Village Wedding
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2004
1
33
39
Trip End
Dec 22, 2006
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Dvirtsi, Ukraine
Monday, July 31, 2006
The wedding was in Dvirtsi, a real village... we walked about 2 km through dirt roads and manure piles to find it. We thought we were lost, so we kept stopping and old ladies kept telling us to keep walking. Then we started hearing the wedding, and followed the sounds.
There was no running water and an outhouse (I discovered when I excused myself to wash my hands before the meal... there was no sink, just a hole, and the hole was not for hand-washing). The women were preparing the food on a wood stove, and there were lots of bugs and animals, 200 of which were guests! They had built a special wooden structure for the reception covered with pine branches and colorful decorations.
Ezra pleased the village men by drinking a lot vodka. In fact, by the end of the evening, the old men across from us (who had been pressuring him to drink all night) started yelling at him to stop! I've NEVER heard Ukrainians tell somebody to stop drinking. They told Ezra it would be bad for his health to take another shot, and he was going to be drunk. Actually Ezra was fine, and he seemed quite happy to be at a Ukrainian wedding. There was a lot of food, and the drinking was spread out over a lot of time, so it wasn't so bad.
I did my usual "sipping wine-only" routine (women aren't under much pressure to drink). I danced a lot and played the traditional wedding games. Nobody could say Ezra's name, so they all called hem "Yura!" Anya wanted me to give a speech into the microphone, to wish Taras (her brother) and his new wife good blessings from America, which I did. Nobody had been paying much attention to the toasts or the guy with the microphone, but everybody STOPPED and stared at me, and the whole party went silent as soon as I opened my mouth. I felt intimidated, but when I finished they applauded, and I got some random kisses and hugs the rest of the evening.
I soon felt like an honored guest. At the end of the night they sent us home with a huge bag of cakes, and a bottle of wine nestled in the middle. I didn't know about the wine until I got home. And getting home was scarry. Our taxi's wheel came off the axle partly. We bumped, and skidded to a metal grinding stop on the side of the road. I thought the car was on fire, and I might die for a second.
Then, we all promptly got out of the car, and the driver cursed, and got a hammer out of his trunk. He jacked the car up, and then hit the wheel back into the car with his hammer. After I was convinced we'd be calling another taxi, we all got back into the car. He drove slowly, and kept getting out of the car to check on the wheel, but we made it home safely. I couldn't believe that he just HAMMERED his wheel in. So we all were pretty "hammered."
