With Uman as our goal, we bicycled through more closely spaced towns, featuring some spectacular monuments.
Lenin!
More Lenin!
Tractor!
Our map designates Uman a "picturesgue" town. But the way seemed to be filled with disappointly drab apartment buildings and heavy traffic over the inevitably paved, but utterly destroyed roads that mark all of the more built up towns from the truly quaint-as-all-hell villages. After getting directions from the first English speaker we'd met since leaving our host in Kiev, we found up at the gates to the apparently famous Sofiyivka gardens near the middle of town. Rather than go right in, we decided that since Uman seemed to be closer to the 21st century than anyplace around, that we should find some Internets and get our bearings. After unsucessfully cruising the main drag in search of wi-fi, we started asking people on the street "Internet?" with the hopeful tone and hand gestures that had gotten us from one unsigned village to the next. Nate found a guide with a man who led us around the corner to a basement Internet cafe. Besides sending off an e-mail to let the parents know we were still alive, we also checked out how to get to this place:
Holy Hebrew, Nachman!
This lovely warehouse looking edifice is the burial place of one of the most famous rabbis in all Judaism, Reb. Nachman of Bretslov. A couple hundred years ago, when this was more Poland than Ukraine, he advocated a pretty radical approach to Judaism that de-emphasized role of strict adherence to the rules and devotion to learning. Instead, he promoted joy in a direct, loving connection to G-d. His followers today are known for going out into nature to call out to G-d. They are also pile into vans plastered with Nachman's image, pull up at intersections in New York or Tel Aviv, jump out, dance like mad men to blaring trance-techno music, peyos flailing, and then speeding off to do it again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhZiRPnxRfw). After seeing the the phrase Na Nach Nachman meUman spray painted on every street corner in Israel, we felt like we might as well see the place while we had the chance. It was strange to roll through this thouroughly Ukrainian town and suddendly come into a little ghetto where Hebrew was the most common language, with even the local street vendors calling out to us in it. It must be even crazier at Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish new year, when 20,000 people make a pilgramage here. Nate took the opportunity to take his first dip into a proper mikvah, or ritual bath, we said a couple prayers in the synagogue, ate some glatt-kosher pizza, turned down a couple offers of free lunch (nothing's ever free, and we didn't feel like navigating the complex world of hospitality), we returned to check out the gardens.
These proved well worth the time, as the sign said they were "charmingly beautiful in all seasons," or at least in "hot summer." Sculptures and sculpted landscape make it a fabulous place to take a stroll.
This gardener's pump was backfiring on him.
Sofiyivka park even has some of the nature
After that, we found a gas cannister from a fishing store, some cookies from a roadside vendor, and it was time to get out of Uman. While Nate checked with an old woman that we were on the right road, her goats came over to investigate Katie and our bikes. It didn't take the nanny goat long to find the bag with the food, identify the buckle holding it shut, and start to work out a way to open it. The bike tipping over didn't deter her in the slightest, but the keeper managed to shoo her along for us.
Leaving Uman meant cutting through several reasonable sized towns, which meant tricky navigation, gnarly roads, and no place to camp. People were being extra friendly, though, and one couple, who introduced themselves as Baba and Dada (grandma and grandpa), gave us a half dozen eggs. As the sun started to drop, we finally made it past last town on the route and found a little corner to throw up our tent in record time. The eggs had miraculously survived several kilometers of pounding cobbles, and we passed out with happy, full bellies.
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