Staff Articles

I. Sarah Lage- Meeting Nastya

II. Alina Uzak- June 1st or International Children's Day

III. Carina Shalkivski- Washington Ukrainian Festival 2023

IV. Logan Weilacher- Cuba Reflections

Nastya and me at the American-style diner where we shared our first meal in Berlin, Germany

Nastya asleep by the window at the Industriepalast Hostel in Berlin, Germany

Enjoying Doner Kebab and napping in the hostel hallway in Berlin, Germany

Nastya and me on the streets of Berlin, Germany

Browsing the English books at KulturKaufhaus in Berlin, Germany

Nastya and me in front of Berliner Dom, where we lit candles and prayed for all Ukrainians

Meeting Nastya

Sarah Lage

Over the summer, I took a two-week trip to Europe with my childhood best friend. We visited Paris, France; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Berlin, Germany– it was a wonderful experience and my first time abroad! The trip came about because my best friend had planned it and purchased the airline tickets months in advance with the intention of going with another person. Unfortunately, they had a falling out, so my friend had the itinerary, tickets, and lodging, but nobody to travel with. Uncomfortable with the notion of being abroad by herself, she suggested that I come with her, and I’m so happy I did! Aside from creating beautiful memories with my best friend, I used this trip as an opportunity to finally meet my Ukrainian friend, Nastya Mishchenko, in person for the first time!

Since fleeing Ukraine over a year ago, Nastya has rebuilt her life as best she can in Hamburg, Germany, where she has resumed her university studies at Kuehne Logistics University. We arranged for her to come to Berlin, where I would be staying, from Hamburg on the Flixbus, and to spend three days and two nights together. Our unification began on June 1st at 1:19 PM, when we embraced in front of an American-style diner near the city’s main bus station. Our meeting came after nearly 4 years of correspondence over the Internet, which encompassed high school graduations, the beginning of college, and, of course– war, violence, and fleeing home.

After our initial meeting and first meal together, we took the city bus back to the Industriepalast Hostel, where we stayed during our time in Berlin. Hostels are always an interesting experience, and staying in them is certainly an effective way to save money while traveling abroad. Upon our arrival, Nastya almost immediately changed clothes and fell asleep on the floor by the window, which overlooked Berlin’s industrial district. Later that evening, she told me that she had not slept at all the night before, but the ease with which she slept on the hard floor spoke to both a physical and emotional exhaustion she has been dealing with since being forced to leave her home.

After she woke up, we went to a local Turkish immigrant-run restaurant, where I tried Doner Kebab for the first time. She told me I’d definitely enjoy it, and she was right! After dinner, we each bought a chocolate bar and returned to the hostel, where we sat in the hallway and talked for a while. She fell asleep in the hallway as well, and I eventually woke her up to move her to her bunk bed. That night we slept in the same room for the first time. I couldn’t believe that after years of online friendship, we were finally together!

The main festivities began the next day. It was such a joy to explore the city with Nastya. We visited Berliner Dom (the Berlin Cathedral), ate German goulash at a cafe, walked around a local park, smelled all of the perfumes at Douglas (kind of like German Sephora), and browsed and purchased books at Nastya’s favorite bookstore– KulturKaufhaus Berlin. At this bookstore, Nastya bought her boyfriend Yehor, a Ukrainian army medic, a Velvet Underground vinyl (the one with the Andy Warhol banana on the cover). She told me that when the Russians pilfered his apartment, they stole this vinyl from his collection. She had it gift-wrapped for him and spent a great deal of time deliberating over which wrapping paper and ribbon color to choose. Eventually, she settled on silver wrapping paper with a yellow ribbon.

On our last night together, we ate Chinese food in Berlin’s industrial district, walked around our neighborhood, and returned to an empty room at the hostel (yay!) where we chatted for a few more hours before retiring to bed. The next morning, Nastya boarded the bus back to Hamburg and my travel companion and I began our long journey back to Paris, set to return to the United States the next day.

It is hard for me to describe how I felt when I finally met Nastya for the first time. In many ways– and we actually spoke about this– we both felt that we had spent time together before, perhaps in a past life or a parallel universe. There was no awkwardness and hardly a language barrier; it was just two soul-sisters coming together from across the world– almost like when soulmates meet in movies, except in a completely platonic way. In many ways, I feel as though I was meant to meet Nastya, and I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to spend time with her in Europe. Our bond is greater than distance, language and cultural differences, and most importantly– war and pain. I could not feel more blessed to have shared a few days with such a brave, brilliant, and kind human being. Слава Украине, слава героем.

June 1st or International Children's Day

Alina Uzak

Summer is likely any child’s favorite season around the world. It is no different in the post-USSR countries. Growing up in Kazakhstan, I remember the start of summer being a memorable day for me and my cousins. It is important to note that summer starts on June 1st and ends on August 31st in typical Slavic traditions, which is different from the American calendars.

June 1st, on top of being the first official day of summer, is also known to be International Children’s Day. This holiday is not typically known in the US, but it does hold significant meaning in the post-Soviet space. Typically, cities will hold parades and festivities on the streets for families to enjoy. For me, the day is associated with the best memories with my cousin spent at our grandmother’s summer-house. The school year always ended on May 25th, so I would spend a few days with friends and my parents before leaving the city to visit my grandmother who lived out in the countryside. My cousin and I would come and stay with her for about a week at a time. June 1st would be a non-negotiable trip for us as that was the time when an amusement park would come to our grandmother’s town and open its doors to kids. Traveling carnivals, or луна-парк, were rather common back in the Soviet Union times too. My dad always tells stories about how the whole city would gather up in the town square to enjoy the carnival whenever it came. The same sense of warmth and joy is what I feel thinking back to June 1st.

My grandmother would take my cousin and me to the Carnival where there would be amusement rides, labyrinths, and concession stands. One of our favorite rides was this water attraction where you get placed inside an inflated sphere-shaped floaty and have to try and move inside it to make the floaty roll on the water’s surface. It is much harder than it might seem to make the floaty move as it is very challenging to keep your balance while on the inside of it. You must try to run to make the sphere move and roll. Another one of my favorites was the labyrinth with cannons. Kids would come with tote bags to collect the rubber balls that could go in the cannons and then be launched at others inside the labyrinth.

International Children’s Day overall is a great and warm family holiday to experience, especially as a young kid.

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Washington Ukrainian Festival 2023

Carina Shalkivski

The annual Washington Ukrainian Festival takes place every September in Maryland at St. Andrew Orthodox Cathedral. Every year, many talented Ukrainian organizations, signers, and dancers come together to celebrate and showcase the rich cultural heritage of Ukraine. The event is held over three days from Friday to Sunday in September, with Saturday being the busiest day. The main event doesn’t actually take place inside St. Andrew’s Church but rather on the big plot of land behind the church and on a big center stage that is located right before a beautiful pond. On the festival days, canopy tents are situated across the field, the center stage is decorated and a variety of different traditional foods are prepared for the thousands of attendees. Under each tent, you will find many Ukrainian exhibits, vendors, and different activities. You can purchase Ukrainian cuisine, which is very rich and savory and it is a staple to eat the offered varenyky, borscht, and holubtsi while watching the performances on stage.

The center stage sets the scene for many performances from traditional dances to ethnic musical concerts and poem-telling. The Ukrainian Festival features multiple dance groups from the New York Yunist Dance Ensemble to the Canadian Shumka Dance Ensemble that perform dances such as the hopak, metelytsia, kozachok hutsulka and kolomyika. Each dance and outfit comes from a certain region of Ukraine, portraying the unique diversity of every region with dance played out. This year they also had famous Ukrainian vocalist Oleh Skrypka perform his most famous music hits to the crowd. The Washington Ukrainian Festival is an amazing venue that anyone in the northern Virginia area should attend if they want to experience a taste of Ukraine in the US.

Cuba Reflections

Logan Weilacher

I like to travel to countries that aren’t common destinations for American tourists, and Cuba certainly met that criteria. However, I didn’t know much about Cuba before I arrived, so everything was new to me.

One aspect of Cuba that I found interesting was how prevalent imagery of Cuba’s history, particularly of its revolution in the 1950s, was in the city. Illustrations and sculptures of Jose Marti, one of the first Cuban independence fighters, were ubiquitous. Being July while I was there, I saw some 26th of July movement flags around town. However, I couldn’t discern the extent to which the revolutionary commemoration was done by the government or ordinary citizens.

I was somewhat apprehensive about how I would be perceived as an American while in Cuba, but overall I found the Cuban people to be quite friendly. Anti-American sentiment didn’t seem to be common in the discourse of ordinary people. As a matter of fact, there were frequently large crowds of people waiting outside the U.S. embassy awaiting immigration appointments.

Additionally, one of the reasons I chose to venture to Cuba was due to the country’s historical ties to the Soviet Union. The Soviet legacy in Cuba turned out to be far more visible than I had anticipated. Nearly half of the cars on the road were of Moskvitch or Lada manufacture. Cuban policemen still carried Soviet-era handguns. When I visited the Fidel Castro center, I found it fascinating that the gift shop’s Cuban history book was available in many languages - including Russian - but not in English. Most surprising was that many older Cubans spoke some Russian from having studied abroad in the Soviet Union. I even got the opportunity to speak Russian with my host family’s grandfather, who studied shipbuilding in the USSR in the 1960s.

I don’t really have any strong feelings about my time in Cuba. I didn’t really enjoy or dislike it, but I am still glad to have visited a country few Americans can claim they have.