Lars Olafsson in Ukraine

Recap, so the first month have almost passed. Can't believe it has already been a month. I feel that it was almost yesterday i arrived. I have had a lot of experiences in Ukraine, but there are so much more to come. As soon as the weather gets a bit better and warmer it will be possible to do a lot more outside, skydiving, paint ball, go-carting, hiking in the mountains, going to the beach etc. etc.!! Can't wait!

So what have I experienced so far, which I have not already shared? I have been doing a bit of brainstorming, and here we go.

I kinda hate the lamp in my bed room. So I decided to take it down and put up a new one. That should not be that hard. Well, it was, and the lamp is still there! Apparently they don't believe in electrical hazards down here, so lets just take two wires and tape them together. So for now the lamp gets to stay until I find some electrician down here. I am not gonna play with tape and electrical wires, that's gonna end badly!

After having stayed in this apartment for almost a month, the lamp in my bedroom is not the only thing beginning to annoy me. The kitchen is really nasty, I had to buy new pots and pans. But there should be some cleaning help on the way, though the only way I ever see it getting clean, is to tear it down. But I am afraid that is not gonna happen, so I hope some thorough cleaning will do the job.

Another fun thing about the apartment is the fact that if we close the valve on our radiators, then we close the radiators in all the apartments. And they only got 2 settings, on and off. So to make it colder in the apartment the only real choice is to open the window. Very environmental!

To move on to where I spent 2nd most time while I am here, my work place. We are situated in small cubicles where we have maybe one meter of desk space. It is not at all optimal, but since they want to maximize the number of people they can have in the rooms, it is understandable. I have yet not found this annoying, though i miss the space I have at Frederikskaj. It also helps a lot when you get 2 brand new 22", 1920x1080 resolution monitors. Makes working a whole lot more fun!

At first we were seated on the 4th floor, along with the most of the company. This room is so crowded, with people and computers running, that the room gets pretty hot. But since its cold outside, again its not hard to open the window to lower the temperature. We have now moved to the location where we are gonna have all the Telenor team. This is on the 2nd floor. This room is nice and cool, at least for now, until it also gets crowded! But they did not think people needed to go to the toilet, cause they get a toilet on both floors, but 4th floor is only men and 2nd floor is only women. So now we have to run from the 2nd floor to the 4th floor, just to go to the toilet! At least its good exercise!

While I have been here, i think I have beaten my record of eating at a restaurant most times in one month. Today was the first day where I cooked my own food. It was nothing fancy, actually it was pasta and ketchup. Sounds boring, but it was actually a nice change from all that restaurant food.
Of all the restaurants I have been to down here, its surprising to say that they have all been good. I guess I should not be surprised, since we got all of them recommended and there are still some we have not tried. So i guess the restaurant visits have not stopped completely yet.

It have been a wide range of different kitchens we have tried, Italian, German, Indian, Chinese, Uzbekistan, Ukrainian is the few I can remember off the top of my head. Though a thing they have not learned, is serving the food at the same time. Very often dishes come when they are done in the kitchen. So when you are raised in Denmark, it is impolite to eat, before everyone have got their food. This you have to forget if you want food that is still warm down here. The worst example was one place we went to, where 3 people ordered 5 dishes. Two people had a first and second course and the last person only 1 course. The food came in this order, 1st person gets his first course, when done, 1st person gets his 2nd course, when done, 2nd person gets his 1st course, when done, 2nd person gets his 2nd course, when done, finally the last person gets his dinner. Maybe 2 hours after making the original order! Thats like crappy waitering!

There are so much more to tell, but I think I will save it for next blog entry! To not make them too long!

So finally we got Internet up and running in the apartment and I am spending my Friday evening writing this blog and watching TV series!

I have now been working and living in Kharkov for almost 2 weeks. It have really been a great time so far! But i guess you are all wondering what I have been up to.

In the first week we needed to get the apartment to feel comfy, and needed to buy all the inventory needed when you move into a new apartment. Cereals, milk, cleaning remedies, drying racks etc. Slowly making the apartment feel more like home. But its really difficult finding groceries down here. Everything is in Cyrillic making us necessary to guess whats in the boxes, if we do not have an interpreter with us. Though we have so far gotten what we needed by asking and guessing.

Until now it have not been a lot of homemade food, mostly restaurant visits are the few take-away possibilities here. But i cannot complain about the food you can get here, really amazing! And since the prices are affordable you can eat at a restaurant for around 150-200 grivnas and get a decent meal (100 grivnas (UAH) ~ 66 kroner ~ 9 euro ~ 12,5 dollars). Lunch at our cafeteria is around 30 grivnas. And to put a bit of perspective of some of the local prices, a bottle of 2L Coca Cola costs 6,5 grivnas, a Big Mac costs 19 grivnas, a 0,7L local vodka 37 grivnas.

Since there is a lot of fat in their food down here, workout is probably going to be necessary to not grow out of my clothes! And i have already been out running 5 times, been to the gym 1 time and played football with the guys from the office 1 time. Running in the streets in Kharkov is an experience in itself. Everyone is looking at you and thinking, what is this motion he is doing, there must be something wrong with him. And since there is a lot of loose dogs down here, you also fear them when running around the streets. One time we ran past these angry dogs barking and trying to tear down a playground. Luckily we escaped that time! Though there is a dog at our apartment complex which is the dog of the lady cleaning the place. I have still not figured out if it just wants to play, but each time it spots us, it starts barking and running towards us. One morning when i was on my way out to run, it actually bit me in the bag of my leg, though only my running pants was injured my leg escaped. But RIP my running pants!

I think this was it for tonight, i have soccer practice again tomorrow morning, so the bed is calling. Though i miss my own bed, the bed I have down here is kinda lousy compared to my nice king size bed at home! Until i write again feel free to write or call me!

So we (Rene, Torben and I) have arrived at Kharkov. We all were bringing our entire apartments with us (well almost), which SAS/Austrian made us pay deeply for. What else could we do, we needed our stuff.

On the way, we were kinda scared about what they were doing to all of our luggage. I even forgot to put those name tags on my suitcases. So i was really worried what would happen, if i would even get my bags with me.
It was a nice and quite trip with the two planes and we arrived at Kharkov on schedule, everything went smooth through the pas port control and then it was on to what we have been afraid of the entire trip, was our bags gonna be there?

We stood there waiting and then my first bag came, Torben had already gotten his two, and Rene one of his. But now there were no more bags on the runner and no more bags were comming out. We started getting a bit more scared, but since there were a lot of other people waiting, we thought, yea well they are probably off to the plane to get the next load. And surely enough bags started comming out again. But not ours. People started leaving the conveyor belt and soon almost only we were left. But along came the awaited joy, the last of our luggage came as the last pieces on the conveyor belt.

Well now we had all of our bags. They looked intact, none of them looked to have been opened. Now all there was between us and the city of Kharkov was the customs control. Until now we have had no problems at all, so what could go wrong here?

Of cause something was bound to go wrong, and it did. After running my 4 pieces of luggage through the x-ray scanner, one of the customs officers comes over to me, starting speaking in Russian. I try to explain i only speak English and she tells me to come with her and bring my suitcase. So now she takes me into this little room and starts asking me what i have in my bag. I do the best i can in explaining to her, that i am bringing med PlayStation 3 and other electronic equipment because i am going to be here for a year. After a few minutes she leaves the room and now i am just standing here, all alone, in a little room. Starting to feel a bit odd, since i do not know what is happening and less what it is i have done wrong. Another few minutes pass and she comes back with this other guy and luckily a guy from the TEAM office here in Ukraine. I explain to him what i told her and he explains to the customs officers and i was off the hook. Through the customs i went, with everything intact. Welcome to Kharkov!

Joel and Sergey from TEAM greated us in the airport helping to get all of our luggage safely to our apartments. Two great guys always ready to help out! I really appreciate all the things they do for us down here.

We got into the apartments to find that they were exactly as how we saw them last. This was not a bad thing. Though the internet was not working in any of the apartments, which was kind off a downside. But this was only a matter of time to get it up and running. Otherwise the apartments was pretty nice. Big apartments with 2 bedrooms and a big living room. See the pictures in the gallery. We went from here off to the office to say hello to all the guys there, and then we went shopping. We needed to buy everything you need in a household, food, water, cleaning materials etc. etc.

After we had been shopping for a couple of hours, and thanks to Oksana for taking us there!, it was now time to find something to eat. Joel mentioned this nearby place which had great food. Can't remember the name of the place, but we decided to go there. We were greeted by a waitress there, which did not understand much English. The menu was only in Russian. So the conversation ended up sorta like this:

Waitress: Do you want meet?
Us: Yes
Waitress: Beef?
Us: Yes
Waitress: Steak?
Us: Yes
Waitress: Potatoes?
Us: Yes
Waitress: Salad?
Us: Yes
Waitress: Beer?
Us: Yes

And we got some great food and good beer.

After we had dinner it was back to the apartment and start unpacking. Rene and I are sharing the one apartment until we get the 3rd one. So we decided to hook up all our electronics before going to bed, and also got time to play a little bit of Xbox before hitting the sack.

End of the first day... To be continued...

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