“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

When I decided to take advantage of the archival closure between Orthodox Easter (April 27) and May Day to visit Krakow, I expected the long train ride to be the worst part of the trip: the train leaves Kyiv at 8:41 pm and arrives in Krakow at around 4:30 pm (Kyiv time) the following day. The train sits at each side of the Ukrainian-Polish border for a combined total of about four hours, a painfully long time because-in addition to passport and customs checks-the train must be jacked up so that workers can change the wheels from the Russian/Soviet/post-Soviet gauge width to the European gauge. As it turned out, I didn't have to experience the gauge changing this time around because the Ukrainian border guards pulled me off of the train beforehand.

A bit of context: After the Orange Revolution in the winter of 2004-2005, the new pro-Western government relaxed Ukraine's visa regime by summer 2005, meaning that foreigners from the EU, the U.S., Canada, and Australia no longer needed visas to enter Ukraine if they stayed in the country under 90 days. Technically, foreigners from these countries needed visas to allow them to stay in Ukraine for longer periods of time, but in practice expats simply made border runs every 90 days to renew their visa-free stays. These quarterly border runs served the additional purpose of renewing expats' registration, a Soviet-era holdover that requires foreigners to register their residence with local authorities (formerly OVIR, now VVIR). Last summer a new (or newly enforced - depending on who you talk to) law stated that the visa-free regime only allowed foreigners to remain in Ukraine for up to 90 days within each 180-day period. A Ukrainian visa didn't free its holder of the registration requirement-with the same 90-day grace period-but that law was rarely enforced...until recently. According to an article in the Kyiv Post, which I happened to read just before my trip to Krakow, the border guards had been stepping enforcement of both the visa-free and registration laws in anticipation of Ukraine's official accession into the World Trade Organization.

Registration is a bureaucratic nightmare and, for many people, practically impossible because it requires (among other things) a notarized lease agreement that many landlords are reluctant to give their tenants. My landlady, however, had no problem giving me the required documents and I tried to start the registration process in mid-March, one month before my 90-day period ended. When I went to VVIR, however, the official refused to give me the paperwork to complete the registration (which also needed to be signed off by Fulbright) because said 90 days weren't yet up-despite the fact that I explained I would be around well past that period. Unfortunately, my landlady's proxy kept the lease agreement with him and then left the city for vacation until the day before my 90 days ended, meaning that I couldn't try registering later. All of this meant that I boarded the train to Krakow knowing that I could be fined for my failure to register, but hoping for the best.

No such luck. Around 9:30 am on Saturday, about an hour after a border guard first disappeared with my passport, another guard returned to my compartment to inform me and a fellow Fulbrighter, Jan Surer, that we would be fined for staying in Ukraine over 90 days and not registering. We started to get out money to pay our fines but the guard announced that we had to pay at a bank. He told us to gather our things and escorted us off the train and into the nearby administrative building, where we waited for what seemed like forever until a man in civilian clothes arrived. In the meantime, I stewed over our expulsion from the train and the inability to simply pay the fine (or a bribe!) "en route," while Jan worried about whether we would still have time to return to our train on the Polish side of the border while it sat for the Polish passport/customs checks and the gauge changing.

The man assigned to our case, Viktor, was friendly enough and suggested that we would leave in time to make the same train across the border, but this didn't happen because the paperwork took so long to complete. Viktor was obligated to explain the law in question to us, although he did so in an abbreviated form because we-somewhat questionably-admitted to knowingly breaking the law. This led to a discussion of why we broke the law, which Viktor translated into the bureaucratic explanation that we “did not have the possibility to register within the time limit”-he definitely understood the difficulties of registering and it was nice of him to make us look less guilty than we perhaps were. Then we took turns sitting in the chair on the other side of Viktor's desk answering basic questions about ourselves (DOB, citizenship, place of birth, etc.) as he typed the answers into his laptop. He was impressed that we both study Ukrainian history, and during Jan's interview we also learned that Viktor is a hockey fan, as he excitedly named the local teams in Jan's places of birth and residence. Apparently Viktor enjoys meeting foreigners in this way: he even mentioned another American he recently fined who's opening a Christian academy in Kyiv.

We spent most of our two-and-a-half hours in the administration building sitting quietly while Viktor completed paperwork and one of his assistants, Iryna, ran around with our documents and passports. In the middle of our wait my mood improved and I became (temporarily!) excited about this "adventure" and the fact that with all this paperwork, I would one day have my own file in a Ukrainian archive. I even snapped a (probably illicit) photo of the cover page of my file when Viktor left the room for a minute. My feelings of excitement and amusement didn't last-especially once Viktor began writing copies of everything he had already entered into the computer!-but I still think I was remarkably patient under the circumstances.

Once all of the papers had finally been completed and copied, we were summoned to review and sign them. We each received our own copy of the signed "decree" or "resolution" stating that we admitted to breaking the relevant law, waived our right to appeal the decision in the local court, and agreed to pay the fine. Together with our bank receipt, this decree was our proof that we had already paid the penalty for not registering. Since we were first-time law-breakers, we were fined the minimum amount of 340 hryvnia or almost $70 (680 hyrvnia is the current maximum fine).

Viktor, along with Iryna and an unidentified man, then drove us through the small village of Mostytska to the border, where we paid the fine at a bank. The drive renewed my sense of adventure because the village-with its individual houses, gardens, and yards with creatures such as chickens and cows-seemed like a different world from Kyiv. On the road we passed a team of horses pulling a small wooden wagon and swerved to avoid hitting a chicken trying to cross the road. The chickens, incidentally, were everywhere and I'm now convinced that the "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes originated somewhere in this part of the world.

After paying the fine, we finally parted with Viktor and Iryna, who showed us where to cross the border on foot and how to get to the nearest Polish town. Viktor also added that he hoped we weren't upset with them over the situation because they were just doing their jobs. We then walked across the border, where we learned that cigarette smuggling (from Ukraine into Poland) is big business and tried to avoid the older man who saw our American passports, leered at us while speaking loudly about us in Polish, and later tried to talk to us about Ronald Reagan ("America - big, good” and “Reagan - good, actor"). After ditching him, we boarded a mini-bus to Przemysl, the nearest town, where we wandered around a bit trying to figure out how to get to Krakow. It was early afternoon by then and the next bus to Krakow wouldn't leave until late in the evening, so we headed to the train station office. On the way, Jan noticed that a train to Wroclaw (the end destination listed on our Kyiv-Krakow tickets) was leaving in a few minutes so we approached a very nice conductor who allowed us to board with our original tickets. It was the first piece of luck we'd had all day, and we reached Krakow only two hours later than planned.

On the return train from Krakow, I was justifiably nervous about the border crossing, but it was completely uneventful-except that Iryna recognized me when I handed my passport over to her. It's not everyone who's on a first-name with the border guards!

My experiences in Ukraine have challenged me both personally and professionally. As someone who grew up in a farming community of nine thousand people, I was no more accustomed to city life (I've been residing in Kyiv) than I was to living in Ukraine. My prior knowledge of certain social and cultural differences between Ukrainians and Americans still left me surprised when I personally witnessed some of these differences. The different value placed on time in particular-whether it's the lack of punctuality displayed at a meeting or the inconvenience of queuing to pay bills in person-still tests my patience. Finally, my research has often proved more difficult than I had expected due to the solitude of archival research, the bureaucratic structure of archives and libraries, and the problem of effectively locating materials relevant to my topic.

Despite these challenges, my time in Ukraine has been very fulfilling. Although I am in the process of reformulating my research topic based on my findings in the archives, I am confident that this will result in a better dissertation. Moreover, I have enjoyed traveling around the country, learning more about its culture, and meeting its people. I am continually impressed by the generosity of Ukrainians and their genuine love for their country. The dedication of those Ukrainians working to solve some of the country's social and political issues is particularly inspiring, and I look forward to following their progress in the coming years.