The long road back
A visit home
UPDATE: I made a silly but critical error in the original post. I completely screwed up the dates of my visit. It's definitely NOT in November, but rather right now. As we speak I'm on the way to Kyiv and will be trying to plan things for 3-8 AUGUST.
WARNING: this post is NSFW; proceed with caution (it’s done merely to help you re-live the experience I had to go through)
March 1995, spring break during my first year at university, and what do I decide to do? Take a solo 28-hour bus journey from Boston to Jacksonville, Florida.
I can’t recall if I had any other enticing options and as it was my first time living in the US in nearly a decade, I decided to embark on one of those classic American rites of passage: a road trip. Though many people going on an American road trip might envisage doing it by car along Route 66, I was taking a Greyhound bus on my own down the East Coast (and back), and I didn’t plan on reading any Jack Kerouac en route either.1
My memory is deceiving me here. I’m not so sure it was a case of wanting to take an epic bus journey or whether I was invited by my aunt and uncle to visit, and it was the cheapest option. Hey, money’s tight when you’re at university.
I can’t say I enjoyed it. It wasn’t much fun and certainly not so comfortable. It made a few lengthy stops on the way and there were a couple of bus changes. And let’s just say that some of these stops – in NYC, Washington DC, somewhere in North Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia – were in the less salubrious parts of town (or in other words, the wrong side of the tracks) at different hours of the day, including the middle of the night. I had so little money that I subsisted on junk food from convenience stories and vending machines, which at the time meant lots of chocolate bars, pies and sugary snacks, and absolutely zero fruits and vegetables.
My ‘favourite’ part of the trip was my seating companion over a long stretch from North Carolina to Savannah. He had a nasty case of Tourette’s Syndrome and from time to time, in between his twitchings and mutterings, he’d drop some pretty loud f-bombs (though I don’t think anyone called them ‘f-bombs’ back then).
Let’s just say FUCK! that there were some interesting…characters on those buses.
FUCK!
I made it more or less okay but my bag didn’t. When I got off the bus in Jacksonville, there was no sign of my bag. I only had the clothes I was wearing and I was sticky and sweaty after the trip.
That meant I’d have to borrow some clothes from my uncle Mark. Just one problem: he’s roughly 6 foot 6 inches (that’s roughly 2 meters for my European friends). I’m barely 5 foot 10 inches (1.75 meters). FUCK!
My bag did eventually turn up, towards the middle of the week.
And then a few days later, it was the return journey back north FUCK! which I was very much looking forward to.
As I make my way back to Kyiv for a journey of similar length, I just hope it’s a little less eventful and a bit FUCK! more comfortable. With normal, non-swearing people.
I know many of my readers have made the journey into and out of Ukraine numerous times, by various combinations of train and bus. The last thing in the world I’m looking for is any sympathy. I just wanted to offer up a short anecdote – that’s anecdote in the English meaning of the term, not a joke – to preface news of my arrival.
I am busily working on arranging events and gatherings and there’s still much to be determined. So stay tuned on these pages for more details in the next few days or so. You can also follow me on Facebook or on Instagram (you’ll see my username down below, in the photo). I’m most likely doing stuff from 3-8 August, at different venues at different times of the day FUCK FUCK FUCK! There’s still a chance I’ll be doing a more formal, organised ‘something’, but otherwise it appears that it’ll be a few cosier, less formal get-togethers to accommodate everyone’s schedules.
Thank you to all of those who have so kindly offered suggestions about venues – I’ve got plenty of options now and am just working through them.
That concludes the logistical part of this post. Feel free to move along now or stick around for some more personal stuff (it’s short).
This time it’s personal – FUCK!
When my daughter and I left Kyiv on 14 February 2022, it was merely as a precautionary measure. We had return tickets for mid-March and we figured we’d be returning then.
But as Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
In April I started writing A Classroom in Kyiv (which was then titled An Accidental Career), and this is from the Introduction:
Interlude: April 2022 Vienna, a glorious sunshiny spring morning, sitting in the picturesque Stadtpark, one of Central Europe’s loveliest, birds chirping, fountains in full flow, couples promenading hand-in-hand, the distant strains of a busker adding a jazz soundtrack to the setting. Here I am in one of the world’s greatest cities, one that regularly makes it to the top three of any ‘Best Cities in the World to Live In’ rankings. Ah, the life of an English teacher abroad!
Well, not quite. This is not my home. My home is…was (?) Kyiv, Ukraine, where I have (had?) lived since September 2010. But now I’m a refugee, kind of, though I am not Ukrainian. I’m not sure where home is these days. I’m not actually sure where home ever was.
I’m only here in Vienna temporarily, I think, and this is definitely not the life of the ‘typical’ English teacher. This was meant to be a two-year plan, not a career – and that was back in 2005. I didn't expect to find myself teaching for so long and I certainly never thought I’d ever be a refugee.
The book, as those of you who have read it will know, is primarily about language learning, life as an English teacher abroad, with various classroom anecdotes (and jokes) weaved in throughout. I tried to limit the overly dramatic personal stuff, but it crept in from time to time, and I only hope that it added some insightful context to the story. The book features a series of personal Interludes which follow a chronological order, and then things get way too personal and in-depth in the whopping 10,000-word Epilogue (which one reader found to be a ‘tear-jerker’, another ‘heart-breaking’ and a third said ‘to hell with this self-indulgent nonsense!’ and gave up after a few paragraphs. Hey, to each their own, right? At least I have a couple of 5-star reviews now).
One more time, I’d be happy to see as many people as possible in Kyiv, FUUUUUUUUUUUCK! and there is absolutely ZERO pressure to buy the book (I’ll have a handful of copies with me; I don’t mean handful literally, don’t worry). It’d be great just to say hello and catch up (hugs are optional), have a bit of chit-chat, enjoy a coffee (or something stronger), whatever.
I shall see (some of) you soon. Sorry I can’t extend the book tour to other parts of Europe and North America.
PS: …FU..no, that’s enough…
My dear old man will be deeply upset with me if I don’t mention my first epic road trip. At the age of 9, we went from Washington (state) to Jacksonville, a journey of 3,000 miles (nearly 5,000km). Regrettably I didn’t keep a journal at the time so my recollections are vague, but the most memorable moment came during a stopover in Colorado, visiting my cousins. They had a Native American friend named Summertime Snow. And we went swimming. And because of this, one day I want to write a book called I Swam in a Swimming Pool with Summertime Snow. All I need to think of is a good plot. Though who was it that said, “plots only matter in thrillers”?