Chapter 18 – Staryi Saltov

Alexander – Александр – Alex – Саша (Sasha)
In Russian the diminutive for Alexander is Sasha, like in English it can refer to a person of female of male gender. In this case it is a male student of mine named Sasha. You may wonder why I chose to give you the etymology of the name instead of just telling you the story of Staryi Saltov, but you see it’s all about setting the mood… drawing you into this rather uneventful story… did it work? Well hopefully if you’re still reading thus far.

About two months ago I met Sasha when I visited his class (part of my role here as ‘native speaker’ is to visit other teachers’ classes and be an audio aid). After the class he and I started talking about international travel, student organizations, etc., exchanging phone numbers in the process. A few weeks later we met again randomly in the main park area behind Lenin (his statue that is). We spent about four hours talking and translating a Russian song into English. After that we started to met more frequently, he came over to my money-pit flat (the second flat I lived in, that is) and worked on my computer, since he’s a programmer here and knows his stuff. He also gave me some movies – American films dubbed, Dubbed! in Russian. I Hate dubbing but Russians Hate subtitles and therefore all movies are, sometimes half-assedly, dubbed into their preferred language.

Moving on, about a month later Sasha invited me to his birthday party at a lakeside resort called – dan da DA! – Staryi Saltov. Very popular with summer vacationers. I was one of a dozen privileged friends to make the hour long trek outside of Kharkov to a reserved old-school wooden cabin. There was my Sasha and his girlfriend Ira, his best friend, Sasha and girlfriend Katya, then another Sasha and his girlfriend Yulia and then Kostya and Natasha (can you tell the popular name here?!).

As the boys started gathering wood and setting up for the BBQ, Katya and I laid on the shore for a while soaking up the sun. The only problem with this idyllic scene is the fact that I have no shorts at all and was wearing long black pants on June 23rd in Ukriane (i.e. HOT). After a while however we headed back to the cabin and as everyone was gathering we ate, drank (yes, vodka was involved again) and were all very merry. The lingua franca was Russian, except for a few occasions when Sasha or some other of his friends wanted to practice their English and of course when Britney Spears was blasting on the stereo!

When the food was mostly finished and the drinks were running low the dancing started. I cannot lie, I took part in all aspects of Slavic birthday traditions from the insane number of vodka toasts (to your birthday, to life, to friendship, to drinking, to anything-so-long-as-we-have-booze!!) to the philosophical chats (conducted in Russian which raised my confidence in my language ability) to the crazy karaoke (which apparently is Very popular here) and the makeshift club dance party.

It was a damn good time until about 2am when my stomach, liver and kidneys all went on strike to protest my abuse of them. I couldn’t sleep (rather, I couldn’t lie down as the room would spin and stomach churn in a most horrible foreshadow of things to come … up that is). After drinking about a litre and a half by myself of water (which the boys pulled from a nearby spring) and about a half dozen trips to the loo (the bushes behind the cabin) I was eventually able to lay down without too much trouble. The next day came late and I felt like shit, understandably.

The one tradition which I tried and refused to finish was the Ukrainian Hangover Cure – after waking up, drink another beer in the morning and the pain and anguish will disappear. Yeah, right! I had about a sip of the beer Sasha opened for me and decided that was one custom I couldn’t hack. So it was back to the good old water and time prescription for me.

That day was spent recovering, sitting on the shore and dipping toes into the no-so-clean water, eating and chatting with some more friends who finally came by bus. We played some fun games, this time in English as the newcomer friends all spoke it proficiently. Also I went on my first catamaran ride on the lake! (Pictures to come, I Promise!!) It was fun except that my stomach was still teaching me a lesson by its protest and bobbing up and down on a lake wasn’t the best way to ingratiate myself to my knackered organ. Eventually the scary landlady pushed us off after yelling at us about the trash and state of the cabin (which was exactly the way we found it…) we left for the city once again.

This time the one guy with a car had left earlier in the day and the rest of us, six altogether, had to hitchhike our way home. I left that to Sasha as he negotiated a price with a random car that stopped by the road. (I love how you can get anything in this country if you just have money. Complete strangers will take you near to where you want for just about 20 gryvnia… aahhhh capitalism at its best.) Arriving back near the metro we finally parted and went our separate ways, Sasha and Ira off together and I to my home to rest for the remainder of the day and pray for a quick recovery, or if not quick at least full recovery. And yes, I did recover and haven’t touch vodka since… well maybe that’s not entirely the truth… but that’s another story for another time… stay tuned!