Ukrainian Dinner Party

Ukraine sees only a limited number of English-speaking tourists, so your Tonic Trekker has often been treated as a novelty over these past three weeks. Locals often ask me why I came to the country, why I like it and what I thought. Two brothers took me out for beers in Lviv, and last night three local Kiev residents invited me, a Brit and an Aussie to a traditional Ukrainian dinner.

The night started with a metro ride about five stops outside the city center, where one of the hosts met us and walked to us to his friend's apartment. He joked about the urine smells in the cement stairway heading up, but the studio apartment was well kept and clearly reflected their main interests, namely heavy metal and medieval sword fighting. They started by playing us some classic Russian metal from the early '90s.

Dinner started with a popular Ukrainian dish, pig lard, which nearly made me gag. They brought out bread, which made it more palatable, though my English-speaking friends seemed to enjoy it both ways. They followed with a type of borscht soup that seemed based on onions instead of beets. It was also cooked with a large piece of meat on the bone, which gave it a yummy, fatty flavor. The hosts then brought out a variety of meats, cheese and breads that we snacked on for the rest of the night.

Giving my liver a twinge, however, was the apparent main course -- two bottles of Ukrainian vodka, several beers and the two Georgian wine bottles that we brought. Over the next several hours, our hosts tested our drinking prowess with this American tourist determined to outlast his mates from London and Perth.

Pounding shots, we finished off the first vodka bottle before tearing through the two wine bottles, drinking beers throughout. We eventually cracked open the second vodka bottle, at which point the Aussie passed out. That meant more vodka shots for the rest of us, which we preceded to down. One of the hosts crashed out next with his girlfriend, which left just three of us pounding the rest of the beers. In the end, the night ended as a three-way draw between the Brit, one of the hosts and myself.

While it's always fun to test your vodka stamina, the true highlight had to be hearing our hosts' perspectives on the Ukraine, Russia and the West. They actually prefer a strong central authority to democracy, arguing that western republics are influenced too much by money. The Soviets certainly made a lot of mistakes in the Ukraine, but they argued that the Russians got things done whereas the current pro-west democracy has been largely ineffective. They also criticized western interest in the Ukraine as being totally self-serving. I responded that the West wouldn't shut down their heating oil, like the Russians did, and reminded him of the Russian tanks rolling through Georgia last summer. I suggested that the Ukraine was like a battered housewife that keeps going back.

After much debate, we finally reached some consensus. The Ukraine is in a unique position to be a bridge between Russia and the West, and that it might be better for the country to straddle that line for the time being. Everyone agreed with that.

Still trying to top each other, the Brit and I finished the night drinking more beer and smoking a hookah pipe near the hostel, but we mutually called it a night around 3 a.m. after nine hours of drinking. Reflecting back on the night, we both appreciated the opportunity to visit with locals, try traditional foods and spend hours engaged in vodka-fueled discussions like locals do many nights at their dinner tables. The evening turned out to be a great, real-life break from the typical tourist experience.