No trip to Ukraine is ever complete without visiting my native Dubno, my birth place. This time, we opted for a crazy... literally insanely hot elektrichka ride...that is a train with hard benches as seats, no A/C or proper toilets. It was Lyena, Aryan, Katya and I that decided on this adventurous journey. Normally we could have taken a train and be there in 2 hours, but nothing worked for our schedule to get there first thing in the morning, and we didn’t want to drive...
Surprisingly, the ride was not too horrible and we prayed hard we wouldn't get Covid with unmasked people coughing nearby. Even Aryan did such a great job!
When we arrived, my cousin Misha and uncle Alex picked us up and took us first to the cemetary.
We visited my dad's and my grandpa's and my grandma's graves.
My dad was so young when he passed away...not even 50 years old. Way too young. This picture on his tombstone doesn't make him look quite himself, by the way.
Afterwards, we visited Alex (Sasha) and Natalia at their apartment. This apartment is the place where my dad grew up.
Here on the picture is Yana (Misha's wife) with their two girls, Katya, Lyena and Aryan.
We had a nice dinner and chat and then went for a walk to the famous "sadochok" where I went to preschool/daycare when I was little.
I actually hated that place but because everyone worked, we had to stay at daycare... Katia and Olia, my cousins, did too.
Here is my aunt Natasha, she is my dad's cousin.
Natasha never had a chance to get married and she has no kids of her own, so she loves me like I am her daughter. Her mom passed away many years ago and so did her grandma (my great grandma), and she never knew her dad. She lives in Dubno in a private house on Sadova Street where we visited all the time when I was little. We actually visited her house this time as well! But I didn't get any pictures, sadly.
But I did get a bunch of pictures of my "Soviet era" daycare place. That's the Kurochka Riaba fairy tale character on the wall.
On this picture you can see the fence to the daycare and also the apartment building where my Babushka Maya used to live (just across the walkway from my other grandma) and where I stayed every summer. That fence seemed SO high thirty five years ago! And we used to have a lot more trees. We also heard many stories how we just walked to the daycare on our own at like two and three years old!
And this is the perfect way to show you the "walkway" in front of the apartment building. Everyone who got off the bus on the main road had to walk pass our building after work. So imagine, during Soviet times, lots of women and men coming home from work, very few had cars. Lots of them would be loaded with groceries for the next couple of days, or lucky finds of clothing and toys. Some would sit down on the benches lining this walkway, in the shade, to chat with other women, sometimes before going upstairs to cook dinner. Sometimes they would come downstairs after dinner, sit alone and wait till others would join them for some gossip, chat and receive therapy of its own kind. I so vividly remember that... And then they would people watch too-hahaha. If a soap opera episode was about to start, everyone would go home (like “Simply Maria” or “The rich also cry” where two most famous Mexican soap operas!). And men would get a cards game going, or a chess game. It was definitely a different kind of life back then.
And this is the garage that used to belong to my grandpa. It seemed huge! He actually did store his car in there. I thought it always looked so nice and new compared to the ones next to it. Now it just looks...green. I can't believe that it's still there.
Visiting Dubno always brings back a lot of childhood memories--the greatest ones and the ones I want to forget. It's my birthplace and a place connected to my earliest memories.
Finally, here is to the new generation of the Klymyuk family!
Yana, Misha, kids, Danilo, Natasha, Lyana, Katya, Lyena and uncle Alex (Sasha), plus Aryan.
The end of Dubno adventures.
I will be back!
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