The Ukrainian People

There are four kinds of people here that brought my attention a lot. The first is the old people. They dress, act and talk in what is obviously the old Eastern European ‘way’. I am not exactly sure how to describe this ‘way’ I am talking about, but if you saw it, you would recognize it. For example, older women tend to dress very conservatively, with dresses in dark colours, wearing dark nylons, flat shoes, and fuzzy sweaters, and covering their short hair with a bandana. BahBah is the typical example of a stereotypical Eastern European old lady.

Then there are the young people. They are sharp and trendy, and the women are ALWAYS dressed in what appears to be designer clothes! Seriously!! They wear as their everyday clothes the kind of stuff I would wear to go to a fancy club or party. It is very interesting. The men are usually a bit more relaxed when it comes to that, but still.

Middle-aged people fall somewhere in between, as it would be expected, with the women more on the trendy side and the men more on the traditional side.

Finally, there are the gypsies. No word of a lie. I guess these are just what we would call ‘poor people’ in Canada, but they have a certain negative stereotype associated with them. People consider them sneaky and sly… even the little ones!! They usually ask you for money, but I have been told not to give it to them and to keep my purse well on sight. I guess that is to be expected.

Aside from that, I noticed something very interesting about the way people relate to one another. Towards someone who looks as foreign as me, people tend to act kind of suspicious. However, between them the social conventions are quite relaxed. I was amazed at the fact that there seems to be a very low amount of rules when it comes to privacy. For instance, when Orest and I went to the hospital, we just walked around and about like nothing, and he knocked on doors that were clearly closed due to the hour (which was past office hours) and had no problem talking to the people there. In some ways there seems to be a lot less ‘red tape’ and strict security, as I mentioned before, when I talked about the airport. Moreover, everyone seems very familiar with each other, and they talk to one another as if they already knew each other. Yet, since this is a small town, everyone might as well actually know each other! Whenever Orest met someone he knew, they shook hands and then kept walking without stopping to talk.

There is a lot more I could say about the people here, but I think it is time to turn to the topic of food!