Vilkovo
Vilkovo. My gut feeling was bad when I woke up and the wind was if not cold atleast very strong. Katya really wanted us to do a tour to get to know the surrounding… even though that was a very sane idea I suffered from the normal sceptisism towards tourism… (although lately I resemble a tourist enough to get away with filming anything).
As Katya went off paying I was trying my lycra flower tights, that we bought in Luleå last year. I was struggling with my mood and the great idea to be in a character all day felt a bit over enthusiastic… plus that “biking-tights” aren’t that warm and the wind was fierce. I slipped into the shorts I’ve been wearing since I came and told the guys to walk ahead for breakfast.
Checked on Katya. The tourist company had given us the wrong hour and the tour was already gone. I felt my system relaxing and told her not to worry.
Suddenly we were on a normal transport, a “Marshrutka”, instead. Twelve gryvna poorer and a film shooting of an engine problem later we arrived to “Ukraine’s Venice” Vilkovo.
Breakfast intake had stranded with the change of plan and Katya was laughing at us when we admitted that nothing could be done before coffee. This is scandinavian!
Oh, I realise by writing this that the movers from scandinavia, including myself, are difficult morning persons… and I guess tomorrow will be the same cause I’m sitting with Johannes and Tobias working while Katya went to bed. We just enhanced our origine by another addiction intake… “Snus”. This actually leads me to bringing a quite amazing coincidence up… the the two slavic movers are both vegetarians and our russian guy stopped drinking alcohol seven years ago. That is “like finding a needle in a haystack” as we say in swedish… or actually more like accidently step on two needles… out of gold…
Our day started to take shape. Katya was warning us for maybe just being able to find instant coffee… “this is Vilkovo and Ukraine” she said… but half an hour later, in a café where three beautiful seniors were starting their lunch with doing bottoms up on their cognacs, we all four found ourselves with the best coffee ever, which afterwards, on the bill, proved to be ten ukrainian coffees due to the size we had ordered…
Earlier, outside the café, a mother and daugther caught Katya’s attention by offering us a tour on the delta with their boat and after our business breakfast where we structured and discussed ideas we happily accepted their offer. The sun was breaking through the clouds and after my coffee I was back in a creative mood again and slipped into my tights. Amazing to walk around in that outfit without catching anyone’s attention…
Valya, the girl, had waited for us and before going to their house she took us on a small tour of Vilkovo. At a playground “stressy lady” and Valya started to climb and soon both of them ended up doing gymnastic in the streets. Along the canal that lead to their house I was feeling myself slightly schizofrenic both being amazed in character and as Lotta, by the old boats passing with even older babushkas and djeduskas inside . Why is everything so extremely fascinating here?
We entered a garden and were served freshly picked berries by Valyas mother. Afterwards Valya and her brother Seriosha took us to the boat. Now we were on the canal ourselves, Seriosha pushing the boat forward as a true Venezian. As we reached a part of the Danube, Seriosha turned the engine on and asked Johannes to drive. Impressions everywhere… people inside the river collecting their fish nets, cows on the riverbank and my hand inside the cooling water.
We stopped on an island with lots of trash and lots of frogs! Valya helped me to catch one… and was playing with Katya and Tobias in the water. By now I completely forgot about my character and was just making intake. I was chatting to Seriosha who was showing me funny films on his mobile phone and for the first time riding away in his hilarious laughter. He specially found my russian extremely funny which made it very easy to amuse him… basically I just had to open my mouth.
Riding back and coming to the house again Olya, the mother of Seriosha and Valya had prepared an enormous meal for us. Dima and his daughter, also named Olya joined us and by now this fantastic family had almost adopted us. If not for having all our equipment back in the light chain village… including adapters… for the cameras… we would have stayed over night as Olya wished us to do.
Dinner session included Olya suggesting Johannes to get a haircut, Tobias getting a new nick name; Sylvester Stallone… “Can you dance lambada?” with the answer of me pretending to make lambada moves to the music of a mobile phone, Valya showing us her diplomas as being best in most things… including dance… Valya dancing asian dance, Katya trying to explain how we know each other and what we do, Johannes playing “Den blomstertid nu kommer” on a guitar that hadn’t been tuned for forty years, Sasha, a friend, arriving back from Romania, with chocolate liquer and chocolate and Seriosha constantly laughing at us whatever we were doing.
It was hard to leave, but we promised to come back and stay over night tomorrow. They offered us to stay the rest of the time but we decided that it would be too difficult to work at their place constantly being fed with delicious food and homemade wine.
On our way back we were again listening to ukrainian trance, or actually russian as Katya informed the rest of us, and suddenly we were the closest to a car crash as I’ve ever been. This happened in the middle of a free style rap that Tobi made on top of the trance music and moments after the almost deadly incident made even Johannes improvise war journalism in front of the video camera…
Coming back alive Katya suddenly shouts and points; Wow! Look at the Café!!!
-Yes in our little strange Vegas village there is a café where we must have breakfast tomorrow. It’s called Café Lambada and that was one more Lambada coincidence in, let’s see… five days. I think I forgot to mention that the sound track of the engine problem was… yes, lambada from a little boy’s computer game. That is more than destiny and we therefore consider to rename the project to the “Lambada project”.