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Days 10-11 - The DP Layover
Our first week of guest teaching complete, Gary and I boarded the train to Dnipropetrovsk (DP) on our way to Agro Soyuz for our main gig - Entrepreneurial Training. This train was a perfect analog for Ukraine: it took us 21 hours to go about 650km, for an average of about 31km/h.
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On the train we spent some time talking to Yuri, a Russian from Dnipropetrovsk who turned out to be very friendly and absolutely insisted that we share his beer. So we spent a couple of hours in our cabin chatting with him; although chatting is a bit of a stretch. His English was almost non-existent, and our Russian was limited to Gary's sparse knowledge and my occasional addition of a word or two. Other than that, Gary and I mostly slept the train ride away, trying to catch up on all the sleep we had missed over the week.
We arrived in DP at 1:30 to find Orin, Jon and Sarah waiting for us at the train station with our host from Agro Soyuz, Vitaliy. They dropped us off at the palace where the DP Rail team was staying and headed off to AS for meetings. This apartment was fantastic! Their hallway/living room was 3 times larger than the entire apartment that Gary and I had stayed in while in Lviv, and it had hardwood floors. There were a number of bedrooms off the main room, some of which had little living rooms of their own, and all of which had full bathrooms with nice showers. It was paradise!
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We had dinner that evening with the DP Rail team (Sheezan - Mark K and Lara stayed home to rest) and the DP Agra team (Mark S, Ewen, Alison, and Rishi), followed by a trip to a local nightclub called Labyrinth. This place turned out to be an old bomb shelter that had been converted to a club and the name was very appropriate; it consisted of a number of smallish rooms connected by winding tunnels. Very cool. Each room had a different style of music playing, and the bomb shelter's thick concrete walls kept overflow of sound from one room to the next at a minimum. We were joined at the club by two of DP Agra's translators - Anna and Helena - as well as Anna's sister Natasha and couple of their friends. After a couple of beer and some vodka, we started dispersing into little groups and chatting, some going off to dance, the guys drooling over all the gorgeous women in the club. I started chatting with Anna and Natasha and pretty soon we were deep into conversation and having a great time.
Around 3 AM, most of the LEADERites decided they wanted to leave, but Jon and Orin were sticking around because they had to go to the train station at 5 to meet Sean (a fellow Entrepreneurial teacher who was arriving late from Canada), so they figured they'd just stay out until then. I didn't feel like leaving at that point, so I told them I'd stay as well and went back into the middle room to Natasha and friends. About an hour later, Anna had gotten up to go to the dance floor and she came back and told me that she didn't see Jon and Orin any more. In a little bit of a panic, I searched all the rooms in the club and couldn't find them anywhere. Needless to say, I was a bit worried. Notwithstanding the LEADER rule that no member should be alone during the training period, I was here in a strange country, a new town, with people I had never met before, at 4 in the morning, in a dance club, and I had to find my own way home, using cabs with drivers who would definitely be out to rip me off, if not worse. Thankfully, Natasha and Anna very kindly offered to go with me in a cab and drop me off at the apartment.
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Jon and Orin (with far too much vodka in their systems) had apparently forgotten that I was still at the club, and they decided they wanted some food. So they bought a bottle of vodka from the club and took off in search of a restaurant, where they managed to order "steak" without the use of an English menu or an English-speaking staff. After eating, they decided to WALK to the train station, which was a good 3-4 kilometers away. So they set off, drunk as a gourd, drinking more vodka along the way, in search of Sean. Unfortunately, the train was delayed an hour and they were in no shape to wait, so they hopped on a tram and headed home, woke up the security guard at the apartment gates, and attempted to wake up someone in the apartment to let them in. When they finally made it in, they entered my room and stood there laughing and giggling like little school girls, trying to explain that Gary and I had to go to the train station to meet Sean, and that they had been walking and drinking and throwing dirt at our windows. It was absolutely hysterical - they couldn't stop laughing and they couldn't even stand up; they both kept leaning against the walls and stumbling into each other. Finally, Jon just grabbed the blanket off me, said "good night" and stumbled off to the couch.
So off Gary and I went to the train station - Gary on about 90 minutes of sleep, and me on less than 30 minutes. We got there around 6:15 and tried to find out when the train was supposed to arrive. In typical Ukrainian fashion, we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone (this may have been due to language barriers, but I think they just didn't know). We couldn't even get a clear answer on when the train was originally supposed to have arrived, let alone how long it was delayed. Around 7:30, Vitaliy (the volunteer who had met us at the train station) showed up; he knew Sean was supposed to arrive that morning and had come to meet him. What an incredibly nice thing to do. We waited together until 10 AM, when the train FINALLY arrived....no Sean. So we turned around and went home, only to find Sean peacefully snoring on a couch in the living room, with Jon fast asleep on the other couch - with MY blanket!
©2004-2005 Kamal Gautam