I went to meet Viktor Melnyk on friday night, we went to Novhorod-Voliniski (in the Zhitomir Oblas) from Rivne on an overnight train which arrived at 3:30 am. We slept on the train and then the 7 of us were escorted to the river by a local drunk man who missed his train (the one we got off of) and walked us the few KMs to the river. At first I was worried that he could take us to some place where we could be robbed or worse, but then we arrived at the river, made some breakfast and had some ealy morning beers. We had 2 large rafts and used them to go rafting down the slooch river :) It was a great experience, I hitch hiked back to town yesterday and took a bus to lutsk from Novhorod-volinski...what a great experience, I was standing in front of an abandoned collective farm that was built in 1983...it was a really intimate experience, I couldn't help but stare at this farm for some time, to see the windows boarded up and the kids riding their bikes through the farm to go fishing in the river, it was hard to believe that almost 30 years ago that farm was a product of Soviet collectivization and I could only imagine that hard labour that went on there. But there was some peacefulness in all this...life in the Ukrainian village seems friendly and still carries a sense of cummunalism, most people we met in the small towns along the river were very friendly, we asked them for water and used their wells. They told us stories and gave advice about the river (where to go and where to be careful). It was a lot of fun, a part of the country not many foreigners get to visit. I wonder how many diplomats in Kyiv from Canada hauled water from a well in some of the smallest villages in Zhitomir Oblas.
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