Uzhgorod and Mukachevo with Alla and Aileen

Tuesday morning when I woke, Klara not only had the usual breakfast ready for me, but also some caviar to try. Never ate caviar before. This was reddish-orange, and I had it on bread with butter. Tasted a little like sardines; was pretty good.

Alla and her daughter Aileen came to pick me up in their Toyota SUV to take me on a tour. Alla is Elizabeth's grand-daughter, and the daughter of Natalya. She is married to Anatol Sokolov, whom I had met in Uzhgorod with Misha. Aileen is eighteen; she just completed college where she studied art. In the fall she will be studying art at a University in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Alla and Aileen took me first to a botanical garden; the garden is small but has many beautiful flowers and plants. There is one kind of tree Ukrainians are particularly fond of - they call it "Lipa",  I don't know what it is in English, but it is very fragrant. In one of the trees there was a little squirrel - I had never seen a squirrel like this! It was small, dark grey and black, and had really big ears. There were lots of really big snails on the sidewalks, too. They were about the size snail that would be used for escargot; they might have been out on the sidewalks because of all the rain.

It started to rain again, so we headed to the pub Anatol owns - "Egan's Irish Pub". You would think it really odd to have an Irish pub in Uzhgorod unless you knew the history. At the turn of the 20th century, Imri Egan, who was of Irish ancestry was sent by the Austro-Hungarian government to Carpathia. He was an economist/agronomist who brought modern farming techniques and technology to Carpathia. They people were so grateful to him for the improvements to their lives from his work, that they (the people) erected a monument to him at the edge of Dravtsi. This monument was built entirely with donations from the people, without any help from any government.

Anatol's pub is in a very old stone building; the building was once a convent. It is several stories high, with cavernous cellars. On the first floor there are two large rooms - the main pub, and a secondary pub for banquets. The upper floors are used as Anatol's office, and he is also converting some rooms for use as a hostel.
For lunch at the pub we had pizza, and potato pancakes. I had a Ukrainian beer which Anatol said was a "live" beer - it wasn't pasteurized or filtered, and still had living yeast in it. It had a very pleasant but unique taste.
I showed everyone the family photos I had on my computer. When I showed them a picture of my mother when she was about 8 or 9 years old, everyone remarked how much she looked liked Alla, except for the hair color.
I had Aileen take me to a bookstore to pick up an English/Ukrainian dictionary. Aileen said it was easy to find stores selling all kinds of dictionaries, since so many languages were spoken in Carpathia. She said that Rusyn, especially the po-Dravetski dialect, was so different from Ukrainian that someone from Kiev or L'viv is not able to understand it. She said also that there were Hungarian and Romanian villages in Ukrainian Carpathia in which the people refuse to speak Ukrainian. Even their schools teach in Hungarian or Romanian. And if you stop to ask the people directions, they won't help you unless you ask in their language.

OK, Klara just interrupted me. She washed some of my clothes yesterday, and she saw that I had them folded up in my room. She took them back off me so that she could iron my clothes!!!!...I tried to tell her that you don't need to iron T-shirts!!!!.......but it's no use trying to argue with these people! Anatol had warned me about Ukrainian people. He said they have a word for their custom of hospitality - I forget what the word was - but it means that they will force food and hospitality on you and there's nothing you can do about it!!..a couple days ago I saw Katya eating a bliny, and asked her what filling was in it. Klara told me it was lekvar, and I made the mistake of telling her that I liked lekvar.......so I had to eat one, even though I had just had a half dozen blini with apricot jelly. Which reminds me, I don't think in earlier posts I said anything about "Kompote". In letters, Klara and Marta, and Josef and Etela, had all written about making apple, cherry, peach, and other fruit "kompotes" so that they "could have something good through the winter when there wasn't any fresh fruit".. I always thought "kompote" was some kind of jam or preserve, but it is a fruit drink. It's a very refreshing drink, much better than any cola or soda or Kool-Aid, and it's all natural. Ivan and Klara have rows and rows of huge jars of "kompote".

Back to my story, we all decided to take a trip to Mukachevo so they could show me the castle there. First we went to Anatol's home so Alla and Aileen could change clothes. Anatol's home is a really, really nice modern home that most Americans would envy. I got a chance to see some of Aileens artwork, and it was pretty impressive.

 Mukachevo is about 40 kilometers from Uzhgorod, and all along the way we passed little villages with their own little churches. I would have liked to take pictures, but it was raining. The rain let up by the time we got to the castle, and I was able to take about a hundred photos of the castle, and the view from the castle, which sits on a little hill which rises about 100 meters from the surrounding land. Inside the castle were lots of historic artifacts, from prehistoric pottery, to peasant costume, to medieval weapons. One room was a little chapel, and had several cases with very old icons and Bibles. Just judging by the style of art, I would guess that one of the icons was from about the 12th Century. I took a couple of photos before I was told by the woman guarding the room that photo's were forbidden, because flashlight might damage them.

Anatol dropped me off at Klara's, and soon Misha's son Sasha came over to visit. Since I was working on my computer and had it out, Sasha showed me his page on the Ukrainian version of "Facebook". He was surprised that I didn't have a cell phone and that I wasn't on any of the social networks; he said he couldn't imagine going without it. When he saw my iPod out, he told me that he DJ's at a club in Uzhgorod on weekends, when he's not busy with dental school work. Sasha will have 5 years of dental school, then 2 years of an internship program, so at 24 will be a fully licensed and practicing dentist.