Sunday, July 7, 2019

It was finally time to head over to the airport to go visit my family in Ukraine. I haven’t been there in five years and I already had new members of the family yet to meet, but the whole trip is a story for another time. I think that if I told most of it, I would get into a lot of trouble, so I’m going to postpone that. 

I want to pinpoint an evening that I don’t believe I will ever forget … willingly. 

July 13th came and, finally, we were going to the place that everyone was harping about to me for a few weeks now. This place is called Krayivka. A restaurant … type … thing … that my mom wouldn’t stop talking about and cousins kept hyping up. I have never had so many warnings told to me before going anywhere before. From “there will be a lot of drunk people there,” to “the smoke from cigarettes will make you highly uncomfortable,” I knew that I was ready. This place sounded like any family reunion I’ve been to before so I don’t think that it would be too shocking.

Now imagine this: we are walking around the center of Lviv, a beautiful, alive city, and my cousins are preparing me for what I was about to see. Finally, we made it there (which was in an alley, might I add).

An underground dug-out.

Literally.

We walk down this road and there is this line of people standing in front of the entrance. I’ll be honest, there could’ve been ten or sixty people in that line but my brain decides not to record that type of information for some reason. And as we stand there with my family, I can kind of see the procedure of entering this place. Yes, procedure. You read that right. There is this whole ceremony that happens with each set of guests, and that’s probably why the wait-time is unnecessarily long, but we won’t talk about that because it was really cool. My family kept averting my gaze and distracting me because they wanted it to be a surprise for my ‘too-Canadian’ self.

When our time came to enter this mysterious place, I finally saw it all unravel before me. This short, funny-looking man wearing traditional Ukrainian clothing greets us with “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine) and by tradition, we answer with, “Heroyem Slava” (Glory to the Heroes). 

That is the password by the way.

We enter this small room and the door is locked behind us. It is so interesting because this room reminded me of my great-grandmother’s house, filled with Ukrainian symbols, bread, religious icons, and the smell of food that I can never get enough of. 

The man then asks me if I am above the age of 18, I replied with a yes and then proceed to get a smack from my mom; a laugh erupts and then I see the bottle. A bottle of gorilka (homemade vodka) and I knew what was about to happen. It was babysitting a bunch of adults time. 

My family later told me that it was a tradition in this restaurant to take a shot of vodka before entering. 

The man pours everyone a shot – besides me and my pregnant cousin – and everyone takes it with a smile, which then turned into the “shot-face” that I believe everyone knows what I’m talking about. After a few more traditional sayings, the door is opened and this mysterious place is revealed to me.

This restaurant is a cramped place where everyone must squeeze in order to make it anywhere. It is completely wooden and the light-brown floorboards creak with every step, but you can’t hear it because it is filled with loud voices and laughter. We make it down this corridor situation where there is railing on each side with occasional openings to go down steps to enter the sitting areas. You are able to see each table as you walk down this make-shift corridor, besides the ones behind occasional walls further back. The entire place is covered with WW2 antiques including pictures and weapons. The wooden walls are filled with Ukrainian symbols and images of soldiers. Waiters try to make their way with the trays of food and my uncle’s yelling something because he’s a lightweight. We finally make it to our table and my cousins pushed me onto a wooden bench with the table right in front of it. We’re finally settled.

My family treats us with all of the amazing food that I’ve genuinely been longing for. This entire place was wonderful and we were all having fun, especially me. I love watching as my parents gradually get drunk with each passing minute. All of the traditional food was served in metal, beaten up bowls and plates to replicate the tableware people would eat from in the original hide-outs this restaurant replicates. During the time we were there, my family told me about the history of this type of place.

This is essentially a copy of a base for saving civilians. These types of hiding places were all over Western Ukraine and they were used in the liberation movement. Russia and Poland were constantly taking over Ukraine and the people had enough. Individuals would get together in these types of underground locations and discuss how to get the Ukrainian government back. How to stop this constant, back-and-forth, tug-o-war for Ukrainian land. Nationalism is a way to describe it. It is very interesting and I won’t be going into this too much, but an interesting fact is that the reason for the password that was said, was to mimic the real-life version of this restaurant. This whole movement was illegal and dangerous so the individuals in these hide-outs would create password phrases like, “the weather is nice today,” “I bet it will rain tomorrow.” The history of these hide-outs is fascinating and convoluted, and it was very interesting to hear about it.

After an hour and a half or so in this restaurant, we made our way back home and it was really funny to see my grandmother watch her son (my dad) as he stumbled drunkenly to bed. That was one of the best nights of my whole time staying there.

 

 

 

 

featured image: https://dribbble.com/shots/1398384-Hyphen-Plane-GIF