I had a really good time the last couple of days. Because of where I live, it is not really convenient to travel. There are only two buses a day that go from my town to the train station, the last of which is around noon. Many overnight trains (which is what you take to get to most of the bigger cities in Ukraine) leave at night so as to get you to your destination in the morning (think flying from US to Europe). Anyway, if you are on one of these trains, you can have upwards of a 12 hour layover in the train station. Well, you get the idea, and I have addressed this in other posts. The point is that I try to limit my travelling to times that I consider worthy of such exertion. This week was one of those times.
A couple of months back my clustermate Patrick, sent out an invitation to his apartment in the city of Dnipropetrovsk which is the third largest city in the country and has more than a million people. The invitation also reminded us that in addition to Thanksgiving, there are three from our training group with birthdays within the week. Now many of these invitees have gotten together from time to time since we left training five months ago- including me when I went to visit friends in Sevastopol a while back. But, I have never ventured northward to visit friends. I accepted the invitation. When I went to buy my train tickets, I asked for a train to get me to there on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, only to be told that the train I want only runs on even days. I decided to rearrange to go on Tuesday rather than on Thursday when I would miss a main portion of what I was being invited to. So, after my two hour bus ride to the train station and a relatively brief layover, I got on my train to DP (for short). It was a straight six hour shot and this time I was at my destination around 8 pm. Patrick met me at the train station and we went to grab some dinner in the city center and headed back to his place for the night.
The invitation list had grown to approximately 15 for our turkey day. Patrick had committed to cook the turkey and a couple of sides and everyone else volunteered or took assignments of what to round out the meal with. I was no exception and had been tasked with making the mashed potatoes. I also offered one of my “go to” recipes of spiced nuts as a pre-dinner snack. On Wednesday morning Patrick and I started by addressing the need to speed up the defrosting of the bird. He had bought it on the weekend and had been defrosting it since Sunday. It wasn’t the biggest turkey I had ever seen, weighing in around 14 pounds, but it this country where owning an oven is some kind of luxury- Patrick’s typically sized oven just barely fit the whole thing. His kitchen sink was too small for the bird and he doesn’t own a bucket or a basin. But we needed to figure out just how to submerge the bird in water to ensure we could cook it on Thursday. After a little looking around, we decided the only method would be putting it in a garbage bag with full bottles of water to weigh it down and filling the tub with enough water to do the trick. It worked like a charm and we were soon off to the central market to do our shopping for the next day. He pretty much had everything he needed, but I had to figure out what I needed and where to get it. With Patrick’s help we were done in two hours and headed to meet up with a mutual friend named Kim, who was experiencing a 12 hour train layover in DP on her way to her Thanksgiving celebration. She was familiar with the city and offered to show me around while Patrick headed back home to start cooking his side dishes, otherwise freeing his Thursday schedule so he could concentrate on the turkey. We met up with some other people who were coming in for Thursday and stayed out for a few hours until Kim had to leave and get her 11:50 pm train to Kiev at which point we headed back to Patrick’s place to call it a night.
On Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), the plan was for everyone to meet at Patrick’s at 3:00. We would have all of our stuff, and those coming over would cook at their places and bring their contributions with them. Everything worked on schedule at his place with the turkey, mashed potatoes and other various dishes start to come together. At 3:15, as Patrick is carving the meat from the turkey, we call the other group to get their ETA, only to find out that they are running more than an hour late and failed to call us. The food, all ready, sits and waits while we snack on my nuts and a cheese ball and crackers. Of course, the drink starts to flow and all worries of plans delayed go out the window. Eventually everyone shows up and the party gets started. One, sort of interesting aspect of being part of a group like this, is that you have 15 people, with 15 different (although mostly similar) traditions of how they celebrate this holiday. Just as the menu included items that some consider “obligatory”, their reasons for giving thanks were equally varied. One person suggested that we all stand and hold hands in a manner reminiscent of a prayer circle- yep, that was odd for me. I don’t think I need to hold hands with the people next to me in order to be connected with them. But at the same time, I am not feeling like I am in a position to trounce the traditions of others. As we stand in a circle joining hands we all give our reasons for being thankful. It was humorous as the food sat, waiting to be served to several hungry people, some people spoke a little too long and the discussions quickly turn to the Grammy’s/Oscar’s method of ushering long-speech makers off of the stage by increasing the volume on the house music. A strict 1 minute time limit was then imposed. As we went around the circle I realized that every one of us has a personal reason to be thankful and expresses it through a different observation and how it relates to how and why they are standing here tonight. People gave thanks for things like friends and family and God, while others chose to recognize technology for keeping us connected with our loved ones, and also new experiences that we could not have imagined just one year ago. After this moment of pause we all ate. Although it is easier to find some foods in this city than others (like my town), I was really impressed by the quality of recipes that need to get tweaked to utilize the ingredients that you can find. Our turkey was fantastic and everyone did a wonderful job pitching in to make this gathering feel as much like home as it did a new experience for all of us. After dinner and cleaning up, we ate our desserts of apple cobbler and buttermilk pie. A nice end to a nice meal.
The invitation list had grown to approximately 15 for our turkey day. Patrick had committed to cook the turkey and a couple of sides and everyone else volunteered or took assignments of what to round out the meal with. I was no exception and had been tasked with making the mashed potatoes. I also offered one of my “go to” recipes of spiced nuts as a pre-dinner snack. On Wednesday morning Patrick and I started by addressing the need to speed up the defrosting of the bird. He had bought it on the weekend and had been defrosting it since Sunday. It wasn’t the biggest turkey I had ever seen, weighing in around 14 pounds, but it this country where owning an oven is some kind of luxury- Patrick’s typically sized oven just barely fit the whole thing. His kitchen sink was too small for the bird and he doesn’t own a bucket or a basin. But we needed to figure out just how to submerge the bird in water to ensure we could cook it on Thursday. After a little looking around, we decided the only method would be putting it in a garbage bag with full bottles of water to weigh it down and filling the tub with enough water to do the trick. It worked like a charm and we were soon off to the central market to do our shopping for the next day. He pretty much had everything he needed, but I had to figure out what I needed and where to get it. With Patrick’s help we were done in two hours and headed to meet up with a mutual friend named Kim, who was experiencing a 12 hour train layover in DP on her way to her Thanksgiving celebration. She was familiar with the city and offered to show me around while Patrick headed back home to start cooking his side dishes, otherwise freeing his Thursday schedule so he could concentrate on the turkey. We met up with some other people who were coming in for Thursday and stayed out for a few hours until Kim had to leave and get her 11:50 pm train to Kiev at which point we headed back to Patrick’s place to call it a night.
On Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), the plan was for everyone to meet at Patrick’s at 3:00. We would have all of our stuff, and those coming over would cook at their places and bring their contributions with them. Everything worked on schedule at his place with the turkey, mashed potatoes and other various dishes start to come together. At 3:15, as Patrick is carving the meat from the turkey, we call the other group to get their ETA, only to find out that they are running more than an hour late and failed to call us. The food, all ready, sits and waits while we snack on my nuts and a cheese ball and crackers. Of course, the drink starts to flow and all worries of plans delayed go out the window. Eventually everyone shows up and the party gets started. One, sort of interesting aspect of being part of a group like this, is that you have 15 people, with 15 different (although mostly similar) traditions of how they celebrate this holiday. Just as the menu included items that some consider “obligatory”, their reasons for giving thanks were equally varied. One person suggested that we all stand and hold hands in a manner reminiscent of a prayer circle- yep, that was odd for me. I don’t think I need to hold hands with the people next to me in order to be connected with them. But at the same time, I am not feeling like I am in a position to trounce the traditions of others. As we stand in a circle joining hands we all give our reasons for being thankful. It was humorous as the food sat, waiting to be served to several hungry people, some people spoke a little too long and the discussions quickly turn to the Grammy’s/Oscar’s method of ushering long-speech makers off of the stage by increasing the volume on the house music. A strict 1 minute time limit was then imposed. As we went around the circle I realized that every one of us has a personal reason to be thankful and expresses it through a different observation and how it relates to how and why they are standing here tonight. People gave thanks for things like friends and family and God, while others chose to recognize technology for keeping us connected with our loved ones, and also new experiences that we could not have imagined just one year ago. After this moment of pause we all ate. Although it is easier to find some foods in this city than others (like my town), I was really impressed by the quality of recipes that need to get tweaked to utilize the ingredients that you can find. Our turkey was fantastic and everyone did a wonderful job pitching in to make this gathering feel as much like home as it did a new experience for all of us. After dinner and cleaning up, we ate our desserts of apple cobbler and buttermilk pie. A nice end to a nice meal.
Patrick ready to carve the bird
Since some people could not get Thursday off of work (or trains to get them to DP on time) so we planned and executed a second holiday feast on Saturday. Turkeys are few and far between in this country (I have never seen one in my market), and the only difference is that in DP you can actually buy one. It costs a lot, relative to chicken, but it was worth every penny. As for Saturday, we went with two chickens instead of another turkey and had dinner contributions that qualified as vegan. The food was different, but not the sentiment. We were all thankful in our own way to be standing right here, right now regardless of the path we chose to get us here. I would say that this weekend’s festivities solidly qualified as a new experience. And, just like appetites, where you know there’s another one in the near future, next year at this time some of us will have something new to be thankful for.
Someone "thankful" for Smirnoff
I will get on my train this evening at 10:00, arriving to Crimea at 4:00am and then have to deal with getting back to Razdol’noye to work in the morning. At least I will be able to look back and reflect on the things that I was thankful for this weekend as I get snapped back into reality sitting in a cold bus station waiting for the cashier to start working.
What were you thankful for? Just the Smirnoff? :-)
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