Back Home in Russia – Safe and Sound…

I was sitting here thinking about the trip I just made over a good cup of coffee. It is really amazing how bad the coffee can be when you have to buy it from a machine. I tried several cups of train station coffee this trip and found that while it was chocked full of caffeine. They forgot to keep the flavor and it was more like mud than coffee. My grandpa use to say, “That coffee could take the varnish off the furniture…”

So running on coffee (?) for several days, does not help my health and it takes me several days to recover once I am home. It is a fun but rough trip…

This week I will update the visa situation in Ukraine. There has been several changes and that caused me a few problems. Nothing that I could not deal with but if you know ahead of time it is easy to change your patterns for. So a new Ukraine visa post is in the works, to cover new said issues…

I also struggled to get any mobile posting done. The system that I had was flawed (as always) and even though it worked at home. It crashed on the road.  I had to do some research at the motel to discover new ways to post from my mobile phone. I finally came upon a application for my android phone called, “WordPress in Your Pocket“. It was the answer to my issues and as you can see I was able to finally get several articles posted. They were just test posts but it worked and made me feel better after all the failures…

There was something cool about sitting in a McDonald’s and eating a cheeseburger and posting to the blog… (I know, I am weird!)

One last thing for this post. I found out on this trip why America is the worst country but is also the greatest and most wonderful country. On a overnight train like the one to Kiev you find that you are a captive of the train and conversations are necessary just to curtail the boredom. So I was talking to a Yuri. (Always a Yuri on a train!) He was expressing about why America was a terrible country and all that stuff. I listened to him and discovered that he was born in Ukraine during the Soviet era and had lived in America for three years after the fall of the Soviet Empire. He was very well educated and fluent in several languages. So he had knowledge’s that extended beyond just western propaganda in his thoughts…

We were joined in conversation by a quiet Briton (Charles) that agreed with Yuri on most of his thoughts. So I was out numbered right off the start.  But after all was said about how America needs to grow up and get her act together. That America is just a semblance of Democracy. That freedoms in America are a facade. Other words politically, morally and structurally, America sucks… 🙁

There was an interesting kicker to the whole conversation. It was about why America is the greatest Country and that these wonderful items override the bad…

Yuri had said that he gained 30 kilos in America and when he came back to Ukraine he lost all that weight he had gained. He said that food was just so plentiful and cheap, that you found yourself and others just eating all the time. Every business meeting had food and more food. Portions are huge at the restaurants, etc etc etc. The biggest thing to him was the donut shops. He could not control himself over Dunkin donuts… 🙂

{I myself, have lost 20 kilos now after leaving America and that part of his conversation I had to agree with. To much excess food in America…}

So Yuri and the Charles made it clear that America is the greatest country in the world because, you have unlimited cups of coffee refills, unlimited cups of hot or cold tea refills, cheap buffets with unlimited food refills, unlimited Coke-Cola refills and donut shops everywhere. (Does Britain have unlimited food items like America?) There was a couple more things and they all had to do with food… 🙂

Who would have thunk? Dunkin Donuts makes America great…

Sometimes my train conversations amaze me…

Windows to Russia!

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