A little Thanksgiving

ready and waiting

Garry had decided we should have all the farm workers for a Thanksgiving dinner when the harvest was over, but by the time the corn was all combined it was time for our trip to Rome, so we decided on Thursday at noon. I thought there would be at least ten people, but only one of the milker ladies came (Yana was at the market, I think I understood). I had dinner ready by noon, with the rolls just coming out of the oven, the chickens (two 5 pounders, stuffed, no turkey at Metro on Tuesday) were carved by Garry, with almost all the trimming of a North American style dinner (no jello salads, and no cranberry sauce).

Maxim Rudei was the first to arrive with his wife Yulia and little Vika, as you can see she is adorable, and about six months old now, and sitting up.

Now we are ready to eat with max and Andrey

Driving in Ukraine... look the truck is on our side of the road!

Always be alert when driving in Ukraine!
Sorry somehow this post never got published last month and I didn't notice!

Last week ? One Sunday afternoon we were returning home from Dnepro when I took this photo, we were driving along the four lane divided highway, when I blinked and said...

 "Garry is that truck coming toward us?"

I think it is...wow, I can't believe it, that is so dangerous! 

Yep, it is definitely on our side of the road, what if one of the cars going
 180 Km an hour in the passing lane had been coming?

the driver coming onto the road from the other highway must be really confused...

because there is of course, no warning signs, no traffic cones, no signage, to warn oncoming traffic about this temporary change in traffic patterns as they say at home...

you may be wondering what caused this potential head on collision situation...





earlier that week they had opened a new military/police checkpoint on the other side of the divided highway where there is the guard rail for about a kilometer or two where they built the new highway intersection a couple years ago...







which caused this accident (possibly because of the conflicting signage which tells you to slow down merge into the left lane, slow down more, move into the right lane, slow down and stop...

This minor accident, the police are there, no ones ever moves cars no matter how
 minor the accident until the report is done in hopes of collecting insurance
 they have put four orange cones across and are directing traffic over

which must have caused this accident, so they sent the cars onto the wrong
side of the road until they got past the guardrail (mostly there isn't one)

The next week they fixed this when the finally got the big cement barricades for people to drive around installed at the checkpoint, which is still in operation

Ukraine is not big on early warning of workers in the road either...

About ten metres at most, even on the highway, we could see this
crane in the city long before seeing the sign

Always look for motorcycles weaving through traffic in the city

and for farm machinery and bicycles

watch for cows and chickens in the road in the country

marchutkas (route vans) stopping for passengers in the city

the slow cars on the highway (those are bags of cabbage)

and that is a walnut buyer leaving the village

tractors driving toward traffic on the highway mowing the meridian
 (no signs except on the tractor)

cars making extra lanes at red lights (and switching lanes like crazy)

and the really fast cars blowing past everyone else (its like they own the road)

Prague and Rome...or eight days alone in a crowd

We actually had a relaxing time away from everyone, it was the anniversary trip we had talked about last year, but never got around to going on.

We arrived back home in the village Monday evening (October 27th), Max Rudei drove the van back to Kiev and Garry drove home in just over 5 hours, a new record, the road between has more bumps from patches than holes these days. In other words a rough ride, but less tire damage! Max brought a friend, like he did when he dropped us at the airport.On the way there, he translated what his friend said about an hour after leaving, as Garry sped through the dark in the fog- we left at 5 am- that he could not believe how calm and quiet I was in the front seat, as any women he knew would be scared and yelling... and I was not. Of course I have ridden with Garry driving for years now. I do occasionally suggest looking out for danger... but quietly, I guess.

A lovely view from the top of a hill in Prague (while we were lost)

We did have our share of adventures, like trying to find our hotel room in Prague, where we overnighted to get from Kiev to Rome. We took the bus and tram like the lady at the airport suggested instead of an expensive taxi, but turned the wrong direction and walked for more than a hour up and down hills and streets. We found it as dusk was falling after an hour of walking.

We did enjoy a late dinner out with traditional foods and two hours of sightseeing early Saturday morning before heading to the airport for the flight to Rome.

We booked the same hotel for our overnight back,since we know where it was.  However we couldn't find it again at ten pm, because the tram line was under repair, so what we remembered didn't work to find it! We did finally figure out and got there around eleven pm!

Prague at 7:30 am

9 am and we found the clock I was looking for as it was about to ring

We went to church Sunday here, in a church dedicated to Martyrs and built
in an ancient Roman bath site, original church was designed by Michelangelo

 The first day was Sunday and we stuck close to the apartment to rest our tired feet after our Prague adventure.

The service was held here in Italian or maybe Latin, we missed the English one

After the church service, in an ancient Catholic church around the corner from our rented apartment,  we visited a couple of nearby museums, one about the huge bath complex that the church was built in, and had an early night, so we could get to the Coliseum when it opened on Monday morning.

The organ was played for the service and before, the church was redone
in the 17th and 18th centuries

The only thing still of the original Michelangelo design
 inside was the foyer ceiling apparently

front door of the church

more from Sunday

Frescoes in a museum- Palazzo Massimo

The Coliseum 

Inside the complex of the Baths of Diocletian, part of the National Roman museum, the ticket was seven euros and you could visit four over three days, we did two on Sunday and found one more of them on Wednesday before our ticket expired.

Monday

We saw all the historical, archaeological highlights of Rome as you can see in these photos... and that was just Monday! We got to the Coliseum before it opened at nine am and beat the crowds with day one of our 3 day Roma Pass - it gets you into two places free, reduced price on the ones after and gets you on public transport for the three days.

after a couple days Garry got bored with broken statues

The Forum area 

The ticket includes the Forum and Palentine hill areas so we walked all of that by two pm, it was near the forums that a lost my five dollar watch I bought in NJ, so we were really carefree after that!
That night Garry wanted to see the area in the dark so we took the Metro (subway) and walked around until nine pm, or later.

Coliseum as night fell 

Garry says his favorite place was the Pantheon, which we found on Tuesday night while we went looking for Trevi fountain (by the way it is dry they are fixing it up) and returned to it on our last Sunday in Rome.

inside at night

There was always a crowd at the Panetheon

It was turned into a church early in Christian Rome, so survived in good shape

This looked like early church decor

the famous ceiling with a hole-

You'll have to wait for the next post to find out my favorite sights of Rome.

Election signs

I was going to put this post together before the election on Sunday, but we were on vacation in Rome and I did really vacation, no crocheting, and no blogging. I didn't have my computer with these photos loaded on and only tried once to login on Garry's and the sign in from Rome got flagged so I gave up, and just spent time with Garry. It was relaxing for both of us, although I have blisters on my feet from all the walking we did!

as the election grew closer ads were everywhere

early in September the billboards filled up with electioning-
 right after the ceasefire was announced

an early ad for Yulia Timoschenko's party

Some seats in parliament are filled by voting for candidates and
some by the parties that receive a percentage of the vote.

This party (The Front) did very well. lead by the prime minister

later this party had billboards with cows on,
I think they were promising a better life for Ukrainians

This is the pilot the Russian have in prison, she was elected 

The opposition bloc got enough votes to get into parliament-
they are the old candidates from the old government

Yulia's Father/mother/brother land (we can't decide on the translation) party
got enough votes to get into Parliament,
but ended up far down the list 

I never had the camera with me to get a photo of the Internet party's billboards, which feature Star Wars characters, they did not get into Parliament. They elected one candidate a couple years ago, but he would not take off his Darth Vader mask, so he was never seated.

If you haven't heard, no one party got a majority in the election but the top parties  Porosenko and Yatsentnuk's will form a coalition of reform minded parties.