Breakfast Buddies

My Breakfast Buddies

These two guys, along with their sister, have been my breakfast buddies this week. Getting up in the morning with my hosts, the Stemple family, has been a pleasure. They made me feel at home here in Kiev. (Thanks, Stemples!)

Getting to the office from their house is a public transportation adventure. The second leg of the journey (after walking to the bus stop in sub-zero Celsius weather) involves hopping on a crowded minibus. About the size of a 15 passenger van, the minibus we rode yesterday morning had 25 people. I was in the standing section and braced myself against the roof with my head. I couldn’t use my hands because everyone else was passing me their bus fare to give to the driver.

Bus fare wasn’t much (1.5 Ukraine Hgrivna, or about $0.30/person), but I found it interesting that everyone paid. Even more interesting was the driver who collected all this cash himself and made change from his wallet. It seemed an odd way for the system to collect public transportation money, but I found out why. The driver pays a daily rate to the system and keeps anything over a base amount. This keeps the buses full and the riders paying. Not a bad system.

The metro is the third leg of the journey. Crowded subways are not something I deal with in Budapest since I walk to work, but in the middle of Kiev rush hour they are unavoidable. On one memorable ride, after the train came to a stop, the doors of an already full car opened to a crowd of about 20 people standing near me waiting to board. With one group motion we all pushed toward the open train doors and forced our way in. In that moment all my notions of personal space and appropriate public behavior left me, and I shoved my way into the middle of the crowd. I elbowed past old fat ladies, pressed against stinking old men, and landed sandwiched between two complete strangers. No one seemed bothered in the least; business as usual.

I’m going to miss this in Orlando!

  Category: Ministry
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