Subway ballet and Type A's

Hi.  It's about 20 degrees Celsius in Kiev (68F) and I'm feeling a little chilly after weeks and weeks of much higher temperatures.  A month ago I put a status on Facebook "have I died and gone to Florida?"  Now I have acclimated.  That's almost scary considering that all my family knows how I've always felt about really hot weather.  A friend of mine told me the other day that last summer was much hotter!  I think I'll have a t-shirt made saying "sweating and stinking - that's my life."

Now, about the metro ballet.  I've probably mentioned before that you can't imagine how deep underground the metro is.  There are two sets of long long escalators to take the throngs down.  The metro moves 1 million people a day with incredible efficiency.  While at first I was taken aback by being shoved into the metro cars, now I'm shoving with the best of them.  I'm told that in Japan, there are metro officials to shove people into the cars.  Here it's do-it-yourself!  Anyway, I digress.

Let's start the metro ballet paragraph again:  On the escalator, the convention is that you move to the right side of the escalator because the left side is for those who want to walk or run down.  The runners usually are young men and women.  To watch them run/skip/dance down the endless steps is beautiful.  I'm sure to them, it's just that they're in a hurry to get nowhere fast.  To me, the observer, it is poetry in motion.  It is beautiful.  They don't know it but they are rejoicing and celebrating their youth and ability and athleticism and the exuberance of young, beautiful, healthy bodies.  Ah, I think to myself, there will come a day when their ankles or knees or hips cause them to step to the right instead of twinkle-toeing down the escalators.

And finally the type A.  I met with a young man who is director of a local activist organizations.  We met, as is usual here, at the exit of a metro station.  Just before he was due, a guy approached me asking where is the square.  I thought of saying I don't know but instead pulled out a useful phrase "na vulitsi"  - outside.   So I got a text saying my friend was running five minutes late.  He arrived frazzled and in high gear.  We walked rapidly to the coffee shop.  He had something called "iced Indian coffee" - there were three globular ice cubes made of frozen coffee in his glass.  I had coffee with cardamom.  Our initial conversation was also in high gear but over the few hours we sat there, everything slowed down.   He sent an email this morning saying that when he left, he felt calm - apparently that was a surprise and a welcome change for him.  I took it as a wonderful compliment.

I've been sitting at Glossary Organic cafe for the last hour.  I had my gassy Morshinska water and a cappuccino and now will order a cabbage salad and cream of mushroom soup.  I may make another stab at being a vegetarian when I come home.  OK, time to order.  Salat zi kapusti, sup-crem zi hribami