Ukraine Week 1

On Monday we began our tour of Kiev with my sister, Irene, whom we met at the airport on Sunday. After a few frustrating hours trying to find where we could catch the Hop-On Hop-Off tour of Kiev, we finally got our tour but it was too late to do any hopping. On the tour and otherwise we saw many monuments and churches. A monument to Mother Ukraine in remembrance of all the soldiers who lost their lives in WWII is shown below, followed by two elegant churches.

 On Tuesday Grace and I toured Kiev on our own as Irene’s leg had swollen up from all the walking we did on Monday. We walked across this pedestrian bridge to an island in the middle of the Dnieper River. We saw more monuments and also toured the Cave Monasteries. On our return we joined up with our Ukraine Tour group.

 Freedom Arch - commemorating friendship with Russia.

Wednesday we had a different tour of Kiev and ended up at an outdoor Cossack museum in the outskirts of Kiev for lunch and a most interesting presentation from a museum tour guide, seen in the photo below. 

Friday we took a tour of Zaporazhye to see many buildings and monuments. The Zaporazhye area has about 20,000 statues of Lenin. Here we are with Walt and Ruth Ewert at the historical large old oak tree that Grace’s grandmother Petkau often talked about.

We also visited Insel Chortitza where she lived. Here we are at the beach she probably often visited.

We also saw a Mennonite monument and many Mennonite buildings. These are distinguishable by the brickwork and the gable windows. In the evening we went to a most enjoyable Cossack show. The horse riding was amazing. The MC called out Professor David from Kanada and I had to go forward and have a hat knocked off my head with a lasso whip. Later I was told that someone had knocked it off my head at the same time as the whip cracked.

Saturday we toured many villages in the Chortitza Colony, beginning with Burwalde where Grace’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born. Burwalde is in  beautiful valley (shown below) but there are no Mennonite homes left in Burwalde. After Burwalde we visited Nieder-Chortitza, Blumengart, Schoenenberg, Kronsthal-Osterwick, Schoenhorst and Neuendorf in the Chortitza Colony. We also visited Nikolaipol and Hochfeld in  Yazekovo Colony. Again, we saw many Mennonite buildings and some cemeteries with a few Mennonite tombstones.

Area of former Burwalde

In the afternoon we met Garry Verhoog. His sons took over his dairy farm in Manitoba. Now he is attempting to teach, by example, Ukrainians how to increase their milk production.

Grandma Petkau's beach taken from our boat tour on the Dnieper River.

On Sunday a subgroup went on a tour to Schoenfeld Colony in search of Janzen ancestors on Alf Poetker’s mother’s side. Our guide, Victor Penner, was very apologetic and not too keen on having us go there as there was “nothing to see”. Alf had this argument on a previous trip to Ukraine and persisted with the conviction that even if it was now an open field, it was still where his ancestors had lived. We visited a Janzen Granite Quarry and then went looking for the area. After asking directions a few times and starting on roads that were not passable, we had some very fortunate meetings and were told about a tombstone in an open pasture. The field was in a valley Alf’s family had described and he had googled. Then we made an amazing discovery that surprised Victor (and Alf) and was not in Rudy Friesen’s book. The tombstone belonged to Elfrieda Janzen (Jantzen ? ? ), born Dick, who died in 189? (perhaps 1890).  We believe we were the first Mennonites to discover this after the Mennonite Exodus. We also met a man who told us a fascinating story of how the stone got to this open pasture.

Marker for Janzen's Granite Quarry 

Carl Plett, myself, Grace, (my sister) Irene, Ruth and Walt Ewert with Linda and Alf Poetker at the Elfrieda Janzen tombstone.