Quote: (08-29-2016 12:32 PM)scrambled Wrote:
"Look at the people, old before their time, at the children, very thin and playing with broken toys... that's another reality, far from Kreshiatik..."
I'm in country right now (excursion to Lvov) and just told two Ukranians about that, neither are rich and one is working class. Their response: accurate, but only circa 1991.
I have been touring by car and train all over central and west Ukraine; I am not making snap judgments based on "Central" Kiev. I just don't see the "Save the Children" Africa like conditions the internet presents; the idea that people go hungry here is a joke, almost every "украинец" has a potbelly. The kids aren't hungry, except for more ice cream, of which there are vendors everywhere. They have plenty of toys since "Карпатія" produces wooden domestic made ones, sourced from the still abundant forests, sold for cheap. The Chinese made Walmart style plastic junk in the USA don't play here.
I'm not trying to deny any observations you personally have made, or to gloss over the problems that are very much present, only to present a more realistic view based my experience. Ukraine just seems like a European country to me, not a starving kids & Chernobyl distopia where the native supermodel women want to leave desperately with any guy who has 10 phrases of Russian memorized. I could see myself living here, except for the cold.
I can tell you of places around Odessa, precise Odessan suburbs 45 minutes from the center, where you could go see for yourself. But granted, it's because most of the families there have drug-related problems (think the grand-grand mothers raising the kids). Very low-income places. Kids with cardboard-made toys, I am not kidding, and very small and thin.
Anyway, I have walked around Odessa main commercial street, derebesomething, with a typical Ukrainian family, lower-middle-class people on once-in-year holiday, and believe me they could
not buy even side-of-the road food, their kids were just looking at the restaurants like Dicken's characters', with wide and sad eyes. I ended up buying food for this family, like I was in the Phils...
And you are right, almost all Ukrainian men have a beer belly and generally are massive and slow dudes, but, just wait for the next generation, the post-Maidan crisis generation, they will be thin, they'll grow up with less food...
Also, there is no denying my "people, old before their time" FSU description: compare a 40 years old French or Italian dude with a 40 years old Ukrainian, lord!... or a 35 years old Parisian or Milan woman with a 35 years old Ukrainian pre-babushka: sad!
This said, I do not deny that Ukraine, for us, is perfectly livable and millions of miles from Africa-conditions, of course.