Hello again from Gary. This post will be for me more fun than the last few about credit ratings, scams, etc.. I hope it’s fun for you too.
I had occasion on my 3 trips to Ukraine to ride the trains several times. Each train trip was for a fairly long (overnight) duration. And each trip, in its’ own way was an exciting experience.
For one thing, I love to see new places, so while daylight prevailed, I was glued to the window to absorb as much as I could about the country we were traveling through. And this country, while mostly farmland or rural was fascinating to observe for the differences between what I saw versus what I would see on an identical trip in America. There are several videos on YouTube that depict life in Ukraine. I posted one of them on our “Misc, Video Clips” page. Check it out for a realistic view of a train ride between cities in Ukraine.
While you watch the video, notice that you will see only 1 piece of farm machinery in action, a horse drawn wagon. As I traveled on the trains going through hundreds of miles of agricultural land dotted with farming communities, I kept looking for machinery and could not find any. I would see huge farms of thousands of acres of land under cultivation with several people, presumably a family, tending the rows off in the distance, but no machines. Apparently they have a system whereby tilling and planting and possibly harvesting too, is performed by collectively owned machines at appropriate times of the season. But from then on, tending and nurturing the crops even on huge tracts is done by hand by the local families that have an interest in each particular field. The whole scene reminded me very much of what I understand life was like in the very early days of America’s agricultural development of our “great plains”.
And too, all along and on both sides of the train tracks wherever there was an available space, small family gardens were being grown - - corn, squash, beans, melons, tomatoes, etc.; subsistence and cash farming to utilize available space, even though the backyards of most houses likewise had small gardens.
And as far as riding the train, Read the rest of this entry »
