When's the Last Time You Heard the Words "No Problem" in a Government Office in Ukraine?

I heard these words today from the lawyer at the local ZHEK office where my wife has to get some documents for her post-work permit registration. After much experience visiting various Ukrainian government offices, I have to admit I was stunned to hear this from the mouth of a Ukrainian bureaucrat. After 4 previous visits to the ZHEK for a precious stamp, I had been dreading this visit and envisioning a list of additional requirements whose fulfillment would be close to impossible by our document deadline.

Far more typical is a long, tense silence while the officer scours your documents looking for problems, then presents you a list of reasons why they can't do what you need them to do.

- "What is this here? How do you expect us to accept a form that's been copied upside-down on the reverse side?"

- "The rental contract has to have the ZHEK's round stamp and the director's signature. This rectangular stamp won't do."

- "Where's the xerox of the passport page with the most recent entry stamp?"

- "How am I supposed to know how to spell your name in Ukrainian? There should be an official translation with your passport."

- "How can I be sure that the foreigner really wants to be registered if she isn't even here?"

- "This tax statement is only valid for 30 days. It was issued 35 days ago."

- "I need you to write a statement (zayava or zayavlenie) stating what you're asking us to do."

3 out of 4 Ukrainian bureaucrats scowl, look depressed or angry, and just want you to leave them alone as soon as possible. 1 in 4 is serious, but friendly and not interested in asserting power over you, the visitor.

Who benefits from the Ukrainian bureaucratic machine?

The dizzying paperwork required for just about any legal activity in Ukraine creates a situation that favors two types of business activity:

1. Big business with budgets large enough to hire lawyers to solve all their legal issues using "all available means."
2. Individuals who work completely under the table

Everything in between these two extremes is punished in the Ukrainian legal machine. Small business development is weak because of the great obstacles to managing a business legally without lawyers and extensive government contacts. Potential entrepreneurs choose instead to join existing organizations and work for a salary because it's easier and safer than trying to build a business alone. Or they go completely underground and pretend to be jobless, but are then unable to grow their business and hire employees.

I think this legal system is a holdover from communism, where individual activity was made extremely difficult, and only large, government sanctioned organizations were able to legally get things done.

On Cafes and Culture

My wife and I visited Chernihiv this weekend, enjoyed the stately center, the ancient churches, autumn leaves, and peaceful atmosphere. It was chilly, so we dropped by a randomly selected cafe on the central street.

The cafe was called "Абажур" (Abazhur) and had a classy interior design, light colors, a high ceiling, a spacious feel despite the relatively small space, and classical music playing. The waitresses were wearing old-fashioned dresses reminiscent of the late 19th century, and the walls were lined with classic literature, mostly Russian and European.

Perhaps for the first time ever in Ukraine, we were in a cafe we truly enjoyed and felt comfortable in. In other cafes there's always something that bugs us -- tacky interiors, loud music, pop music, TV, crowded space, too dark, smoking allowed, etc. etc.

It occurred to me that I had never before heard classical music in a cafe in Ukraine. What a shame. Instead, music for public places in Ukraine is chosen based on the "least common denominator" principle. In other words, music is chosen that satisfies the tastes and expectations of the least sophisticated visitor.

Basically, nearly everywhere you go in Ukraine you must listen to music for young teenage girls -- unsophisticated, sexy, and pathetic pop. Baffingly, this is even what most minibus drivers turn on, and these are grown men who should be beyond girly teenage pop.

There are few places to go where you can enjoy more sophisticated tastes, aside from the local philharmonic hall. Older educated people say that the culture has degraded and that things used to be better. I wasn't around then, so I can't say for sure.

A few hours after leaving this unexpected cafe filled with sophisticated-looking people and reserved but charming waitresses, we took another break at a kiosk next to the park. We bought our MacCoffee and chocolate bar and sat down on plastic patio chairs underneath an open "Obolon Beer" cloth pavilion and sipped out of the plastic cup while trying to stay warm. A nearby speaker blared in-your-face teenage girl pop. We were back in the real Ukraine.

An Evening at the Kyiv National Philharmonic Hall

Walking by the Philharmonic hall one day (it's at the end of Khreschatyk Street if you walk towards the Dnipro River), my wife and I looked at the schedule and saw a concert we were interested in. I wrote down the number and called a few days later:

(044) 278-16-97

The tickets were all out, but the lady told me to call towards the evening (same day as the concert). I did so, and sure enough, two tickets had shown up. I reserved them by giving my last name and said I'd pick them up at 6:50 pm, 10 minutes before the concert.

When I arrived at 6:51, the lady had just given my tickets to someone else. My wife and I were in despair. "Let's go," she said, "there's no point in standing around here." But having spent most of my adult life in Eastern Europe, I felt that all was not yet lost. Maybe an usher would let us stand at the back of the balcony and listen?? We'd probably have to wait till after the concert began.

Wondering what to do, we stood near the entrance to the philharmonic hall and just watched people. Some were standing around waiting for dates. I was getting ready to start walking up to people and offer to buy their tickets when I saw that people were congregating around a lady in front of the entrance.

Sure enough, she was holding a bunch of tickets in her hands and selling them, apparently at the normal price. I quickly ran up, found out which tickets were cheapest, and stuffed a bill in her hand. We were in!

It's for things like this that I love Ukraine. There are always "options" ("всегда есть варианты"), and it's almost certain that if you really need something, there is a way to get it.

Not to mention that each ticket cost 35 UAH, or $4.50, for a 2.5 hour concert of classical music that culminated in a large choral and orchestral rendition of a Stravinsky piece. I wonder how much that would have cost in New York?

WizzAir Flights to Scandinavia

Ukraine's becoming closer and closer to Europe. With discount airline WizzAir now flying to a number of destinations around Europe, you can take a low-priced getaway and escape the Ukraine blues for a while. With some caveats, of course:

1. Buy your tickets well in advance for the best prices.
2. Take note to follow all the residency rules to the letter (namely, the notorious 90/180 rule for those without permanent residency, a work visa, or a student visa). They are likely to nab you at Boryspil and make you pay a fine or tempt you to give them a [word that starts with "b"] to avoid being delayed from your flight.
3. Do advance planning to avoid spending more money than you intend (this is western Europe, after all!). See my recommendations for Scandinavia below.

Flying to Norway or Sweden

Flights can be as little as 80-100 Euros if you buy them in advance. The Norway flight stops for the season on Sept. 12. You can take bikes for another 40 Euros.

For budget travel in Norway and Sweden -- two of the most expensive countries of the world --remember these key tips:

1. Camping is allowed on open land not used for agriculture, provided you do no harm.
2. Bring as much food from Ukraine as possible.
3. Buy train tickets in advance with a credit card and look for the "miniprice." You can save as much as 85% off the cost of a ticket.
4. Hitchhiking is possible and safe, outside of the major cities, particularly in the north.

In other words, if you go there as a shrewd backpacker, you can spend as little as 200 Euros on a 2 week trip, including plane tickets. Otherwise, get ready to shell out unheard-of sums for everything from accommodations to donuts and the right to pee in public facilities.

As a shrewd backpacker, I can recommend hiking the numerous mountain areas of southern and central Norway as well as hiking trails in the north, such as the famous "Kungsleden" in northern Sweden. I hiked the northernmost 180 km of it through the highest mountains of Sweden.

And here's what one might see while in Norway and Sweden (my pictures):

No More Immigration Cards at Ukraine Border Crossings?

I just returned from a trip to Norway and Sweden and was met with a surprise in the Boryspil airport, which is not surprising since it's always full of surprises. No more immigration cards to fill out upon entering the country!

The border official instead asked me where and with whom I would be staying. I could not tell if she was entering it into the computer or not. She confirmed that immigration cards were not being required here anymore, but wasn't sure it was a permanent change. I kind of suspect it is, since any decision to stop issuing immigration cards requires a corresponding decision to stop requesting them upon departure at every border crossing in Ukraine. This requires top-level planning and establishing a new procedure for entering information in the computer as opposed to storing torn-off scraps of paper somewhere.

At least I'd like to think this is the case and that this isn't something Boryspil airport started doing because their xerox stopped working and they ran out of immigration cards the day I flew in.

UPDATE SEPT. 20, 2010:

We just had a couchsurfer from Moscow at our home. He had to fill out an immigration card at the border. Oh well. So much for consistency of implementation!

UPDATE DECEMBER 2010:

From the news coming in from many different expats it seems that the scrap-paper immigration cards have finally been scrapped for good. Hooray! 

LDS (Mormon) Temple Opened in Kiev

For several years Kievites have been wondering, "what's that tall white building being built over there on the Okruzhnaya Road?" Well, now we know. It's a Mormon (LDS) temple, the first of its kind not only in Ukraine, but in all the former Soviet Union.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, claims 10,000 members in Ukraine after nearly 20 years of proselyting activity. There are some 13 million or so Mormons around the world with roughly 1 temple per 100,000 members (so ~130 temples). So now, instead of traveling to Germany (a little perk of membership) for temple service, LDS church members in the region will stay a bit closer to home.

The temple is highly visible right next to the Okruzhnaya Road on the southwest edge of Kiev. It had its public open house in August and from now on will only be accessible to church members with special passes. Regular Sunday worship meetings are held in chapels, which are open to the general public.

Other public activities held by Ukrainian Mormons include English conversation classes led by foreign missionaries, mostly from the U.S. Many students of English in Kiev have heard of or even attended these classes. They say they consist of general conversation by untrained teachers who tend to be replaced sooner than you can get to know them, followed by a brief proselytizing spiel. But they are free of cost.

I toured the temple during its open house along with hundreds or thousands of other Kievites and was impressed with the interior. I'm fairly sure it could be put in the top 100 buildings of Ukraine in terms of quality and neatness of interior design.

The landscaping was distinctly American / Western European, with a thick mat of uniformly trimmed bright green grass. "It's artificial," said someone who had never seen a proper lawn before. "No, it's real," I explained, a lawn expert by virtue of my U.S. citizenship.

Geography Lesson: Why Ukraine is Better than Russia

I spent nearly two years living in Russia and enjoy the culture, language, and geography. But I have recently come to realize that it has some drawbacks that put major limits on the quality of life. By far the greatest drawback is climate.

The vast majority of Russia is so cold that a huge percentage -- roughly one half -- of all energy expenditures is wasted on heating. Instead of using energy to produce goods and services to improve the quality of life, Russians use it just to keep warm.

With few exceptions, heat is generated through the combustion of fossil fuels. Before fossil fuels had become widely available, Russia was a miserable place to live for all but the 5% of society who were aristocracy and government workers. Russian peasants across most of Russia lived in abject poverty, barely able to scrape by in the harsh climate and poor agricultural conditions.

This was not because the country lacked democracy and a free market economy, but because the climate didn't allow people living on the land to build up surpluses and engage in trade and other nonessential activities.

Today, the cost of heating and maintaining infrastructure over enormous distances puts added costs onto many goods and services -- for instance, transportation. Train travel in Russia is 2 to 3 times more expensive than in Ukraine. And yet, except for a few cities in European Russia, people are just as poor as in Ukraine (or poorer).

Many people in the outskirts are effectively stuck where they are, unable to travel further than an occasional short trip by train to the nearest city. Some visas for international travel can only be obtained at consulates and embassies located in Moscow or St. Petersburg, which are a prohibitively expensive trip away. Flights are expensive, and train travel is expensive and takes forever.

Without fossil fuels and other natural resources to exploit, most of Russia would suffer a catastrophic loss in standard of living. As global temperatures rise, primarily affecting arctic regions, Russia stands to gain a lot of effective territory and be able to spend less energy trying to keep things warm and liveable for its inhabitants. Global Warming is good news for Russia.

In Ukraine life was never so hard. The comparatively cold, continental climate kept European-like urban development from occuring over much of the country. Most people lived as peasants with too little surplus to allow for the creation of large towns. But life in the countryside was rarely so difficult -- thanks to a warmer climate and better soils -- that people and livestock were constantly on the verge of starving to death and had no time to do anything other than subsistence agriculture.

With train travel comparatively inexpensive and southern lands quite close, Ukrainians can more easily take vacations to places like Crimea, Bulgaria, and Croatia, which are all a day's trip away. Europe with its culture and history is just a stone's throw away, and many Ukrainians have been to Poland at the very least, if not further west.

Ukraine is also dependent upon coal and gas for heating. But if these were taken away, people would have a place to go -- back to the countryside. Wood might soon be in short supply, but cold spells are shorter and less severe, and the warm growing season quite a bit longer, than in most of Russia.

From a climatic and geographical standpoint, the most favorable areas in Ukraine for living are probably Transcarpathia, Galicia, and Bukovina -- all in western Ukraine, which has a milder and somewhat moister climate. It's no surprise that these areas developed an urban culture similar to that of central Europe.

To these we might add the Crimean foothills and coast -- another area with quite a bit of development historically, though little connected with far western Ukraine.

Even sandy, chilly Kiev is in a better location with better climate specs than the Russian capital, Moscow, although still somewhat cut off from the civilized world.

By choosing Ukraine (if one has a choice at all), your putting your bets with a place that, for geographical and climatic reasons, historically has tended to have a better standard of living than Russia.

Is Getting a Work Permit in Ukraine Worth It?

Sometimes my wife and I ask ourselves this. By the time we finally get her temporary residency permit in a few weeks, it will have been a full six months since we sat down with her employer and discussed the steps we would take to get her legally employed at their company. Mind you, work permits are only issued for a year, so I guess that means 6 months out of each year will be spent moving documents from place to place and wondering what the outcome will be.

Her employer took on most of the work, but some things we had to do ourselves. I can't imagine a foreigner who is not fluent in Russian/Ukrainian being able to complete the process without breaking down and paying a lawyer upwards of 500 Euro to take care of [much of] the work.

But receiving a work permit is just the first -- albeit most critical -- part of a three-stage process:

1. obtain work permit (no small feat)
2. obtain visa (take trip to Ukrainian consulate abroad)
3. obtain temporary residency in Ukraine

The third stage turned out to be surprisingly difficult. It's more than the usual visit to the ZHEK for an OVIR registration. You need to get statements from everyone registered at your address of registration, AIDS and tuberculosis medical tests, and a statement from the tax office on your employer that takes 10 working days to issue. I figure that by the time we get this all done I will have been to the Kiev OVIR 8 times.

Most landlords are understandably not interested in registering anyone at their apartment, even temporarily. It's more work for them, potential problems with the ZHEK, and increased utilities payments as well as taxes (there's a 15% income tax on rental income). Even if they agree to this, expect to foot the bill for taxes and utilities. This step can be so much of a problem that apartment rental agencies will take care of all this for you for a modest fee of... $1200 USD. That just goes to show how hard it is to get a landlord to go with you to the ZHEK.

Soon this process will finally be over... for the next 6 or 7 months, at least. I'm sure over 100 man hours will have been spent if you consider the time my wife's employer spent preparing and submitting documents, our trips to the Krakow consulate along with the innumerable trips here and there across Kiev to submit documents for police clearance certificates and then pick them up, getting a taxpayer's code, and all the rest.

Smoke and Wildfires in Ukraine

We've been hearing for a while about the terrible wildfires in Russia due to unprecedented hot and dry weather. This morning Kiev woke up to a smokey haze enshrouding the entire city. Reports say the smoke is from burning peat about 20 km from Kiev or from a fire near Irpen (to the northeast of Kiev) and is not from the much larger fires in Russia.

It is possible, even probable, that more fires will erupt in Ukraine in the coming week. Temperatures are expected to reach record levels at near 40 C (104 F) over much of the country on Wednesday and Thursday and remain high for many days after that, with no major precipitation in sight.

Much of Kiev is surrounded by pine forests that are frequented by picnickers who love to light fires and make shish-kabobs. Some of these people don't put out their fires completely before abandoning them (often with a few more bottles and plastic dishes spread around). All it takes is a hot wind to cause a wildfire. Right now the woods are dry, and fire danger levels will rise to "extreme" later this week.

Possible changes in Ukraine's landscape due to Global Warming

Climate scientists expect summers like this to become more common as the planet warms. Climate zones will shift northward, with Kiev becoming more like Kirovohrad (a city several hundred kilometers to the south), and Kirovohrad becoming more like Kherson (even further south).

This means that the boundary of steppe and forest will probably also shift north. How this will probably happen is that forests at the southern edge of the forested zone will become increasingly drier and susceptible to forest fires. They will start going up in flames and will simply not grow back. Instead, there will be grasses and shrubs with frequent fires in the hot and dry summer season leaving no chance for forests to develop.

UPDATE AUG. 13, 2010

The situation has not changed. There is still a light smokey haze above the city. Nothing like Moscow, but enough to make being outside less pleasant. Temperatures are forecasted to drop in a week, after many weeks of uncommon heat.

See: Current Weather around Ukraine at TryUkraine.com

Cord Adaptors for Use in Ukraine

If you have any electronics from the United States, you'll need to pick up a cord / outlet adaptor for use in Ukraine. These are easy to find in many underground passageways adjacent to metro stations.

Here is a sampling of the adaptors available:

You'll want to get only the one on the left. The others all have smaller prong diameters and will wiggle around in the outlet, giving you an unstable power connection. You'll come to hate them (trust me). I don't know what they are for if they work so poorly.

The one on the left fits snugly in any outlet and costs approximately 12 UAH.