So, we recently had our spring break (which for my group is the last time we can really leave the country without a work excuse). I took the chance to go visit a friend, Sarah, in Ukraine. She had been a volunteer in my group but went home in the spring of last year and found a job teaching English in Kiev. We like to consider ourselves travel warriors, and I think we earned our stripes on this trip...
I arrived on Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon we caught a train from Kiev to Sevastopol, Crimea. The train ride was 19 hours, made better only by the fact we had beds in a 4-person compartment complete with sheets and tea service. We got to Crimea early Monday morning, found a hotel, and deposited our stuff before heading out to find a bus to Balaklava, a little town near Sevastopol that has an old Soviet nuclear submarine factory hidden in surrounding caves. It was while trying to find a boatride over to this factory that I realized I no longer had my wallet. Someone had stolen it, and with it $200 in Ukrainian grivna, my Bulgarian ID card, my Peace Corps ID card, our return train tickets, my only American debit card and credit card, my Bulgarian bank card, my return flight info, and most fatally, my passport. I had no money, no identification documents. Plus, in Ukraine, you need a passport to even by a train ticket, and I was as far from the American Embassy as one could be in Ukraine. In short, I was screwed.
Luckily I had Sarah, who had money and a Russian dictionary. We hightailed it back to Sevastopol, back to our hotel, and I emailed everyone in the PC Bulgaria office I could think of with my hotel phone number. Within half an hour, Sergei (the Safety Director of PC Ukraine) was on the line, arranging for me to meet with two volunteers in Sevastopol to go to the police station and report the crime. They were very new volunteers and barely knew Russian, but between my Bulgarian and amazing charades ability, we managed to get the job done and I was able to use the document to buy a train ticket for the next night.
Determined to enjoy Crimea while we were there, we spent the next day wandering Sevastopol, a wicked cool city with CRAZY Soviet military memorials (there is still a fleet of Russian Navy stationed there). Sarah and I are both avid lovers of Soviet military art, so we were in heaven. As evening rolled in, we caught our second 19-hour train ride in two days and headed back to Kiev to deal with "the situation."
When we got home the following afternoon, I had an email from Sergei...All it said was, "Your documents seem to be found. Call me immediately." After a small freak out, I called him and he told me to come to PC Ukraine office to discuss it. Once there, he explained that someone had called the American Embassy to report that he had found my passport, but he "seemed reluctant to hand it over to the police" in Crimea. According to Sergei, this guy wanted a bribe, which is against PC policy. He said that we would just have to try and convince the guy to go to the police and hand in the wallet. He set me up an appointment at the embassy on Friday (this was Wednesday), and told me to sit tight until then. Meanwhile, the president disbanded the parliment and there were protests everywhere, so we were told to keep a low profile and stay away from crowds.
Also, mom and dad managed to Western Union me some money, so that made me happy.
So, Sarah and I took in the sites of Kiev. There are some amazingly beautiful churches, as well as amazingly hideous statues of dead people. The most stunning statue sits on top of the "Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WWII)" and is called "Rodina Mat" (Motherland). She is sort of the Soviet Statue of Liberty, only she's tin, muscular like a bodybuilder, holding a shield with a hammer and sickle in one hand and a sword in the other, and is just hideous. We also went to this monastery where a bunch of monks lived in caves and died there and now they are put in glass coffins lining the walls of the cave...Tourism in Ukraine truly is bizzare.
On Friday morning I prepared myself to get a new passport...I had photos taken, I put $100 in my wallet, and we headed to the PC office. Serei wasn't there, but "my case" as they called it, had been handed to his assistant, Andrei. Andrei came out with the news that the man in Crimea who had my wallet was in fact a border guard, and since there is some sort of hostility between border guards and the regular Crimean police, he refused to hand my wallet over to them. He wanted to use "his channels." He said he had given my wallet to a colleague who was leaving for Kiev, and that it would be waiting at the embassy for me by 9am. We called the embassy, but no wallet. Andrei sent Sarah and I to the lounge to wait, and we waited.
At 1pm, precisely one hour before my appointment at the embassy, Andrei came to find us. The wallet was at the Borisopol airport outside of Kiev. In a PC van, Sarah and I made our way out to the airport, met with a security guard, and retrieved my debit and credit cards, my Bulgarian and PC IDs, my return flight info, and most importantly, my passport. This was Good Friday, and I call it my Good Friday miracle.
That night we met with some friends and celebrated. On Saturday we went to Chernobyl, which I might write about at some later date. For now, I would like to close saying when you travel in Ukraine, WATCH YOUR BACK.
