A month in

A month in, and a bit more settled. Visits from David and Maggie, who both came bearing presents of olive oil and lokum! And of course catching up and good times. David and I spent a weekend in Lviv and also explored Kyiv. Maggie came for the bayram and we stayed in Kyiv, but saw quite a bit. Also managed to fill up a suitcase of decent wine and European cheese for her to bring back to Istanbul. I think this was a trip second only to the wonderful Indian (at Himalaya) we had our first night.

For those of you who are fans of David's photography, and I know there are quite a few of you out there, you can find his photos from the trip here. The Chernobyl album is here. I wanted to share one of my favorite of his pictures, taken on Andriyivskyi Uzviz in Kyiv:


There are so many things I like about this photograph. Most of all how it reminds me of seeing this couple at the time and thinking, "How ridiculously sweet..."

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This past week I attended an interesting conference titled "World War II and the (Re)Creation of Historical Memory in Contemporary Ukraine." Not in any way an area of expertise for me, so it was quite interesting to passively participate in. Also: Mariah Carey interference on my simultaneous translation device, reception at Polish Embassy, meeting academics at all levels of investment warning me about the dangers of graduate school, and all-night documentary film festival on Saturday. Unfortunately regarding the last item, I was not in attendance. Great idea, but I do think you'd need to be quite dedicated to not fall asleep just thinking about the following collection of words, all in one place: overnight. world war two. documentary. Shall I add: academics. Really, great idea though! I instead spent my Saturday night eating sushi, getting dragged to a place that some of us call the "underground military bar" (because it is actually underground, not because it is actually cool) to eat borsch and drink half a beer only to retire by 10.