For anyone who has been a parent, you will understand that these words-Date Night- have special significance. I just needed some adult time away from Disney films and ‘Mama, I want’s, so Pat and I wrangled a babysitter for Friday night and went out on a date. I dressed up to the best of my ability for my age; I cannot seem to dress up and look good anymore, I don’t know why, but that ability seems to have been lost to my 20’s.
Earlier in the day we had visited a couple of places that looked interesting. We had lunch at Stargorod, a micropub in Kharkiv, and the manager, Mergen (photo below), from Turkmenistan, gave us a guided tour of the brewing facilities, so we decided to return that night for the show. It turns out that the “show” was more like a dance club and admission was $10.00 a piece. We weren’t up for dancing, so we told Mergen that we would return another time.
Prior to that though, we went to dinner at this little French restaurant called, of course, Paris. I had scoped it out during the day and it looked interesting. I haven’t seen many international restaurants and I thought that this would be a good one to visit. I was hoping the menus would be in French and therefore I could possibly read them-yeah! We arrived around 7:30pm and were given a small table on the second tier of the restaurant in a cozy corner. The décor was a lot of fun; all kinds of French souvenirs, playbills, iconic items like scarves, tailor’s busts, ballerina’s shoes, putti (i.e., angel sculptures), etc. The interior was dark with maroon wallpaper and dim lighting. The wooden tables were old-fashioned round, display case tables with some of the aforementioned items in them. The chairs were velvet covered armchairs.
The menus did turn out to be in Frenc
h, but the waitress didn’t understand French at all. At least, I could figure out what to order! Yippee. After a round of drinks, semi-sweet white wine for me and cognac and beer for Pat, he and I ordered a white wine and cheese fondue with bread with two different salads. The fondue was so delicious and surprising light in flavor. The cheeses blended very well together to make a lovely light concoction. It was filling, so the salads were the perfect complement to make it as though we hadn’t just eaten a block of cheese. I cannot recall the names of the 2 salads, but mine was a stuffed avocado with chicken, apples, and nuts. Pat’s was something like a Ukrainian Greek salad, which wasn’t at all like an American Greek salad. We did like them though and the quality of the food lived up to the renown of the owner and chef of the restaurant who had studied and lived in Paris while working at a couple very famous restaurants with very famous actors and artists as clients (all this is laid out on the first page of the menu-lol). We did have dessert of homemade chocolate ice cream with chocolate mousse that ended up being way too rich to eat. I would have preferred a nice ice cream with berries on top. I also wanted a decaf latte or cappuccino for dessert, but decaf is almost nonexistent in restaurants here (I have noticed it in grocery stores though).
A note about wines in Ukraine. You do not ord
er them by wine variety and color like in the US or France. You specifically don’t order them by brand name and year, for example, “I’d like a nice 1993 Cake Bread Cellars Cabernet.” Nope, here, you order wine by saying, “I’d like a glass of semi-sweet white wine. I’d love it some from Georgia (the country not the American state), if you have any from Georgia.” So, I feel a bit as though I’m out of my wine element. Although, Patrick and I have discovered that I have a penchant for Georgian white wines. We also like their reds, but I don’t like them as much as Californian red Zinfandels or French Burgundies.
Dinner was a bit on the expensive side, but we will just count it as our anniversary dinner. On Dec. 10th, we will have been married for 13 years. OMG! When did that happen? Time just slides by…
Next, we went to Stargorod (see above), and then onto Churchill’s Music Pub. I didn’t know anything about this “pub” prior to going; I had only seen the sign which was in English when walking back from paying my internet bill. Churchill’s is about 4 blocks away from our flat up Pushkinskaya and take a left. It is a little dive bar, the likes of the dark, dirty, rough, trashy, beat up, and overused music venues on short Vine in Cincinnati in which I spent too much of my early 20’s. The minute we walked up, Pat said something along the lines of, “Do you think we’ll be welcome here?” It had a rough feel to it immediately, because of the thuggish loiterers drinking beer and hanging around outs
ide the dimly–lit entrance. I was a bit self-conscious, because of my great big expensive-looking leather coat and my obviously tending toward mainstream, normal appearance. The only exception was my glasses! Thank God for those. But there was one ray of light! One of the loiterers had a small baby strapped to his chest in a Baby Björn.
We entered the building, I was trying to project confidence that I knew where I was going and that I fit in, and climbed down beat up, rickety stairs without falling. Once we got to the bottom of the stairs, I was conscious of the great reggae beat coming from the live band inside. The bouncers at the door stalled our entry only for a moment to decide whether charge us admission, which they decided against since the band was rapping up soon. So, we entered the darkened room with only red, blue, green and yellow stage lights on the far right to the marijuana-married reggae beat and attempted to blend into the youngish crowd grooving and swaying to the music. I maneuvered myself into the crowd to get a good view of the band, but the small room was pretty damn full. Pat immediately started videotaping the band and we ended up with some decent video. They were really good and I enjoyed the music completely. They played 3 songs before the end of the show, so we got to see enough for the cost. ;-) The first song we heard was called Thank You (but it 
was in Russian, so Cпасбо). The next two were good, but not as great as the Thank You jam. There was a dark-haired girl next to me who hear us speaking English and started talking to me. She was cool. She told me that the band comes from Belarus and it is named Eddy’s A Bebop; the name is kind of inexplicable and incongruous to me, but whatever, they were good. The band’s charismatic and sexy lead singer was a blond with thick dred locks held back in a ponytail. The other band members wore short hair and quintessential rock performers’ garb of tattoos, jeans, and ripped t-shirts. The fans were kind of drug hazed and dedicated to the performance. I mean they were into it. There was one groupie guy on the far wall next to the band who bought them some beers. I swear he’d have slept with them, too! At the end of the performance, they asked the management via the microphone if they were allowed to do another song-interesting. They were granted permission. During the last song, as I was videotaping, because Pat had done a bar run, a youngish, frizzy dark-haired woman suddenly appeared directly in front of me. She said in English, “Thank you. Thank you.” So I replied, “You’re welcome.” At this point, Pat appeared next to me and she started hugging him and thanking him too. I was kind of intrigued and mystified, but that lasted only a few moments until Pat said the key word-ecstasy. Aaaah. Okay. The friendly girl next to me said that the thank you woman was the mother of the little baby who was now on the dance floor jamming out to the music with his dad. The friendly girl and I exchanged our ideas as to the appropriacy of taking your 6 month old out to a LOUD club and doing X. When the band finished, I gulped down the white wine Pat brought me and we took off to our little girl.
For anyone who has been a parent, you will understand that these words-Date Night- have special significance. I just needed some adult time away from Disney films and ‘Mama, I want’s, so Pat and I wrangled a babysitter for Friday night and went out on a date. I dressed up to the best of my ability for my age; I cannot seem to dress up and look good anymore, I don’t know why, but that ability seems to have been lost to my 20’s. 
h, but the waitress didn’t understand French at all. At least, I could figure out what to order! Yippee. After a round of drinks, semi-sweet white wine for me and cognac and beer for Pat, he and I ordered a white wine and cheese fondue with bread with two different salads. The fondue was so delicious and surprising light in flavor. The cheeses blended very well together to make a lovely light concoction. It was filling, so the salads were the perfect complement to make it as though we hadn’t just eaten a block of cheese. I cannot recall the names of the 2 salads, but mine was a stuffed avocado with chicken, apples, and nuts. Pat’s was something like a Ukrainian Greek salad, which wasn’t at all like an American Greek salad. We did like them though and the quality of the food lived up to the renown of the owner and chef of the restaurant who had studied and lived in Paris while working at a couple very famous restaurants with very famous actors and artists as clients (all this is laid out on the first page of the menu-lol). We did have dessert of homemade chocolate ice cream with chocolate mousse that ended up being way too rich to eat. I would have preferred a nice ice cream with berries on top. I also wanted a decaf latte or cappuccino for dessert, but decaf is almost nonexistent in restaurants here (I have noticed it in grocery stores though).
er them by wine variety and color like in the 
ide the dimly–lit entrance. I was a bit self-conscious, because of my great big expensive-looking leather coat and my obviously tending toward mainstream, normal appearance. The only exception was my glasses! Thank God for those. But there was one ray of light! One of the loiterers had a small baby strapped to his chest in a Baby Björn. 
was in Russian, so Cпасбо). The next two were good, but not as great as the Thank You jam. There was a dark-haired girl next to me who hear us speaking English and started talking to me. She was cool. She told me that the band comes from 
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