First Mashrutki Rides

Oh the those first mashrustki rides that you take after you've been away in a country where you command a car down the wide, smooth highways in your attempt to get somewhere important!

How quickly you forgot how difficult it is to even open the door. No one will help or offer assistance as you struggle desperately and feel like a fool. If you can't open the door, you will stay where you are. You will go nowhere. Once inside the driver impatiently looks around while you try to decipher how much the fare has gone up. If you ask, you will receive a sarcastic answer if any answer at all. You should already know the price of the mashrutka you poor passenger you! You will delicately balance yourself on the narrow steps in your winter boots as you dig in your purse with one hand to find money while the other tries to close the door. Before you get the door shut completely, someone yanks it open and you nearly topple over as a woman screams at the driver and asks where this mashrutka is going.

Once the fare has been handed over, you glance quickly around to discern what you will be able to grab onto for dear life that is not a living, breathing human being. You have only the bare half second to make a decision. Make sure you do not grab a person or their belongings! Maybe you will be spared a ride standing in the narrow aisle and you will be able to take a seat. Look around quickly. Always be hopeful!

Ah, a seat! You are propelled into a vacant space next to a glaring devushka by the raw speed of the mashrutka as it pulls away from the curb, but you are sitting down! If there was a game app for "Life In Ukraine" you would score five points at least.

Now, inhale deeply. Okay, maybe not that deeply. The smell of the mashrutka. Ah, you forgot that human sweat, plastic, dirt, gas smell. How could you?