Coffee and flowers and the subway and massage

I want to say a few words about flowers and coffee and the subway and massage:

Ukrainians are crazy about flowers.  Every subway station has cut flower shops, people are selling them on the streets, and you can see people carrying them home from work or to work for that matter.  The long stem roses are magnificent in many colors.  The flower that is in season right now looks exactly like Lily of the Valley but has a very strong sweet scent, different from what we have at home.  It's really a nice aspect of life here.

And coffee:  anyone who knows me also knows that I'm crazy about coffee.  I've discerned five styles of coffee here and I suspect there are more:
There is instant and one can buy a cup of instant at any number of little shops.  It is served in plastic cups that don't seem to be made for hot drinks.
Then there is espresso: dark and strong
And, my usual choice, cappuccino which is espresso with steamed/frothed milk, served alone or with cinnamon or with chocolate (in Odessa, little pots of thick chocolate)
And we must not forget Americano.  It is weak and usually served with hot milk, like a weak latte.  It shows what Europeans think of American coffee.

And the metro/subway.  The system is inexpensive, clean, efficient and so very far underground. To ride costs 2UAH (called Hrivna) It's about $0.25. It is common to enter a station and take a steep escalator down a very far distance.  People who are content to stand and ride, move to the right side of the escalator step and people who want to rush down do so on the left side of the step.  Having reached what you assume to be the bottom, you then find another escalator that goes an equal distance or more.  Several stations have interchanges so you can change lines.  I live on the green line and often change to blue or red depending on where I'm going. When we cross the river, we surface and cross a bridge then return underground.  One of the first phrases I learned from hearing was Nastupna Stantsia (next station).  It makes it possible for me to doze, like many do, and keep an ear tuned to the next stop till I hear my stop.

And massage:  at home, I visit Kevin, my massage therapist monthly.  He keeps me functioning and is really like family to me.  After all the forms of travel and walking, I decided to seek out a massage therapist here.  It was determined I needed massage, not a vertebrist - I suppose that's our equivalent of a chiropractor.  I found a man named Yevgeniy with the help of a friend and had an appointment this morning.  He only worked on my back and used techniques that were totally unknown to me but he did a good job.  When he had worked on my back almost an hour, he asked if he could work on my abdomen.  I agreed.  He put deep, almost painful pressure on several parts of my abdomen.  I don't really know why or how but he certainly got things moving, if you know what I mean!  I will return to him when I return from my next trip and finish a conference, probably the first week in June.

The sun is brilliant and it is in the mid-to-high seventies today.  Low humidity and wispy clouds.  To say it's perfect weather would be an understatement.  I hear that at home it's gray and wet, interminably.  I'm sorry about that.