Tuesday, September 11, 2012

RC#62: Nostalgia lane


published in Eastern Economist #453, October 8, 2002
This column is only for those who have spent at least 10 years in the region. The rest of you will only feel disoriented as you wind through this strange excursion.
            The other day, my cleaning lady brought over a ‘dozen’ eggs. I say ‘dozen’ although, in fact, everything here is metric, so eggs come in sets of 10, not 12.
            Ever since I came here, the standard way to buy eggs in Ukraine has been to tell the saleslady (believe it or not, in all these years, I haven’t ever seen a man selling behind the counter in a grocery store) how much you want. She then counted them and carefully packed them, one by one.
            Used to be that she would make a cone of stiff paper and carefully place the 10 eggs in there, then fold over the top, so they didn’t fall out. You then had to carefully place this paper cone with 10 fresh eggs somewhere safe among your groceries. More often than not, you got home to find one egg cracked and leaking.
            When plastic bags became fairly common, the ladies started packing eggs in small-sized transparent bags and tying them up. You still had to place them very gingerly on top of all your other groceries and pray nothing smooshed them before you got home.
            Yes, you could buy eggs in carton. You just had to buy 30 or 40 and then they were literally sandwiched between two flats and tied with string. The only manufactured “egg purses” – hard plastic egg cartons complete with snaps and handles – were generally for 5x6 eggs. 30-40 was enough to last me three-four months, so I never used the cumbersome thing.
            This time, my eggs were in a carton. Not a 5x6 monster, not two carton layers wrapped in string. A nice factory-made carton. Not paper or polystyrene. It was a light plastic, transparent egg carton with a colorful professional label. It even snapped shut neatly. Reusable. Moreover, each egg was quality stamped.
            It got me to thinking of the things that have changed most radically. (Remember, this is nostalgia time. No politics.)
            Packaging is a big one.
            Gone, for the most part, are the soviet one-style-suits-all jars with the separate plastic lids that also came in two standard sizes that would fit anything from a 250 ml jar to a 5-liter one. The good thing about these jars was that they were recycled.
            Gone, mostly, too, are the metal lids that had to be pried off very, very carefully, then tossed and replaced by the standard plastic ones.
            Service is another.
            The first time I drove around Kyiv, back in 1992, it was like being in a low-grade spy movie just to get gasoline. Les, the man who was showing me around, would drive along some main road until he saw a few men lingering around a battered-looking truck. He’d then jump out, grab a jerrycan and go over to them. They’d negotiate a little, gesturing at the car and at the truck.
            Sometimes there’d just be a chorus of shrugs and he would come back, disgruntled. Other times, a wad of bills would cross hands and he’d come back with five or ten liters of gas for the car.
            “Don’t you have any gas stations here?” I asked him.
            “Not any more. They’re all shut down. Deficit.”
            Les was also very cagey about just how he knew where to get gas and how he determined a fair price.
            Later, when I started living in Kyiv, I noticed that there really wasn’t anything resembling gas stations, operating or abandoned. Occasionally, you could see a shack with one or two WWII-issue pumps nearby.
            About four years ago, it all started to change. First one station, then two. Then, about two years ago, a dozen chains with unfamiliar names (other than BP out by Boryspil) began sprouting gas stations across the country like mushrooms after the rain.
            Now you can whizz into a spiffy hi-tech, white-tiled gas station, have a coffee while a guy in uniform fills your tank, and sometimes even pay for it all on a credit card. It’s almost too easy, really. Takes the adventure out of travelling in Ukraine, if you ask me.
            Vocabulary has changed, too.
            The word “deficit,” meaning shortage, was probably the most popular word in Ukraine in the early and mid-nineties. That’s because the soviet system had its own “peculiarities.” (Another popular word that was essentially an excuse to do things your own way no matter what the rest of the world thought or said. The great conscience-salving term of all times.)
            The “peculiarity” of selling was that everything went to the saleslady’s buddies, relatives, in-laws and so on, first. Only then (if there was really no other option, such as shutting down for technical breaks, lunch or inventorization or chit-chatting with your fellow saleslady, your back implacably towards the counter and any customers, for 40 minutes) to customers off the street. That meant that mostly everything was “in deficit” most of the time.
            Supermarkets have taken care of that, much like the spiffy gas stations.
            “Chornobyl” also cropped up in conversation, as predictably as the word “can’t.” As in, “My kid has a sore throat and can’t go to school. It’s Chornobyl.” Or, “I can’t figure out how to do this math problem. Must be Chornobyl.”
            In the last few years, even before the 3rd block was shut down in 2000, the word “Chornobyl” seems to have disappeared from the vocabulary of most people. Children no longer look so sallow. They even seem to like going to school. And adults no longer bellyache about their health from dawn till dusk.
            Maybe in another 10 years, Ukrainians will also look back on all this with simple nostalgia… •

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