Ukraine is not dead yet - it thrives on vodka, black bread and pig fat

We had not expected a border post. This was not a border. Way over the other side of a high pass through the Carpathian Mountains lay Romania, but this small village nestling in a valley by a rushing river was in Ukraine, wholly in Ukraine, and we were anyway not taking the turning for Romania but continuing only a few kilometres more up a side valley to what our guides, Stas, Elena and Igor, said was a ‘rough’ mountain hostel. ‘Not hotel – not hotel – understand?’ said Elena, in the confrontational way of talking that an Englishman might mistake for anger, but is just the way Ukrainians, who are rather mild and helpful people, speak.

There was no mistaking the boom-barrier over the dirt road, the huge military-style cap on the head of the official beside it, or his request for passports. Slightly less straightforward was the signal sent by his dirty white shirt, unbuttoned by the swelling belly, and by his trouser-flies, which were undone. He looked a little unfocused.

Passports were procured, a bottle of beer offered and accepted, and after a while the boom was lifted for our van. We continued up our track, taking with us, at his request, the border guard in his cap, now a passenger. He was holding some keys. It turned out he was also the warden of the hostel.

Set in a clearing by a stream in a high, dark pine forest, our destination looked, in the gathering dusk, like the Addams family mansion: tall, gothic, built entirely of wood, with turrets. Like so much in Ukraine it was not so much ruined as in a state of disrepair. The refrain of the Ukrainian national anthem translates ‘Ukraine is not dead yet’, and this is applicable beyond politics.