Family Trip
Remember the days before the pandemic? Our family hasn’t traveled abroad in over a year, but in 2019 we spent two weeks in Ukraine.
My wife Laura and I live in Dubai with our two daughters — Valentina (6) and Chiara (3). My wife is from Mexico City and her grandfather, Moses, fled Ukraine in the 1920’s with Trotsky during the pogroms. He traveled to Brazil, made his way up the coast with the intention of immigrating to America, but stopped in Mexico and never left. These are strange days for me — an American married to a Mexican raising children in the Middle East.
My father-in-law, Moses Jr., was celebrating his 75th birthday and wanted to explore his family roots outside Kiev. Maybe there were remnants of his heritage — a temple, plaque, even a gravestone to bear witness to his ancestors.
The first thing I learned from the Internet was no one in Ukraine speaks English. I prepared for this with a cursory glance at the Cyrillic alphabet, followed by a prompt downloading of Google Translate.
I discovered next that taxi drivers were devious and public transportation unreliable. There would be seven of us, with multiple bags, so we would need at least two phones with ride-sharing abilities. I downloaded the Uber app (I had never used it) and installed it on my phone.
Before I had children, I fantasized about taking my kids on road trips, zigzagging across the countryside, stopping at gas stations to pick up invisible ink books to fill in as we sang Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall and held our breath past cemeteries. Maybe those activities still exist, but as older parents with young kids in Dubai, our faith is placed in iPads, which we thrust into our children’s tiny palms with hardly a qualm, for as long as the batteries last.
This trip, we had plenty of Peppa Pig and Puffin Rock for the three year-old, along with a smattering of Baby Shark. For the five year-old, we loaded Odd Bods (my favorite), a few select PJ Masks, and for emergencies, King Kong, Skull Island, which I had inadvertently left on an iPad but discovered had a profound quieting affect on both kids — the youngest referring to it excitedly as “Angry Monkey!” I’m aware it’s not age-appropriate but I’ll make sure there’s money for therapy in the will.
Gone are the days of carrying a couple Band-Aids and some Advil in my change pocket. With the first child we flew with a basic kit, but these days we bring it all: liquid-Tylenol (and Ibuprofen, in case you have to alternate) nasal spray, changing bag with nappies, extra clothes, antibiotics, probiotics for the antibiotics, two thermometers, regular wipes, disinfectant wipes, and the obligatory Benadryl in case of a bee sting (or if you wanted to risk anesthetizing a child for a long flight).
Checklists complete, we packed our remaining bags, figured out snacks for the next day’s trip and sat down for dinner. My wife noticed our three year-old seemed grumpy and warm to the touch. We took her temperature and decided on a quick trip to the pediatrician. The flight was early next morning.
Our regular pediatrician was across town at The American Hospital, but they’re closed on Fridays. Luckily, in Dubai, medical care is big business and you can find a doctor within stroller-distance of most locations. We found a pediatrician across the park and wheeled the young one over. Forty-five minutes, a throat check and blood test later, we were assured Chiara had a virus and it would clear up on its own with fever management and plenty of fluids.
In the morning we were ready to go. We’ve gotten pretty good at these family trips, having traveled with one or both kids to New York, London, Lisbon, Athens, Bucharest, Amman, and Mexico City — mostly without incident. (Ask me about rotavirus in an attic hotel room with a baby in Istanbul another time.)
A light breakfast and a call to Uber and we were off to the airport. We arrived at Departures, cruised through the sliding doors with our trolley and searched for our airline, which we could not find. I had Googled which terminal our flight originated from and of course the Internet lied.
If you inadvertently arrive at the wrong terminal in most airports, you’ll soon discover the arrival and departure zones have rules. Foolishly optimistic, I swiftly wheeled our bags back out the sliding doors to flag down a taxi.
Simple enough, I thought. What could be more convenient than desperately needing a taxi and finding yourself in a drop off zone overflowing with empty taxis?
“Sorry,” the first driver explained. “Only drop-off.”
“No pickup, sir,” the second.
Sweating in the Dubai morning humidity, I walked over to an Uber driver (or maybe someone’s uncle, about to leave) in a black Lexus, prepared to pay whatever he asked.
“Can’t do it. I’ll get a ticket.”
Fuming, I directed the family back inside and wheeled our luggage over to one of those eternally smiling airport greeters. I asked where we could get a taxi to the other terminal and she pulled one of those I don’t really know but I’ll point in a general direction anyway deals.
In Dubai, service-sector employees often exhibit a frustrating combination of polite confidence, little knowledge and a total disregard for the value of precise direction. In the supermarket, for example, if you ask the person with the How Can I Help You? T-shirt where the paper towels are, instead of describing the section and aisle number, they will simply stand up and point to a general area over your shoulder. Those paper towels could be ten meters away or one hundred — but in their mind, somewhere over there, is precise enough. Two escalators, an avenue crossing and an elevator-up-and-down later, we were in another taxi on the way to our second terminal.
As I was trying to keep my cool, our youngest child was heating up. Chiara’s fever had returned and Laura was applying a wet-wipe to her forehead and burning precious battery life on Peppa Pig. Mercifully, the traffic was light and we made it over quickly, unloading the luggage and stroller (again) and wheeling our way toward wheels-up.
The security line was the usual; with stroller folding, iPad extraction, belt-removal, child herding, wand waving (and beeping), carry-on emptying (baby food squeezies, water bottles, medicines) and a quick pause for two spoons of Ibuprofen.
Even after living in the UAE for years, I find passport control intimidating. The agents are all Emirati men in their Kanduras, and though most are pleasant and some even smile, unless your Arabic is excellent, one often has the feeling they’re having a surreptitious conversation about you. It’s inevitable to feel this way, as it’s their country and you’re only passing through, no matter how long you’ve lived there. (Foreign nationals, even children like ours who were born here, cannot gain citizenship.) At passport control, you are literally passing through, and rarely are the existential givens of one’s personal transience more apparent.
Still, we’ve crossed many times without a hitch, so we approached the desk with confidence. We still had time to make the plane and were looking forward to a few minutes in the airport lounge to grab a juice and catch our breath.
Living as expats in the UAE has had its pluses and minuses. A major downside has been the overwhelming bureaucracy, an unfortunate British legacy. The paperwork began before our first child’s birth, with the submission of our marriage licenses (and a notarized certificate of divorce from New York State, in my case) — followed by several trips to municipal offices for the UAE birth certificate, which then had to be translated at an official typing center from Arabic to English and Spanish, then on to the U.S. Consulate and Mexican embassy for the Certificates of Birth Abroad, both of which required official translations to Arabic. The passports came next, followed by applications for Emirates National Identification cards (for each family member, which required a mandatory chest X-ray for TB and a blood test), residency visas and sponsorships, work permits, notarized tenancy contracts, non-objection certificates (NOC’s), along with the usual car registrations, school enrollments, vaccinations, non-Muslim alcohol licenses, et cetera.
Considering all this, perhaps it should not have come as a surprise when the passport control officer explained that Valentina’s visa had expired. (Turning five, she had recently received her new passport but her residency visa was on the old one and we had forgotten.)
Luckily, and I guess unsurprisingly, considering the UAE population is 85% expatriates, the passport control officer said this happens all the time. He directed us to one of those airport interrogation rooms with the blinds drawn that you hope you’ll never find out what goes on in. We sat down and began the process of officially cancelling her residency status. Upon our return, the officer explained, she would enter the country as a tourist on a thirty-day holiday visa. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, scrambled back through passport control, security, and on to our gate.
Chiara’s temperature was rising so we gave her more medicine and a quesadilla we brought from home, which she ate, cheerfully. Our hope was the fever would abate for the six-hour flight to Kiev. Unfortunately, we had to take an endless shuttle bus ride before boarding and sat on the runway in a hot cabin for another hour. Finally, iPads in hand, we took to the air.
Once the seat belt light pinged off, I took a quick trip to the bathroom. Each lavatory remained occupied for at least ten minutes. I asked the steward what was going on so he knocked. After no response, he joked that perhaps one of the guys inside was “doing the big one.” Groaning, I looked back up the aisle but it was too far. I hoped Laura and the kids were okay.
I got back and found my wife covered in barf. Our feverish three year-old had had enough of the stale air and jettison-vomited (including on the gentleman in the window seat). I flew into damage control with wet-wipes and a change of clothes and held Chiara in the aisle. I prepared to rinse her mouth, but using those fancy kids’ water bottles, you have to remember to loosen the bigger screw cap before flipping the rubber nipple open. If you fail to take this step at 37,000 feet, the result is a cabin-pressurized jet stream, sufficient to soak everyone within a six-seat radius. Stunned passengers wiped their faces and hair. I muttered something like, “Don’t worry, it’s only water,” but everyone had seen it was lukewarm backwash from a sick toddler. If we were curious about the best kid-friendly restaurant in Kiev, we were going to have to find somewhere else to ask.
We changed Chiara’s clothes and a stewardess swapped out the seat-cover while I did my best to calm the child. Barfing is traumatic, but particularly so for three year-olds, since they understand just enough to know it really sucks, but not enough to understand why it’s happening to them. As if to drive this point home, forty minutes later Chiara did a repeat performance on me. I managed to catch most of the Ibuprofen-infused milk down my V-neck undershirt, which, mercifully, was white. Down to our last change of clothes, we cleaned up the best we could and prayed for the plane to land on time, which it did.
The passport control area in Kiev was smooth. Once they saw we had small children, they waived us to the front of the line, which I appreciated. Some countries do this and others do not. In Lisbon, Bucharest, Vienna, Athens, Mexico City and Istanbul, they usher pregnant mothers and people with small children to the front of the line. It’s a lovely way to be greeted in a new land and something you never forget. In Dubai they provide complimentary strollers.
We collected our luggage, checked Chiara’s temperature, and met up with our AirBnB host, Valerio, who had volunteered to drive. We wheeled our bags to the parking garage and piled into his beat-up SUV. Valerio seemed nice enough and spoke English fairly well, which was a pleasant surprise.
What Valerio demonstrated in lingual skill, however, was soon neutralized by his driving style. You know those people who drive extra slow, one over from the fast lane, forcing traffic around, oblivious? I wouldn’t have minded, since I see this often in Dubai, but we had a sick kid in the back seat. Laura was doing her best, juggling iPads and pointing out the window, but we needed to move faster. Adding to the frustration was Valerio’s exasperating need to deliver a history lesson on the origins of every passing structure.
“This building, here,” he mused in a Soviet submarine commander inflection, “Khrushchev era… and this one coming up on left…much newer…maybe 2010…builders make building but no shops on floor and bad maintenance. Criminals…”
An air of restlessness crept over my shoulder from the back seat. Chiara was wriggling and making noises I now recognized as the pre-barf sequence. Laura was giving her sips of water and bites of quesadilla, which I thought might not be a good idea, but I focused on Valerio.
“How much further?” I asked.
“Not far,” he answered, returning to the architectural tour. “This one up here…also Khrushchev-era…and next door…German…See brickwork? German design.”
I considered asking Valerio if he was in construction but I was spent. We were stuck in downtown traffic and the back seat sounds were getting worse. I kept checking Google Maps and we seemed close, but I couldn’t be sure amongst the dyslexia-inducing Cyrillic. I was egging Valerio on, cursing him under my breath and trying to turn up the AC, when Chiara jettison-vomited for the third time that day.
Amazingly, it still took a minute to get Valerio to pull the car over so I could get Chiara onto the sidewalk for some air. Maybe he was in denial of what just happened in his vehicle, but I was almost pleased. After a perfunctory wipe down of Valerio’s upholstery, we plopped a grumpy and dehydrated toddler into her stroller and dragged our bags to the graffiti-covered building entrance.
One common feature of Ukraine was that the basic infrastructure — walls, stairways, entryways, light fixtures, roofs — were generally falling apart. Most buildings looked like a set from Saving Private Ryan.
We lumbered through the entryway and around a corner to what had to be one of the oldest two-person elevators on Earth. Valerio explained we had to jump in quickly because the doors were “fast.” He made a clamping gesture with his arms. You had about three seconds to get yourself and your bag into the cage before the doors slammed and the carriage lurched upwards. We did just that, one after another, hurling bags and leaping in two at a time as the doors crashed and we rose to the fourth floor.
Once out of the post-apocalyptic hallway, the actual apartment wasn’t bad. It had four big bedrooms in a railroad layout, with two bathrooms and a living room. The kitchen was small and amazingly, had no sink, but we found it tucked away behind a closet door in the living room next to a laundry machine. We got the Wi-Fi codes from Valerio along with directions to the supermarket and ushered him out.
Chiara was burning up again. I began to suspect the blood test in Dubai had been a false negative for bacteria. I tried to look into her throat with the flashlight from my iPhone, but she fought me off, so we gave her more medicine and compiled a list of supplies.
The supermarket run always falls to me. I’m used to it and my wife’s time is better spent sorting the kids’ clothes, beds, and arranging the apartment. My job is to get some cash from an ATM, then ferret out the nearest place to pick up food items: fruit, vegetables, pasta, rice, meat, and water (a necessity in Ukraine, as the tap water was undrinkable). If I’m lucky, I find a couple of local craft beers, too. (In Dubai, you can’t just pick up beer at the supermarket. You have to go to a liquor store, sequestered down in the basement of a mall, plunk down your alcohol license and pay a 30% tax. For this reason, I’m always a bit giddy at the prospect of buying a beer along with the eggs.)
I grabbed the list, and warily eyeing Jaws the Elevator, took the stairs down to the street. My first mission was the ATM, which I failed. I had no clue what the lettering was telling me and had yet to figure out Google Translate (which I couldn’t have used anyway, since I didn’t yet have a local SIM card). I tried combinations on the screen, but none resulted in the expulsion of cash, so I went off in search of the market, credit card in hand. (Laura was able to extract thousands in cash from the ATM later in the day on her first try, simply by selecting the first option on each screen.)
In Kiev, there were no crosswalks, and large untenable medians bisected the avenues. You had to go under the roads in a series of maze-like tunnels and mini-malls that permeated the underbelly of the city. We were there in summer, so this seemed silly at first, but when I later considered how unbelievably cold it gets in winter, made perfect sense.
I meandered through the underground, passing shops selling socks, embroidered Soviet-era traditional dresses, electronics, vape-kiosks (everyone vapes) and weird food stands that peddled what looked like éclairs stuffed with hotdogs (which everyone ate, all hours of the day).
I emerged on the other side of the square to the supermarket, a Billa. Fruits and vegetables were trickiest, since they had to be weighed before checkout, and if you didn’t read Ukrainian, good luck guessing the word for banana. My go-to move has been to look for a middle-aged mom-type who’s not in a hurry and ask for help. A young person may have spoken some English, but they’re rarely in the vegetables section, and unlikely to come to the aid of a balding American in shorts with an armful of Pampers.
In this particular store, it seemed the entire staff were hard of hearing. At first I thought they were ignoring me as I held items at arms length, squinting, and asked for clarification about “yogurt,” and water with “‘gas, or no gas.” But, after they looked me over patiently, then signed to one another, I realized they were, in fact, quite literally deaf. I’m not sure if it was a government program, but it turned out fine at check out, as my rudimentary sign language (versus my non-existent Ukrainian) was sufficient to decline plastic bags (I had my backpack), signal for the credit card machine (which I tapped) and leave by the designated exit door (eventually).
I failed the ATM once again on the way home and found myself back at our building. I thought twice about taking the stairs but was so tired I flung the groceries into Jaws and rode the elevator. Laura had found SpongeBob on Russian TV and settled the kids so we unpacked the food and tried to relax. We would be hosting her parents and younger brother for the remainder of the trip; they would be arriving the next morning.
The kids woke in the night, as it was a new place with strange beds and foreign noises rising from the streets. Our apartment overlooked a downtown intersection where people seemed to rev their engines needlessly, but we’re used to that in Dubai, where every fourth car is a rented Lamborghini. At least in Kiev they managed to find second gear.
Los abuelos arrived with my brother-in-law in the morning. We dragged their luggage into the building and after a brief rundown on elevator protocol; the relatives lunged into Jaws and ascended for a reunion with the grandkids. The girls were particularly pleased to see their uncle Irving, who they lovingly refer to as “Uncle Kiwi.” The grandparents speak only Spanish, so the house quickly transformed into a lively Spanglish over a background of Russian and Ukrainian from the television. We settled them in and after sorting the laundry, charging phones, and prepping snacks, set off to check out the neighborhood.
My wife and I have different styles when it comes to travel. One difference is biological. I have inherited an annoying traveling-IBS-condition that comes on a day or two before I fly and occupies my mind daily. My father has the same condition (which both our wives maintain is purely psychological). Dad has managed his affliction in peculiar ways, including a diet of “only white things,” including white bread, turkey, rice and the occasional slice of cheese. My father also discovered drinking alcohol was, among other things, terrible for his digestion, so he quit.
Forgoing the tea-totaling, I have found the best way to handle this condition is to wake up at least an hour early, drink coffee, pop a few probiotics (mixed with a smattering of Imodium), wash it down with a gulp of bismuth, then use the bathroom a couple times before we go out. It has also helped to simply not eat, but that’s no fun when visiting new places with interesting food. My Mexican wife, on the other hand, has an iron stomach, seasoned by a lifetime of hot peppers. She struggles to find empathy.
It was easy before the children. If items were percolating, I detoured into a restaurant or back home. When you’re on foot in Vienna lumbering uphill with a stroller, however, things aren’t that simple. You can’t just leave the child on the street and even if you did find a zero hour solution, it’s no fun sitting on a Starbucks toilet with your toddler staring you in the face (never mind the quad-strength it takes to stand up off a toilet with a kid in a chest-harness).
In Kiev, I’d have found the nearest park, ideally with a cafe (bathroom) and chilled out on a bench to watch over the kids on swings and seesaws. Alas, my wife likes the bus.
In her mind, the best way to figure out a city is to get tickets on The Big Bus and ride around like a pigeon in a double-decker lab experiment. I concede this is an excellent introduction to a city, but for me, the bus presents concerns.
Buses don’t have bathrooms… I’m not driving the bus… I can’t pull over… The kids don’t have seat belts… I don’t have a SIM card… Google maps isn’t working and I don’t know where we are…If I get off to use a bathroom and the bus leaves, I may never see them again…
My wife, bless her, insists on the audio guide. I choose to narrate in my mind.
There’s an old building with an old person sitting on the steps …Khrushchev era… Up on here on the right, we have another cathedral…Italian design?
Mercifully, Kiev is not that big so the bus ride was short and we spent the rest of the week on foot. One disadvantage of the Google Maps, however, is there’s no way to gauge elevation. Kiev has hills, so we often found ourselves trekking up steep inclines with my septuagenarian in-laws struggling behind and the kids on my shoulders. Between the nervous eating and hauling kids, I usually lose about ten pounds on these trips.
We braved the hills and walked to museums and cathedrals. There are lots of cathedrals in Ukraine. One of the first we visited is perhaps the most famous — St. Sophia’s, an orthodox cathedral, founded in 1037 during the reign of Vladimir the Great, with a towering gilded cupola, museum and necropolis. Valentina had no interest in viewing dead monks, so she led uncle Kiwi and me up a terrifying stairwell to the apex of the cupola where we enjoyed panoramic views of the city. There were thousands of people in the streets that day, and we learned it was in celebration of the one thousand year anniversary of Christianity’s arrival to Kiev.
Of course, as soon as we reached the top, Valentina had to pee, so uncle Kiwi and I took a few pictures and made our way back down to the bathrooms. I sent Valentina into the ladies’ room but she came back a minute later.
“Dad, I can’t go. They’re all different,” she cried.
“What do you mean, different?”
“Like, there’s no toilet!”
This being an older establishment (adjacent to the necropolis), the toilets were probably the squat-style version, which was a problem. Valentina was raised in Dubai, where the closest you’ll get to a squat-style commode is a gilded bathroom without a towel attendant. She’d also never been camping and lacked outdoor pee skills. I checked the men’s room, which had a single “Disabled” stall with a regular toilet, and whisked her inside.
I was still pondering toilet design when Valentina emerged and we continued on. We found a couple of excellent parks that day, each with identical industrial era playgrounds in Ukrainian national yellow and blue. The parks were popular and over the next few days we enjoyed picnics on the grass, an unfeasible summer activity in the heat back home.
The food in Kiev was excellent and cheap — dinner for seven people with drinks and desserts for around fifty bucks. We ate lots of borscht, along with varying Ukrainian dumplings and I often chose pork chops and homemade sausages — a rarity back home in our Muslim-governed land. The produce was fresh from the surrounding countryside, another novelty for desert dwellers.
By day three, despite our best efforts, Chiara’s temperature persisted. After a search online, Chiara, mom and grandma were on their way to The American Medical Center of Kiev. There are “American” hospitals and clinics throughout the world and they’re usually quite good. Our kids were born at The American Hospital, Dubai, where we still go for pediatric care. At the very least the staff is likely to speak English, which is important when explaining symptoms. The doctor in Kiev was lovely and immediately diagnosed Chiara with tonsillitis. We picked up antibiotics on the way home and her condition improved overnight.
On the fifth day, we woke up early, packed our things for the long train ride to Lviv, an eastern European-style city near the western border with Poland. We called Ubers to take us to the train station and as the cars were arriving, uncle Kiwi wheeled Chiara into the old elevator and the doors slammed shut. Jaws lurched downward and abruptly ground to a halt between floors.
Little can provoke greater panic than being stuck in an elevator. Worse, the elevator was sixty years old and my toddler was trapped. Uncle Kiwi was with her and she had the stroller, so at least she wasn’t uncomfortable, but we were freaked and grandma was downright terrified. My daughter and brother-in-law were stuck exactly halfway between the floors, inside a meshed cage, but we could at least talk to uncle Kiwi through the metal framing. We directed him to push buttons, which of course, he was already doing.
I ran downstairs to the ground floor, and using my newly downloaded Google Translate, pointed the camera at a Cyrillic sign that might have been the elevator company. I say, “Might have,” because Google Translate was hit or miss. The day before I tried it on a bag of salad and got “Fucking Bad” as a main ingredient.
As I was struggling with the app, a tenant came around the corner and explained the sign was indeed for the maintenance company but no one ever answered. I ran back upstairs and found Laura on the phone with Valerio, who said someone would come but they might take a couple hours to arrive.
Images flashed of Chiara stuck overnight, desperate for food and a clean nappy. I tried in vain to pry the doors apart with my hands, but my wife had been examining the elevator mechanics through the metal cage. She found what looked like two lock-and-release rollers on top of the doors. If we could pop these, the doors might free up and we could pry them apart. I ran upstairs to the apartment and came back with a broom handle, which I was able to thread through the cage and pop the locks, one at a time. We pried open the doors and held them apart.
I could see uncle Kiwi and Chiara’s head, but if Hollywood was any guide, hauling people out of an elevator stuck between floors usually ended badly. I took a moment and decided this wasn’t a horror movie and ordered my brother-in-law to fling the three year-old to safety, tossing her up and out of the elevator into my arms. Uncle Kiwi climbed out awkwardly, scraping his legs badly in the process, but thankfully no one was halved.
Relieved, we lugged our bags down the stairs and crammed into Ubers. The Kiev railway station, Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi, was beautiful, with massive chandeliers and a majestic escalator rising to the platforms. Nothing was in English but Laura managed to purchase the tickets and soon the seven of us were on the express train, settled in for the eight-hour trip across Ukraine, eastward to Lviv.
When I wasn’t chasing Chiara through the cabin or breaking up iPad fights, I took in the passing countryside, strikingly similar to New England. We passed tiny old villages with few roads and narrow pathways amongst houses surrounded by endless sunflowers and cornfields. An old man rambled down a milkweed-lined pathway, a bushel of corn balanced on the back of his antique bicycle.
We arrived in Lviv at midnight to mass confusion. The streets were under construction and multiple sidewalk exits led to no discernable destination. The crowd of travelers amassed in the street aside a dimly lit park, interspersed with wispy-bearded hippy dudes slithering about, eyeing our luggage. It was chaos and we had two sleepy kids and grandparents in desperate need of beds.
With no clear idea where to grab a taxi, we checked Google Maps and began walking in a downtown direction, dragging our bags over potholes and cobblestones, looking for a good spot to call Ubers. We stopped in front of a restaurant, Big Burger, which seemed as good a place as any, and waited for our rides. After chasing several passing cars, we realized all license plates in Lviv start and end with the same two letters, and finally found our rides.
Everyone was exhausted by the time we made it to the AirBnB. I guess we should have been thankful there was no elevator, but our ancient building in Lviv suffered from the now familiar Saving Private Ryan syndrome, and we lugged our bags up four flights of a listing wooden staircase with dangling balusters. It seemed people own what’s inside the apartments, but no one in Ukraine seems to be responsible for whatever exists outside the apartments. A paper coffee cup stuffed with cigarette butts and an empty beer bottle sat aside the stairwell for the duration of our stay.
The interior of the apartment, however, was beautiful, with a newly renovated kitchen and spacious bedrooms. There was even a sauna, but we never figured out how to turn it on. Valentina and I shared a bed because my snoring might have awakened Chiara, still recovering from tonsillitis. I woke several times with little feet in my face and marveled at how much five year-olds squirm in their sleep. We rose in the morning feeling refreshed and ready for Lviv.
We spent the next few days exploring the old city, much of which centers around a town square, closed off from cars. We wandered in and out of (more) cathedrals and found parks and cafes where we hung out for hours, people watching. It rained a few times, which was a novelty for the girls, who’ve only experienced raindrops and puddle jumping on a handful of occasions, mostly in London.
On our last afternoon we were caught in a downpour, and looking for a spot to wait out the storm, ended up inside the Lviv Opera House. We paid a few bucks for a tour, but there was no guide, so we wandered up the staircases onto the balcony and were treated to a full orchestra rehearsal. It was the kind of thing they would have monetized in New York, with a queue around the corner for tickets, but in Lviv it was free and intimate, only a few random tourists in the audience.
The acoustics were spectacular and the kids were mesmerized — a lovely introduction to live music. We sat and listened as I explained the different instruments to Valentina while Chiara bounced in grandma’s lap. The orchestra was rehearsing Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto (“Moses in Egypt”), a perfect coincidence, since Laura’s great-grandfather we had set out to find, Abraham, had named his son Moses. Moses’ in Ukraine, a captivating swan song to our time in Lviv.
We took the train back to Kiev the next afternoon and arrived at midnight. Uncle Kiwi had booked rooms at a hotel near the airport, which was a thirty-minute ride; so again we dialed up Ubers and waited outside with our bags. Chiara was asleep in her stroller and Valentina was passed amongst the grownups, her sleepy head lolling over our shoulders.
Waiting for the cars and checking our phones, I couldn’t help noticing a couple of regular taxis idling curbside with their drivers standing by, smoking cigarettes and chortling in our direction. One leaned against his minivan, which would have fit all seven of us.
Laura prefers Ubers and argued taxis would rip us off and normally I would’ve agreed. Ubers are convenient, especially when you’re in a remote part of a city and you need a ride to come to you. Standing outside a train station at midnight with a dying phone, however, I considered the taxis viable. I walked over and asked the minivan man how much. Maybe he could tell from the look on my face I was ready to accept any number, but either way, his price was 500 hryvnia, or about twenty bucks. Assessing our circumstances and considering what a taxi used to cost from JFK, this seemed reasonable.
“You can take that taxi if you want, but we’re waiting,” Laura quipped, as if my leaving the family on the sidewalk was acceptable. Everybody was stressed, so I let it go and we waited for the Ubers. (In the end, the final bill for the Uber was 481.00 UAH, saving us exactly nine hryvnia (32 cents). I’ve kept this detail to myself.)
The first car came minutes later and the driver spoke perfect English. Laura and Chiara piled in with grandma and uncle Kiwi and off they went to the hotel while Grandpa, Valentina and I stood on the sidewalk, forlorn, and waved goodbye.
I settled Valentina on a piece of luggage, looked down at my phone and examined the screen as our Uber black car icon abruptly disappeared. It was almost one in the morning and I glanced longingly at the taxis. Laura had explained there was some kind of cancellation penalty for the Ubers, but ever the optimist, I hadn’t been paying attention. Wary of this enigmatic fee, I gave up on the taxi and did the next best thing, stepping away from grandpa to berate my phone like an idiot. Abuelo was eyeing me nervously and looking around for his own means of transportation when miraculously, the tiny black car reappeared on the screen.
Frantic, I was trying to expand the map with my thumb and forefinger when our early-90’s model VW minibus finally arrived, house-music thumping from the open windows. Grandpa and Valentina climbed into the back while I got in front to help “navigate.” There were no seat belts, which would normally be a deal-breaker, but Valentina had already fallen asleep against the lavender-colored paisley curtains and grandpa was fading fast. I told the driver, who couldn’t have been a day over nineteen, to get going. We pulled into traffic and my phone pinged.
WhatsApp: What happened? 1:02 AM
Just got in car
Ok. Shouldn’t be a problem now
Our driver can barely see over the steering wheel
Ours is very nice. He put Mexican music for us
Driving safe
I don’t think our headlights are on
Almost there
We are not having fun and -
We checked in. You can come directly to room 1
Please stop texting me 1:29 AM
Arriving hungry, we were pleasantly surprised to find the restaurant in the lobby still open. I joined the grandparents and uncle Kiwi for a midnight snack. Our mood soured, though, as the lone waiter was unable to bring two pieces of cheesecake within an hour, so we left in a huff and went to sleep hungry.
The next morning the same waiter was serving breakfast, which was awkward. This time, he was unable (or unwilling) to scramble an egg, and insisted our kids choose from one of three poached egg options. A contentious back and forth ensued, this time with my wife, but no eggs were scrambled and we left that restaurant in a snit for the second time in twelve hours.
Luckily, I had time to kill at the airport and tasted sweet revenge, undoubtedly sealing the surly waiter’s fate with a withering one-star review on Trip Advisor.
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Worst Restaurant Service in the History of Humankind.
It took the waiter over an hour to NOT bring a single piece of cheesecake. The sad reason we waited that long was because we were also waiting for an order of chicken, which never came, either. We were the only people there and for some reason the chef was unable to figure out how to deliver cheesecake. The waiter insisted the restaurant “wasn’t a McDonald’s,” as if that were somehow an excuse for not figuring out cheesecake. Sadly, the same troglodyte was still “serving” breakfast the following morning, where they were unable to scramble an egg for our kids. The service was so bad that we suggested the waiter try another occupation, or at least Google “waiter.”
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Snap.
Despite the harrowing flight over, trips to the doctor, toilet troubles and scary buildings with elevator issues, we had fun. We did not end up finding grandpa’s relatives but the journey brought our modern family closer.
The flight back to Dubai was uneventful and devoid of vomit. Laura, Chiara and I stamped our residency visas with the Emiratis and Valentina entered the country on a 30-day tourist visa, somehow a more appropriate status. We were all tourists — passing through, back from a family trip.
