Ukrainian Hospitality

Several weeks ago, I did some work at Donetsk National University in Vinnytsia.  For faculty and students, I presented a lecture on the topic The Inclusive University:  Strategies to Help Students with Disabilities Succeed in Post-Secondary Education, and for students, I presented an additional lecture on the topic The American Deaf Community. I also assisted the math faculty with a project.  While I was in Vinnytsia, my friend and colleague Fedir invited me to his home for supper.  We were joined by some of his colleagues and former and current graduate students.  Of course, it was a feast of traditional and scrumptious Ukrainian fare.  

We enjoyed traditional cabbage/carrot salad, two kinds of beet salad, smoked plums with a sweet vanilla laced 82% smetana (Ukrainian sour cream) that was so thick and rich it was more like sweetened cream cheese, four kinds of verenyky (cabbage, potato, cheese, and cherry), pickled eggplant (which sounds strange, but was intoxicatingly delicious), addictively tasty roasted garlic stems, fresh fruit and much more.  

The point of this post isn't that Fedir and his friends shared a lot of delicious food with me.  It's that Ukrainians by nature are very gracious, loving and generous hosts.  This attitude towards friends (and also strangers welcomed into their homes) is exemplified by a beloved Ukrainian folk song which Fedir and his other guests sang for me after supper. Below is the refrain which my dear friend and interpreter Vira translated for me:

Green is the rye.

My good friends are with me.

Green rye is beyond the village.

And my good guests are at the table here.

Rye is the giver of life, and the author of this song equates friendship with the green rye.  In other words, friends make life worth living.