Some Newspaper Articles by Matt Hagengruber

Ukraine Volunteers Nervously Watch Winds Of Change
Wisconsin State Journal
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Matt Hagengruber

Snow and rain and fog hit the western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod recently. The Carpathian Mountains that ring the city were hidden from view, and, fittingly, Ukrainians couldn't see 10 feet into the sky, much less two days into the future.

I've been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzhgorod since June, and I've been in Ukraine since March. From the first day we arrived, we were sternly warned to stay away from Ukrainian politics. Now, it's never been harder.

A Nov. 21 presidential election run-off has been annulled because of fraud. With new elections on the horizon, it's a mistake to think that this political crisis is over. It just seems to be on hold. Many Ukrainian cities still see protests, including my city of 125,000 people. But as in Kiev, life still pushes on here. Buses run like normal now, but they also ran during the tense times of the past few weeks, although they were much more crowded as some drivers stopped working.

People talk politics constantly, and everyone wants to know where the Peace Corps stands. I just repeat what I learned in Russian class back in March: that Peace Corps is a non-political, non-religious government organization. With so much practice, I'm starting to sound like a native.

Now orange -- opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's campaign color -- is everywhere, but there are Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich supporters here too. A bulletin board is set up in the central town square with pictures from rallies around the world, plus what look like mug shots of tough-looking men, with a poster asking "Who is their trainer?"

A week ago, the local police force arrested about 30 toughs near the soccer stadium. My neighbor Art, a young radio journalist, watched in amazement as the police searched the dozens of cars parked nearby. Each trunk was loaded with machine guns, pistols and baseball bats, he told me, as well as piles of money.

Yet despite all this muscle stretching -- on both sides -- life continues almost as usual. Buses are more crowded. Instead of packing 30 people onto the old Russian buses, 50 people squeeze in, forcing the air from our collective lungs. People laugh as one more person rushes at the open door with their plastic bags of cabbages and beets. Some buses have torn pieces of orange cloth hanging from the rear view mirror. Some don't.

Old men block the doorways of Soviet-style general stores to discuss politics, their faces flushed from the cold outside and the heat of the argument. They look me in the eyes to see if I'm with them, but with the odd mix of languages spoken here, I'm usually lost. They just wave me off and laugh.

"Amerikanyets?" they ask. "No," I say, which in local dialect actually means yes.

American dollars are hard to find, and the exchange rate has been inching upward. Before the first round of elections, people were lined up 10 deep at the few bank machines in town, cashing in Ukrainian hryvnia for American dollars.

"When you have elections in America," my co-worker Natalka told me, "the economy is stable. When we have an election, the economy crashes."

In Uzhgorod, both sides seem to have granted themselves a temporary reprieve, and they need the rest. Some university students are back in class, but they still man a tent city in front of the local government building. They held a big concert in the darkness Saturday night.

Every day, someone from the Peace Corps office in Kiev calls to give briefing of what's happening. With more than 300 volunteers in Ukraine -- the Peace Corps' largest program -- the mixed American-Ukrainian staff is edgy about any news that could put Americans in danger. My regional manager sounds more tired every time he calls.

All the other volunteers I've talked to are hopeful that we won't be forced to leave. If we do, though, it will be a quick exit, as I can see European Union territory from my crumbling balcony.

But no one really knows what will happen, at least not until the next round of elections on Dec. 26.

As I talked to an old Ukrainian taxi driver in the center of Uzhgorod recently, someone was blaring the Scorpions' song "Winds of Change" from a second-story balcony. The classic soundtrack from the end of communism echoed through the alleyways and off the walls of the old Hungarian buildings in the city center.

The weather has finally cleared, but most Ukrainians still wonder which way the winds will blow.

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Travel essay: A taste of life in Ukraine
By Matt Hagengruber
Special to The Seattle Times
Friday, August 20, 2004

Since coming to Ukraine in March as a Peace Corps volunteer, my culinary palate has been wiped clean and replaced with something entirely different.

I've eaten raw fish, boiled fish head, raw pig fat, squid jerky, pickled everything and an odd assortment of mystery meat, usually doused with ketchup. Pizza usually includes corn and shredded, pickled carrots, and hot dogs are covered with cabbage and mayonnaise. But I enjoy it, as do my Ukrainian hosts, who revel in getting the American to blindly eat whatever comes out of the cloudy, salty bowl of fish stew.

And then eat it the next morning, cold, for breakfast.

But possibly my biggest challenge, and my biggest insight into Ukrainian culture, came at a Sunday afternoon picnic along the Uzh River in western Ukraine. I live in the city of Uzhgorod, in a flat pocket between ridges of the Carpathian Mountains.

My host family and I left the city behind in their Lada sedan, which still runs despite being nearly 30 years old. We met up with friends in a field crowded with other picnickers. I had no idea what I was in for.

We built a quick fire and settled in as my host mom, Maria, peeled small potatoes with a knife. They were about the size of golf balls and are currently selling for next to nothing at the local market. In summer, fresh local vegetables are as cheap as the chocolate-colored dirt they come from.

Maria split the potatoes in half like a hamburger bun and sprinkled each flat side with a mix of peppers and Hungarian spices. Hungary is just across the border, less than an hour away.

After the spices came the wedge of salo, sandwiched between the two potato halves. The best way to describe salo is to think of a hunk of bacon the size of a small suitcase, minus the meat, with only the white, stringy fat left behind.

The raw pig fat is bought cheap in the bazaar, and a sharp knife slices through it like, well, lard. My family has a 10-pound slab hanging from a meat hook in its pantry, next to homemade sausage and jars of strawberry jam.

Salo is a Ukrainian tradition that dates back centuries. It's usually eaten raw, a few slippery slabs atop a piece of sour brown bread. It goes well with a shot of peppered vodka, one taste canceling the other. But this was different. This was a full-blown Ukrainian salo fest.

The salo-potato sandwiches were wrapped in foil and dumped on the smoldering fire, as were 15 plain potatoes, which sat right in the coals until they had fully blackened an hour later.

Yura, a longtime friend of Ivan, my host dad, pulled out a well-used cast-iron frying pan and filled it with the remaining salo and half a dozen sliced onions. Within a few minutes, the salo had liquefied and engulfed the onions, which crackled and sizzled in the pan. The tough bacon skin that remained turned brown and curled up like a pork rind.

Yura took a handful of branches from a Russian olive tree and whacked the blackened skin of the potatoes until the ash had fallen off, leaving behind only the gold-colored meat. He split the potatoes in half with his hand and dumped them and the onion and salo mix into a pot, which he tossed like a salad.

At first, the idea of eating salo - pure fat - as a main course caused my appetite to shrivel, but I'd steeled myself prior to coming to Ukraine to take what I was offered, even if it meant a quart of pure fat over a pot of potatoes.

As with many of the delicacies I've been offered here, I ate everything with an outward smile.

We drank spring water and homemade wine, ate foot-long green onions and tore at thick slabs of rye bread. The families told stories about concerts they attended and the travel hassles that marred a recent trip to Kiev, some 400 miles to the east.

Despite the somewhat shocking tastes, this was the true experience I had come here for. I wouldn't trade it for all the things I miss in America.

We finished the day by climbing a hill to an ancient castle that overlooks the Uzh River valley. Looking west, over the Carpathians and into Slovakia, we watched the sky turn a deep blue and lightning strike the far-off hillsides.

The crumbling castle stood still and silent with us, watching over the valley and the approaching storm as it has done for centuries.

Matt Hagengruber is from Helena, Mont.
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Last updated 8.11.2005