What do Ukrainians eat?

Hello People of the Planet Earth! Howdie? Had your breakfast already? Coffee? Starbucks? Dunkin Donut? I have never thought that there can be stereotypes about breakfasts. What comes to your mind when you think about breakfast? It's very interesting that when you have breakfast in a Ukrainian hotel (I mean in a good Ukrainian hotel because we still have some remnants from soviet times) most likely you will have a buffet breakfast where you'll be offered fried and boiled eggs, meat, cheese platter, and vegetable platters, cereal, milk, yoghurts, porridge, bread, rolls, juices, water, teas and coffee. Breakfasts are usually included in the price of your room. It was pretty weird for me while travelling the US not stay for breakfast in a hotel. But then I quickly learnt that those breakfasts are usually not worth the time and a Dunkin Donut breakfast is a much better thing. The question is: Do Ukrainians have similar breakfasts at home too? And the answer would be yes and no. The thing is that we all are very different and have different habits just like anyone else anywhere in the world. But we don't have any kind of prejudice when it comes to breakfast. I mean if I decide that I want a steak for breakfast I can have a steak. And since most of us in Ukraine have breakfasts at home, we eat pretty much anything we feel like eating. So if there is a piece of pizza from yesterday or a couple of chicken patties in bread crumbs I will eat them. Unless I feel like having something "lighter" for breakfast or if I know that I'm going to have a lunch in a canteen or restaurant. We are not very picky with our breakfasts mostly because we don't often eat out, so when I know I'll have a long day and maybe no chance to snack I will have more substantial breakfast than just yoghurt and coffee. Of course, there are people that are extremely conscious of healthy eating since healthy lifestyle trends came to Ukraine as well. I personally knew a couple of ladies that are very slim but would like to be able to enter any room through a keyhole in the door. They usually have for breakfast dew collected from flowers and coffee with morning clouds instead of cream. Personally, I don't have all this prejudice about food, though I try to eat healthily, that's why I cook from scratch. But it was pretty funny when my American mother-in-law saw me eating chicken nuggets for breakfast. She asked whether I want her to cook me some scrambled eggs.
So how about other meals during the day? What is popular in Ukraine? At first a little bit of mythology. I don't know where it came from but most older people believe that without a soup any decent lunch is impossible. You will hear it from a lot of people that you MUST have soup, broth or any other type of so-called "first dish". I guess that one of the reasons why Ukrainian cuisine has such a great variety of them. The world-famous BORSCHT, red beetroot soup, is one of the best soups in the world. It contains all possible veggies and is served with sour cream. In my family, every lunch, especially in my grandfather's house starts with a soup of some kind. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization didn't find a confirmation that eating soup every single day is something that will improve your health. So as it turned out, eating soup is more a tradition than an element of healthy eating. Among other soups that are on my favourite list are tomato soup (unlike gaspacho it is served warm and has more ingredients), chicken broth with vermicelli (but I mean HOME chicken) and green soup which is, I guess, the most unusual one for any foreigner and is made out of sorrel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrel). My dad cooks the best soup in the world and it usually consists of anything he can find in the fridge. Traditionally he cooks it the day before my mom comes back from visiting my grandpa.
Second-course dishes usually consist of some meat and potatoes or boiled cereals (not Cheerios or Frosted Flakes, but I mean real cereals like rice, buckwheat, cracked wheat, millet, barley). We might have some fresh salad like tomato and cucumbers mix with a little bit of onion and vegetable oil or some pickled veggies. Unfortunately, a lot of Ukrainians don't eat very healthily and consume a lot of carbohydrates and sugars, I mean that they like eating different pasta, for example, because it's relatively cheap and quick to cook and they use a ton of mayonnaise when they make salads. Some of those habits are because of low incomes, some of them are from our soviet past since national cuisines were simplified or even neglected. In addition, during soviet times we had practically no food variety in the stores so making a rucola salad with feta, cherry tomatoes and quail eggs was impossible.
When it gets to the celebratory table Ukrainians will cook a lot and pretty much half of any recipe book. And when the table is served and there are one or two empty spots, any lady of the house will be in a panic because guests might leave her home hungry. That's why if you are invited to a Ukrainian house for a dinner I recommend you to prepare really well - don't eat at least for one whole day )) If you are a foreigner and you are invited to a Ukrainian home for dinner, don't just eat for one whole day but also get ready to be offered a lot of traditional dishes.
We are very proud of our cuisine and every time I read somewhere that Slavic cuisines are "heavy" I get a bit annoyed. Of course we have heartier food! We are not Mediterranian countries and don't rely on Frutti de mare (seafood), we have a continental climate and it means we have cold winters, rough springs and chilly falls, so it all reflects in our food: a lot of dough used for different kinds of dumplings, thick soups that consist of a lot of veggies, potato is a centrepiece because it's starchy and keeps you full for a long time. On the other hand, a lot of elaborate and even exquisite recipes were lost when soviet authorities decided that the difference between the nations in the Soviet Union should be erased. However, due to enthusiasts and patriots, we start having restaurants that revive old recipes and introduce them back. On top of that, we have a great variety of food festivals where you can taste a lot of different dishes in the same place, some are very authentic, others are with some chef's twist. Anyways, you won't starve in Ukraine.
What I like the most about big cities in Ukraine (and now small towns also catch up with the trend) you can get good quality coffee, pastries and hotdogs/sandwiches pretty much anywhere and choose the price range that is the most suitable for you. For instance, a cup of good quality coffee is available at $1 from any mobile coffee place in Kyiv. By mobile, I mean guys that have brewing machines at the back of their vans or any other vehicle that was turned into a small coffee shop. As well as really cool looking small stands with hipster-looking young people that can change a trivial hot-dog into a masterpiece.
Anyways, the best way to learn the country is to try its food. Welcome to Ukraine and don't forget to have dumplings with cherries and a bowl of borscht!
With all said, BEHAVE AND BON APPETITE!

Mozzarella balls 

Latte

Bagels in Kyiv

Hot dog with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella

My favorite - poppy seed strudel with glaze and coffee, of course ))

Pumpkin soup

Collection of beer bottles at the entrance to the Lithuanian Pub.

Schooling in Ukraine

How are you doing today while sitting on the surface of the planet whirling through the boundless Universe? How often do you think about the boundless Universe that surrounds us from every possible direction like a giant ocean? When I studied at school I was impatiently waiting for astronomy classes to start because I wanted to know more about the planets and stars and everything else out there. We didn't ger astronomy till the 10th grade and when finally we got it our teacher literally killed the subject and our lessons were boring to the umpteenth degree. I thought that all our educational system was boring and that somewhere out there in the world there should be a country with a great educational system. Now I'm a grown-up person and I have very little illusion left to find that perfect school where children are happy and each lesson is a breathtaking adventure. However, when I talk to people around me (no matter which country I'm in) they usually tell me that they are impressed with the variety and range of knowledge I have. A lot of those things that I carry in my head come from a couple of sources, and my school, actually, is one of them. I was quite surprised to learn how different is the quality and quantity of subjects students go through in each particular country. That's why I decided to tell my story of getting the level of education I have and explain how schooling in Ukraine looks like. 
So everything started with a kindergarten and back then when I was little enough to go to a kindergarten, they were extremely poorly supported by the government and didn't resemble modern preschool where kids start learning their first foreign language, have dance classes and make a ton of different crafts. We had a quite limited amount of old toys, and the main task of our nursery teacher was to make sure that we didn't fight over those toys. We were supposed to take a midday nap and we had 3 or 4 meals during the day. I don't remember much about my preschool since very soon my parents got me a nanny. Maybe having a nanny contributed to my introvert personality that developed with time. As far as I know from my peers that went kindergartens regularly there were some educational programs according to which the kids were taught there. They had some small events for parents where children were singing, dancing and reciting short poems. But all these events omitted me. My parents and grandparents were educating me at home. 
When Ukrainian children turn six or seven years old they go to the first grade. It's up to parents to decide when the child should go to school. Sometimes they send kids to school as early as five years old. I went to school in September and in October I turned 7 years old. At that point, I was a very avid reader and went through most of the books in my own library. So when our teacher would run out of the tasks for us, she would ask if anyone wanted to tell a story to the rest of the class. Well, I was always that "anyone" since I read so many fairy tales and was always ready to retell them to my classmates. Our classroom didn't look like a primary school room in any American or British school. We had small desks and two of us sat at each of them. There were three rows of desks with at least 5-6 of them in each row. There were about 30-32 kids studying with me. No carpets, no round tables, no colourful paper, crayons, paints or any other school equipment. Our parents were supposed to equip us with everything we might need for the lessons. Since it was 1988, the soviet union was dying, the stores were empty, the quantity and quality of school supplies were very limited. This way I went through 4 grades of primary school. Our lessons lasted 45 minutes, we had from 3 to 5 lessons each day. The subjects were reading, arithmetics, nature, writing, art, physical education. When I got to middle school things got more complicated and we changed our class mom (a teacher that was in charge of our particular group of students). Our schedule contained mathematics, foreign language (in my case it was English), history, geography music, arts, ancient literature, Ukrainian language, Ukrainian literature. I also studied the Russian language, because it was still a transition period and though Ukraine was already independent we still studies according to the old soviet system. None of the subjects we could choose, all of them were compulsory and nowadays the system is the same. We don't pick subjects at school, there can be only some additional lessons that our parents can ask the school to introduce but it all depends on whether a school will be able to find a teacher to teach that subject. So over 11 years spent at school, I had the following subjects: English, German, chemistry (both non-organic and organic), astronomy, algebra, geometry, world literature, Ukrainian language and literature, physics, history of Ukraine, world history, physical education, arts, biology, zoology, anatomy, basis of science of law, music, dance, health and safety, maybe I missed something, but you have general idea. At the end of the 11 grade, I took graduation exams, there 5 of them: mathematics, Ukrainian language, English, history of Ukraine, and geography. I could pick only one exam, it was geography. The other ones were compulsory.
When I finished school I went through entrance exams in order to get to the University. I was lucky to go through only one exam, that consisted of two parts - a written and oral one. The exam lasted more than 4 hours and the most nervous part was to learn whether you passed or not which we learned later that day. Well, I did pass )) I spent 5 years in one university and then I entered another one to get my Master's degree. I had to do so because while I was studying in my first University there was introduced a reform in our higher education system and if I didn't go for Master's I could roll back to Bachelor's degree even though I studied for 5 years. My major was English language and literature. I will not bore you describing all 6 years of my education at university I will just put here the list of subjects I went through over 6 years. So here they are the history of Ukraine, phonetics of English, English grammar, English theoretical grammar, the literature of ancient Greece, politology, sociology, psychology, economics, history of English language, country studies (this subject covered all English speaking countries), German, history of the German language, basics of linguistics, literature studies, religions of the world, French, physical education, English literature, phraseology, basic medical education, English phonetics, computer studies, teaching methodology, methodology of teaching English, philosophy, basics of translation studies, and quite possible I have missed something, but you do have a general idea how much fun we had at University. Unfortunately, since I was not able to pick my subjects I had no chance to start working. So I literally wasted 5 years on just education and when I graduated I didn't have much practical experience. I lucked out when I studied for my Master's degree because during that year I started teaching a bit in the same university a couple of groups of third-year students. After graduation I started working for a private language school in Odesa and that's how I learnt that I actually like teaching )))

A lot of things have changed in Ukraine since then. I know that now children are taught differently at schools and universities and colleges also have implemented some changes. A lot of youth have the opportunity to study abroad. I have thought a lot about my education and not once I thought that I would change a lot about it, especially now from the perspective of my current life experience. Would I choose English as my major? Definitely not. If you are not planning a career in the field of linguistics, don't waste your time learning one particular language at university. This world is run by managers of all possible ranks and levels. That's definitely something worth attention. Especially if you are not into creating software or launching rockets. What I definitely appreciate about my education is the skill of research and self-education. 

But what's most important about any education was summed up by Confucius very long time ago: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Having written all that, I wish you to have a great day and BEHAVE!

My parents and I, 1989. I just finished the first grade.

Chernivtsi National University. I studied here for 5 years. Very beautiful building, but its beauty I could appreciate only after graduation )))

Odesa National University, not a very nice looking building, but the place of my first teaching experience.