You look like a cucumber today.: Donbass Tour

I apologize for the lack of entries lately. ABC and scattered Internet connection have been my excuse for not writing. I've been jotting down in my notebook daily amusings that I'll hopefully compose during language camp this week.

After ABC I took a quick tour of the east to Lugansk and Donetsk, which comprise the "Donbass", the industrial and coal mining heart of Ukraine. Before arriving I assumed that it would be coal-dust covered with not so warm people, using the retold stereotypes. I was quite surprised at how beautiful the area was. Much like America's rustbelt, the Donbass has had a difficult time restructuring itself beyond energy and manufacturing. Factories have closed and oligarchs fail to invest in their properties. On the one hand, this causes unemployment. On the other, the environment is much cleaner. In fact, I found it much easier to breathe at my friend's site than at my own, perhaps because there isn't trash burning in the center or animal waste everywhere. I enjoyed the remnants of soviet planning of company towns and tried to imagine them at full capacity.

Being in the Donbass, I didn't feel like I was in the Ukraine I know. Lugansk is an 18 hour train ride away from Kyiv. The area is historically Russian and I heard very little Ukrainian on the street. I found it amusing that at the train station the map of routes didn't have a line dividing Ukraine and Russia, as though Ukraine is indeed part of Russia.

Ancient fertility goddesses found in the area displayed in the courtyard of Lugansk's pedagogical university.

I love the socialist sculptures.

Gas Lines to Russia

Me posing with one of the great tourist attractions of the east, a terakon. A massive hill of coal waste. They dot the countryside, forming alien landscapes.