We (Michal, Elisabetta and Alena, Michal's sister) were with Brave-heart, professional from Turin who will never appear
in our photos because he has told us that he wants to be incognito! He will appear quite often in the story because we have a lot to tell about
him. Now I just say that he's an elegant, sportive, demanding (more with himself than with the others) 42 years old man, quite scared
by his adventure in looking for a wife: he will deny till the end his intention:
At the consulate they don't give us the visa: the consul is really kind, but he tells us that we can't obtain it in the same day, it was too
late.. So we have followed the established programm: we have taken in the car with us Roberto and Nicolò (both of them from Milan, they
would have come with us till Kijev) and Giuseppe, philosophy teacher from the middle of our country (he also was going to stop in Kijev).
In the meantime Michal has left us, because he had to go to Prague to ask for a new passport. ... he would have reached us at the first stage: Lvov.
With some luggage's problems (instead of the three previewed baggages, Brave-heart had three enourmous cases, 2x2 m), we leave from Milan and we
reach Cesare's camper in Brescia. He will follow us all the journey long.
Cesare is a 40 years old doctor from Piemonte. He's a nice, handsome, serious and very sportive man, who loves camper and canoe, in fact his car
is equipped as a camper, it's wonderful! And he has done everything on his own.. We will call it "Big Mother Cell".
Giorgio is a sweet architect from Liguria, and I don't exaggerate if I say that he's the sweetest person I've ever met. I think he's the only
one who has never argued with anybody, but at the same time he's nice, cheerful and autoironic, too. Speed is slow, but cheerful.
We arrive at 9 pm at Tarvisio, where Raimond is waiting for us. He's a philosophy student and a universitary assistant, for all the trip
everybody will call him Trostki, both for the hair, and for the conviction and the genuine speeches. With him there's Michele, druggist from the
South, who already know a lot of things about East Europe and he's quite sure about himself.
The car on which they travel is a Ford Fiesta, a little bit old. Raimondo is complaining about its cost, because he costed just two millions,
but he's paid a lot about the repairs, really much more!! Maybe it hasn't been an affair... Michele drives, cause he already know the
road. Raimondo can drive just since 7 months.
We travel all night long, with the men from Milan complaining because they wanted to go to sleep in the hotel. They didn't feel nice in the
back of the car, one of them wants to throw away crakers and melons (in his opinion they take too much place). With some argument we begin
speaking about politics. And we all fell tired and not so controlled. We laugh a little bit at the Austrian and Hungarian border: the policeman
tells me: We arrive in Budapest at 7 am in front at the Ukrajnian ambassy. We had to meet with the third car which arrived from Padua, with Francescoo, Leopoldo and Giuseppe.
Francesco is a very nice 40 years old man from Veneto, he's joined our Agency since quite a lot and now he's decided to find the right girl at
any cost... he wants her to be blond, slim, very beautiful and good.
[note: At the end Francesco has found his wife in this trip: in Volzhskij, and her name's Natalja]
He's a man with many surprises, when he's joined us in '95 he looked like Berlusconi, elegant, a little bit fat, short hair .... then the
metamorphosis: in two years he's became another person: now he's blond,
slim (he goes to the gym every day), he has black jeans, he travels by moto (is he a biker? also Brave-heart wants!) he goes to the gatherings
and he wants an always younger girl.
Leopoldo studies history in Verona, and he'll tell us important dates, places and secrets stories about the historical past of the countries
we'll visit. Unfortunately he
doesn't speak any foreign language and he doesn't want to meet any girl if she doesn't speak Italian; for this reason he won't be able to meet
at least the 90 per cent of the meetings and many times we'll talk with him, trying to change his opinions which, at the end, will remain always
the same.. .. According to the fact that he's a really balaced person (maybe the only one, if we don't consider the two men of the "Big Mother
Cell", who will always be apart from the group because of the speed of their car) and he never argues. The others have elected him the
ambassador of the group ...
Giuseppe is a very nice journalist.. He'll write the daily diary of the trip, and at every stop he'll read for us a part of it. Unfortunately he
has come with us just till Doneck, then he's decided to come back to Italy to work a little bit and not to lose too many days of vacation, to be
able to reach us later in Saint Petersburg, and go on with the trip ... some days later someone tells us he's at the seaside
(but.. what about his word?!?), that he's fallen on a rock and he's gone to the hospital, so he's not come back!
In Budapest the Ukrajnian ambassy confirms us that the passports will be ready at 4 pm! What can we do? We've got 8 free hours,
we divide: who wants to go to visit the city (almost everyone), who wants to repair the car (Raimondo with Michele go looking for someone to ask
to), who wants to sleep ...(we want to! Because the night before we've just worked all the time)
We can't sleep more than 2 hours: it's too hot and we're too worry for the trip.
At 5 pm the passports are ready, I have to send one of them to Bologna, cause Valerio has totake the plane for Kijev three days later, so we go looking for the post office at the airport.
Everybody's nervous: who wants to sleep in Budapest, who doesn't, in the meantime someone needs Michal, to speak in Russian at the phone, but
he's not with us, I speak Russian just a little bit, but I try ... we get it. Now Francesco and Giuseppe have a meeting for the following day in
Lvov, both of them with girls with whom they write letters, too.
We leave, we buy a lot of things along the road, it's really expensive: we spend 50.000 lire for a sandwich for each! (The
"Big Mother Cell" was already on the road for the Ukrajnian border)
In the middle of the route Michele would have leaved us: he had to meet a person with whom he had some business, but he would have reach us in
Lvov. Unfortunately he doesn't notice that the town with the strange name was already behind us, he wants to go back. Panic:
We arrive at the border at 3 am, we find the "Big Mother Cell" and we decide to sleep among all different kind of people... we are too tired!
At 5 am (2 hours later!) we decide to leave again (the man from Milan are more and more angry) and we go to the border: there begins something strange.
A young soldier, blond and who seems nice, come closer to use and, quite smiling (did he really smile?), he tells us in Russian and by gesture,
that he wouldn't have emptied and checked all the car if we paid ... The men tell me to pay, I don't want to
We pass the border just in three hours (incredible, but we didn't know that it was really fast for an east-country border). At 8 am we go on
travelling in Ukrajna.
We have to fill up. We find the service-station at once. There is a lot of people, the place is nice, clean After 50 km the cops stop the "Big Mother Cell" and they take a big ham and also a little bit of parmisan, Cesare
and Giorgio are speechless, but the journey goes on.
We reach Lvov at 7 pm, really tired. I don't know how I do, but I succeed in understanding what a kind cop answers me and we
reach the hotel in 5 minutes. (I had not asked informations to the policeman to know the direction to the hotel, but just not to take
another fine: in fact all the cars were in a one way road...)
The hotel is one of the most beautiful of the entire journey (and it's expensive, too! A double room costs 70 dollars, but I
don't sleep since two days, I'm really TOO tired, and I have also to unload all the things in the car ...).
The whole evening I try to contact Michal, who's still in Prague. I can't find him, I try to call him on the mobile by
night... nothing at all
(he should have already left). Then finally the following day he answers me and he tells me that he won't be able to arrive at
the first meeting: at the Polish-Ukrajnian border they don't have the vouchers Czechs need to pass, so he has to come back to
Slovakia and pass the border there.... Panic: I won't have a translater, and I won't have everything I should have for the
computer, the videocamera, the camera, too!
In the morning we find Renato in the hall of our hotel. He's a biology teacher -I don't know anybody who can speak so many
languages as he can: he can speak fluently English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Polish and others ... -. He's an
extravagant man, almost strange: when he came for the first time in my office I thought he was a homeless, so I had sent him
away. At that point he was just disappointed, but he told me that I had been honest because I didn't want to take his
money... I hadn't understood that he wanted to dress that way, it was a choice of life! In Lvov he just seemed a Russian man,
dressed a little bit badly... Anyway he's really kind and he helps me at the reception desk where I'm asking the number of the
Russian ambassy... We still need the visa!!!!
I and Alena go to the Ambassy, but it's closed. I pretend I don't understand and I try to explain in half Russian and
gestures, that we need visas. The boy I'm talking to, tells me I should talk to another man who seems to "know everything". This man says
to me that
In the meantime the men are in the hotel, excited. Francesco's happy: the previous night he's met a girl with whom he's being writing
since months. Also Giuseppe, who's found that the girl he was writing to since an year, is more beautiful live than in the photos.
At the meeting we find Ludmila, a really beautiful girl who lives in Lvov and who got married last year with one of our
clients. Now she's come back for a couple of days to visit her family: she can speak fluently Italian and she helps me
translating to the girl my preliminary speech: Michal is not with us yet, Alena can understand Russian, but she can't speak it
very well, I speak Russian, also if I can't, and people can understand really a few of what I wanna say...
Dining in the evening there are just Alena and I. We sit with Raimondo and he begins telling us something about his life,
really sad: he's lost both his parents, he has no more relatives alive, he's alone. He's a responsible, intelligent, determined
but also a really sincere and ingenuous boy. He's also really pure, and he's got no diplomacy and -as he says- people loves
him, or can't stand him. We spend time in an interesting way, sometime we peer in the table next to us, where there's Giuseppe, who
is dining with three girls who laugh and joke. At the end of the dinner Michal arrives -finally!- with his father, they're too
tired, so they eat something, they take a shower in our room and then they go to sleep in the car, each of them in his own: the
hotel is too expensive, the car is comfortable and nobody can steal it.
We leave for Kijev at 11 am, before we go taking the visas which have cost really too much. The men from Milan come no more
with us: they'll reach us in Kijev by plane, they didn't want to come in car with us anymore..... everybody has had
breakfast. We've been waiting 2 hours! Michele, Raimondo and Giuseppe, with the "Big Mother Cell", have left on their own, they
say I drive too fast for them. On the road there are a lot of monuments for the planes, the horses, the tanks, missiles...
On the borders of the road there are women selling fruits and vegetables of all kinds. We are too curious not to stop. We buy a
lot of
cucumbers and apples. Clients do the dongiovanni with the girls in the bars, kiosks and restaurants...
Along the road we meet some new friends...
We reach Kijev in the middle of the afternoon. But there's a problem: the entire city doesn't have any petrol. All way long
Michal didn't want to fill up, because he thought that in Kijev it would have cost less. Now everybody was angry with him. We
found it 30 km after Kijev on the way to Odessa.
We go to the Mir hotel and we take the rooms (not after having argued an hour for the price). Hotel Mir is really beautiful, in
the center of the city, just restructured. We meet another client who has to join meetings. He comes from Reggio Emilia, he's
travelled by plane. He works as beekeeper and he wanna find a beautiful girl who doesn't fear their stings...
We go in our room, unload the car and then we notice that there's no hot water! So we load up everything again (we have tried
to ask for a discount but we haven't succeed) and we go looking for another hotel. In the meanwhile Leopoldo forgets his shoes
, the elegant ones which he needed for the meeting (he will notice this fact just the following day). So 10 minutes before the beginning of the meeting we have to run untill the Mir just to take them...
We begin going round for hours, we ask for the way, we get angry, we discuss and after all we arrive in an open space where the
Dzhuljen hotel should be. In fact the hotel there is: we get off, and in a dark hall there's an only light behind the glasses
there there's written "Reception" in Russian. We knock... nobody. Two stair-doors -"Is there anybody? Yes?" ...abandoned. I
rise untill the first floor and there's a door with an enormous padlock. I go back to the reception, there the phone: very
well! We call the other hotels using this phone... I've got a Kijev guide with hotels and phones: we call the first one and a
girl answers, she begins to talk, we talk too, she hangs up, mistery. We try again and she hangs up again, mistery. No, we have
to pull "1" when she answers, but now she doesn't answer anymore...
Luckily someone arrives: two women are coming from the first floor, are they the receptionists? Yes! There are all the
rooms we need, double and everything, they cost about 23.000 lire for each... but how do they look like? We wanna see them. At
the second floor there's a little room as hall with 8 black men in it, they're tall 2 meters but they look peaceful. The rooms
are a little bit bleak, but they're clean. Finally here we are: we unload the car (every time is like a nightmare, because
we're full of things: books, depliants, photos and computers, monitors, lights, signboards, cables,
tripods, cameras, papers, suitcases, knapsacks, bags, maps, sleeping-bags, food supplies, toilet paper (in the hotels there was
only thin pasteboard. Brave-heart was not well, too:
with his knapsacks he seemed a white porter of an expedition on the Himalaja...
Then we go parking one of the cars in a kept parking, with the other one the all of us go to Mac
Donald's. Michal doens't, he goes buying something in a little shop. Then we go back to the hotel, we park our car, too. The
watchdogs attack us, one of them bites Michal. We are too tired and we go to sleep.
The following morning there's the meeting: we load up the car again, we run to go taking the shoes Leopoldo has forgotten and
then we reach the Culture Palace, where the meeting takes place. In the bar there's everybody, also th eones who have come by
plane: all of them are clean, happy, full od hopes.. The meeting won't disappoint them.
The second meeting: Kijev ...
This has really been the most beautiful meeting of our history, a part of some little drawback as an ukrajnian drunk boy who
wanted to beat me (but the administrators of the meeting-hall have taken him away..) and the unspeakable crowd (150 women in an
afternoon). I had to build something like a barrier of chairs around the computer table not to be submerged by the girls who
asked for informations...
At 6 am we wake up, then we wait 2 hours and a half because Leandro wants to go taking Valerio, who didn't know we should have
left at that hour, but he wants to go with Francesco because he doesn't want us to go away without them. So with the hostage he
goes away and leave us there waiting... We are really andry, but we smile as well in the photo in front of the hotel. Alena,
Brave-heart, "without face", with his girlfriend, Svetlana (who after some minutes goes away with a taxi), about whom he will
go on talking during the whole trip. Svetlana comes from Sumy, the previous day she had been travelling 9 hours by train to
come meeting him in Kijev ...
...then Leopoldo, with the gym shoes (not the meeting ones), Giuseppe (who is smoking the last but two cigarette because he
wanna stop smoking... will he succeed? I don't believe him anymore, anyway the cigarettes were always mine)
then Michal and I.
[note: Leandro has found his wife in this meeting: in Kijev, her name's Elena]
Valerio, ironic and sneaky, secure, nice. He lives in Bologna, but we know him quite well. He's hard to please: he's
already met, gone about and abandoned almost 6 or 7 girls, all of them very beautiful, really sweet, but not enough
housekeeper. I always tell him:
[note: Valerio has found his wife in this trip: in Kijev, her name's Elena]
He arrives with Leandro, not at all disturbed by our complaints: We leave, we have breakfast in a little kiosk on the way and then we go on and on.. Brave-heart groans: he misses his
girlfriend too much:
We stop in Uman, a little town which is a big market: carpets, candies, fruits and vegetables, flowers, cigarettes and false
icons. We buy something to eat. Someone discovers that the Russian for bread is "batòn" (it's not true, it's name's
xleb, but a certain kind of bread it's called like that) and from that moment everybody, in the bakeries, in the bars and in
the restaurants
We continue on the road: it's straight, under a strong sun, in the middle of an infinite country, it's too hot (we have
air-conditioned in our car, the others haven't but they bear). At 50 km from Odessa we fing the "Big Mother Cell" which was
arriving at the destination leaving two hours before us and going very slowly.
In Odessa we find a really great surprise: at a road block the cops ask us for 25 dollars for each to enter the city. We refuse
We arrive in Odessa in the middle of the afternoon, we've got some bags to give to the mother of a girl who got married in
Turin (medicines for the grand-father, oil..). Odessa is a beautiful city with wooded boulevards and a lot of cheerful
people. We find the street and the house at once (luckily); the mother is really kind and she wants to accompany us looking for
a hotel. She gets on the "Big Mother Cell" and she comes with us. Near the sea there are no more wooden boulevards but little
roads like in Liguria. There's also the tram, so it's very dangerous. Cesare and Giorgio go to a camping-site, we wanna go to
the seaside...
We begin looking for a way to reach the seaside. We park almost on the beach, we change and go swimming. Alena, Michal and I,
because the others don't want to: Giuseppe puts the costume on, but the water is too cold (9 degrees someone tells us.. can it
be? and he doen't go in. Brave-heart begins to look for his costume, but he doesn't know in which suitcase he shoul
look. Valerio walks along the beach with the hands in his pocket, Leandro cuts a melon, Leopoldo looks at the cars. We go
around on the dock. There are fishermen, noone takes a bath. It was really cold: the water has let us happy. We come
back. Brave-heart is still looking for the costume,
he's calling someone with his mobile, is he asking where he can find his costume? No, it's his friend who got married with a girl in Kijev, who suggests
him and other things.. In a few words he calls him everyday: in his opinion Brave-heart should come back to Kijev and marry
Svetlana (he has met her, too, and he says she's very good for our hero):
And now? Leandro doesn't have a valid visa for Russia and the following day he would like to go to the Russian Embassy in Odessa. Valerio,
who travels with Leandro, would like to be in Cherson the following day, in a nice hotel, because (I forgot to tell) Valerio
goes just in wonderful hotels, you see. The following day, istead, we'd like to go toward Cherson, but go to sleep before it,
because I think it's too tiring go until there. Francesco & "company" haven't got any problem, Leandro
decides: he doesn't go to Russia, he will reach us in Saint Petersburg, by plane. From that moment he will begin convincing
Giuseppe to follow him (after Doneck, last Ukrajnian stage) in the trip back to Kijev (not to be alone: Valerio has already
booked the plane Doneck/Bologna) and he'll succeed in it.
We leave. The road is beautiful, it goes nearby the seaside, the river, the swamps, there's no traffic at all. In the evening I
find on the left a nice kiosk. We stop and it seems to be in Texas! In the kiosk the light's green, there are flowers on the
walls and the chairs are made of black plastic. We take two or three tables together and the waiter goes on running backwards
and forwards. He tells us everything we can order and we're cheerful and full of hopes. Michal translates, we order. Someone
goes to the toilet washing his hands. In the wash-basin there are two dead black-beetles. Now we're less quiet. The plates
arrive, they look all the same dish, a little bit green, but it's the light's effect. This is without cream, this is with it,
but they are the same. This is the steak.. no.. the hamburger.. absolutely the same.. Water is salted.
It's important to talk about water. You can't drink the one from the tap so you can drink the one in the bottle or something
else. The one in the bottle sometimes is the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted, sometimes not. You can't know it before,
so who has not to drive drinks beer or Coca Cola, or orange juice.. and they are not the best thing to drink if you eat salad
with cream. However..
In Lvov the water we drank in the hotel was called Zachod, which is the Czech for "toilet". Alena has taken the tag to remember
it. She laughed.
We're dining. brave-heart is in incognito, obviously...
I come just to take pictures -this is a nice game -but what about a wife!, When I come back I'll buy a moto- I'm really fine like this-
I'm really happy I'm here, if I were alone I couldn't come .....
Dwo car?
No, not two cars, we're three
I answer, thinking that he was talking
about the group. No. dwo, your car?
He was asking me if the car was mine, but I didn't understand him!
Tuesday 3rd August
I - It's
useless for everybody to go back, we stop here and we wait for you
in the meantime, in the dark, just dogs the men from
Milan - we look for a hotel
they ALWAYS said so Raimondo - I don't drive, alone, coming back
Michele - Mrs, I told you the name of the town, why didn't you stop there?
I - why didn't YOU stop? I
can't remind that name more than 4 seconds!
Giuseppe - Well, ok.. I go with them, but wait for me, for sure?! My
place would be on your car, and what about the car breaks? Have you looked at this car? Can you assure me that you won't move from here??
I assure him, I'm too tired, and with the sound of the dog far from us, I sleep.. When they come back it seems that just 3 minutes
have passed...
Wednesday 4th August
he - 50 dollars-
I - no, 10-
he -no, 30-
I- 20, but for the 4
cars...-
.... ok!
I give him 20 dollars and I feel a worm... If Michal was here with us we wouldn't have
given anything, you have not to get scared and this behaviour of the policemen has to end. Then we have to pay a lot (they give us the receipt,
but was did we HAVE to?)
for the insurance (we already had it, everybody) for ecology, for the structures of the border... and in the meantime the soldier gets to take
20 dollars more from Raimondo who was the last of the queue
... there is no petrol?
Yes, there is, but there's no current and the pumps are out of work
...
We decide to go on looking for another service-station, the road is full of holes so we go reeeeally slow. We
find on but there's no petrol and current again... Finally Francesco fills up, but not with the petrol he needs. We find
gas-oil just after 20 km and we fill up, too. We go really slow, the road is not always full of holes but we're waiting for
them. Then we look around: not many cars, a lot of broken trucks, bicycles, people on foot, farmers, old tractors. The first
fine on the Carpathian Mountains: Francesco succeed in not taking it and he waits for us laughing. I succeed in not taking it,
too. That's just because I begin to argue in something like a mixture of Russian and Italian and also because I'm a woman (they
tell me to go away). In the meantime Raimondo comes closer to the group who is talkin to policemen, opening his wallet and
showing to the cops a lot of money. So the result is: 30 grivni (Ukrajnian Money) for each car...
Thursday 5th August
It's closed, tomorrow...
I, pretending not to understand this time too, go on saying:
I don't understand, I need visas, we're eight, Italians..
We go on like this for a while, then he
stops, 'cause he's tired to tell me it's closed, so he takes all the papers and he goes away. I wait for 1 hour. Then he comes
back and he asks me a huge sum of money for the visas, but they'll be ready for the following morning... Evviva!
Friday 6th August
in the photo on the left, from left to right: two girls and an old man from Ukrajna and I... in the photo on the right,
from left to right: Giuseppe between two ukrajnian girls who didn't want to let him go away anymore, an old man, I, Francesco and Leopoldo.
Saturday 7th August
At the end of the afternoon Pierluigi has reached us, a boy from Genoa who was visiting Ukrajna (after being in Latvia and
White Russian) alone. He wanted to meet some girls who had answered him in the previous months. We had organized the trip
toghether, while I was trying to hold back his optimism: for example he thought he could leave Kirovograd at 5pm to reach
Dnepropetrovsk in the same evening! He was happy of his journey and he told me everything about the various things which
were happened to him. He was really satisfied. We decided he would have wait the end of the meeting to go together to our hotel
(he wants to spend less, too). Unluckily we have lost him on the way (maybe because we were too tired, or because we were
chatting too much..). I noticed the fact while we were still in the center of the city, I've gone back at once, but he wasn't
there anymore! What a pity!
Sunday 8th August
You should go to a employment agency,
you are looking for a housekeeper, not a wife...
Nobody told me we should leave at 6
am!
Leandro: Certainly, it's all my fault. Ok,
you can get angry with me!
So at the end, they're always right...
I - in my opinion you should have stopped here, you could take her with us!
he-... oh.. and the meetings?!
... Human egoism! He doesn't get off (Michal thought he could get off and come back to his love) and he go on groaning,
sometimes he falls asleep I- Take car, with the seat belt you can hang yourself!
He - But
I don't sleep!...
From that moment, not to show he's sleeping, he will wear sunglasses and he'll pretend to be listening
to his walkman... but the head is suspended and we notice it. To spend the night with his girlfriend he has told Leopoldo to
sleep somewhere else. Leopoldo at the end has found another place bribing the waitress. He's not slept much this night, but he
doesn't want us to know it.
...batòn, batòn!
It seems to be in a school trip, with the children joking.
-"Don't pass"
we go back
you can't!
it seems to
be in the film with Troisi and Benigni: who are you, where are you going, what are you carrying, two pieces of
silver...
Troisi lets a bag fall and he goes taking it and they want him to pay another time. So some of us (the
others remain in the cars) go in the "office" where there's the boss (a female one) and we've began with our negotiations.
Francesco went on saying we didn't have money, I was angry for the abuse, because we had already paid for the visas and nobody
had told us we should have paid a fee in every city as well. The boss answered us that we should have paid just for Odessa and
the Crimea peninsula (now we know that it isn't true, someone has asked us money also for the Azov Sea and near Fodosija). We
have tried to briding her but at the end we have just obtained a discount: 12-5 dollars for each.
Marry her, now, go on
...and Brave-heart to us: but this man's crazy, he'd like to see me married and all, but it's not a simple thing,
I don't even know if I wanna do it, I wanna buy a motorbike, now I can join a gym, I can go with my bike.. and all.. You
know.. it's not easy ...
["and all" means other things I can't say because everybody could recognize who
Brave-heart is]).
to be continued ....