Kyiv Faces

I'm in Germany for the holiday break visiting Patty and her family. Such a happy cheerful smiling country! This may not be your impression of Germany. Well, compared to Ukraine, that's what it is. As soon as I got off the plane in Frankfurt I was struck by the difference. People make eye contact with you! They nod and smile! They even say "Guten Tag!"

I'm delighted to be in Kyiv but, to fit in, I can't show it. On the street, I've adopted a "Kyiv face." This is the face of everyone in the city: dour, unsmiling, flat affect, grim, staring straight ahead, never acknowledging the presence of another person. I walk to and from work every day (I LOVE walking to work!) and recognize fellow pedestrians. Never do they indicate that they recognize me. But they do: a friend who has worked here for four years said "oh, yeah, they know you. They even know you're an American, and they watch everything you do." I told him that by the summer I want someone to smile at me on the way to work. "Fat chance, " he said.

Sometimes my face hurts at the end of the day from the effort to keep my face Kyivian. Now and then I get on a bus, turn to the window, and grin widely, stretching those smiling muscles that haven't been used for hours. I probably look like a gargoyle to the people outside.