten used to (and frankly don’t have any desire to) is the preference most Ukrainians have for fat in their diet.  When my wife and I went shopping back in Canada for meat, be it for a steak, pork chop or cold cuts, we typically would select the leanest choice available.  Here, most people opt for the opposite. Although the variety of sausages and kobassas available here is huge, almost all of them are conspicuously fatty. Any cut of meat here is deemed unacceptable unless it is abundantly marbled or lined with fat.

The epitome of this is Ukraine’s favourite delicacy called salo, which is nothing less than a slab of pure fat.  Sliced thinly and served with garlic, salt and dark bread, it is the country’s favourite appetizer. I have even spoken to doctors here who insist that eating salo regularly is healthy. Ukrainians enjoy it with an in-your-face recklessness.  There is a caf in Lviv called Dzyga whose specialty is chocolate covered salo.  The label on this product proudly proclaims that the serving is 100 per cent cholesterol and contains 2,800 calories!

There are, of course, many visual differences in Kyiv. Although one expects historically and culturally inspired architectural differences, one aspect to the buildings here that I find somewhat strange is that they paint the exterior of brick buildings.  In Canada, and in particular in the province of Ontario where I come from, houses built of brick are the most common type of construction.  The bricks come in many different shades of colours and textures and provide an esthetic appeal without any need of further adornment.  Here, by contrast, most brick buildings and even many stone ones are covered in paint.  Why one would want to disguise the natural beauty of bricks is beyond me, particularly in view of the fact that the paint usually deteriorates within a few years and these buildings rapidly take on a dilapidated appearance.

There are many other quirks and habits here that have made me pause and wonder.  It is, for example, quite legal and acceptable here to wander down the street drinking a beer.  In Lviv it is common and apparently legal to park your car on the centre line of a street, rather than against the curb.  On television, it is common to have all the commercials appear together in a ten-minute block at the end of a program, rather than interspersed throughout the show as we do in North America.  The other oddity about television here is that shows do not necessarily begin and end on the half hour or hour, but can begin and end at any time.  Hot dogs here are very popular, but instead of mustard and relish for condiments, people here eat them with ketchup, mayonnaise and coleslaw.

I could go on with many more examples.  None of these differences are particularly significant or earth shattering. Nonetheless, they add a certain colour to the experience of living here and remind me that in some respects this is indeed a “foreign” country.