Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Author’s note: Inside Out is a column to help you sift through Ukraine’s cultural peculiarities, dip into the arcane Slavic soul and basically keep you out of trouble.

Who should read this: If you live in Ukraine or are thinking about traveling through our beautiful country, this column will help you get your bearings among our people. Keep your travel guide for museums and churches, but read this column to get to know the Ukrainian psyche.

E-mail me if you don’t understand why Ukrainian women jump the lines all the time or why you are required to wear old-fashioned slippers over your shoes in the museums.

Don’t e-mail me if you are looking for a mail-order bride and want to ask me if she’s real. Chances are she’s taking you for a ride. If you want to get a life and a wife, invest into Ukraine, open a business here, read the Kyiv Post, or otherwise work on the demography elsewhere.

How do I know the answers: I was born and bred in Ukraine, but then crossed a few oceans trying to get under the skin of the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. I came back to tell you the story.

Twelve hours in a Soviet spa

If travel agents ever try to sell you a trip to a sanatorium, which they describe as a Ukrainian spa-hotel, don’t give in. The difference between the two is measured in eras.

Sanatoriums, or rehabilitation centers for people with long-time illnesses, are still clad with old-fashioned spa facilities and staff attitudes from the Soviet Union. They are stressful.

Spa-hotels, on the other hand, are designed to make you feel three kilos lighter, be it through body or mind pampering.

My weekend trip to a Soviet spa in Uman, a town between Kyiv and Odessa, revealed the whole old world to me.

In the golden-leaved forest beckoning for log cottages and mineral water pools, we have stepped into the hulks of a sanatorium for people with joint ailments and blood circulation problems.

My friend, who booked the trip hoping for a Ritz experience, was unintentionally acquiring a fine education into the Soviet past.

“I need your passport,” said a receptionist. Noting my friend’s baffled expression, I quickly pulled mine out to pen in the required information. Back in the U.S.S.R., they wouldn’t allow a customer in without a document. For various security reasons, administration even kept all guests’ passports until check-out. Luckily, she let go of my passport after a quick scan.

“In order to get a massage, you first have to see a doctor,” continued the receptionist. It was hard to derail her since this was a procedure set in stone with no way around it.

She proceeded giving us food vouchers for dinner and breakfast, which were included in the price of the room. A request for room service fell on deaf ears.

Undiscouraged, I was checking out our abode for the weekend. A number of four-story buildings erected in 1988 didn’t look old, but I felt caught in a time warp.

It was definitely more a hospital than a spa. Staff wore green medical robes and anywhere we went, it smelled of medicine. We rushed quickly past people in track suits, who looked quite happy in this Soviet workers’ paradise. Without a doubt they were.

Ukraine has always been cherishing its arsenal of Soviet-style sanatoriums popular both among regular folk and party leaders. In the 1920s, Lenin ordered construction of dozens of grand health spas. In the Crimea, century-old Tatar palaces became accessible for soldiers and factory workers for treatment of a range of illnesses. Josef Stalin preferred Sochi health nooks. Many Ukrainian parliamentarians until this day secure discounted trips to coveted sanatoriums to keep away from the public eye.

Keeping all this in mind, I hoped that our room described as Turkish in a leaflet would at least feature some modern amenities. Sadly, the only thing Turkish there was wallpaper with a photograph of the Blue Mosque.

The suite of at least 200 square meters in size reminded a stadium– huge and empty. I felt like a spectator who missed the show. Very little furniture in all that space made for a good echo, if nothing else. Sadly, it was one of the best rooms in the whole complex and priced as much as a standard room in the Hyatt in Kyiv.

In late afternoon, we decided to check treatment amenities, but since we failed to see a doctor on time, there was not a masseuse anywhere to be found. A dark massage parlor with five beds separated by greasy-looking curtains left a lasting impression on me.

“Come back in the morning to see a doctor and then, you’ll get all treatments,” said the same receptionist. Somehow, I didn’t feel like a massage any more.

With the same feeling of inevitability, we headed for dinner. It was exactly the same for all guests, served between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. and not a minute later. I made a joke that it would be a dish of barley as that’s what I remember being served in pioneer camps in the 1990s. It’s one of the cheapest kinds of porridge, which fishermen use as bait these days and farmers give to poultry.

Apparently the menu hasn’t been refreshed since then as it was barley on some hundred people’s plates that night. Ordering from a-la-carte was impossible because all the cooks were hired for the wedding next door. And so we were stuck with our barley and kefir – a fermented milk drink, instead of wine.

Our adventure through a Soviet world in pine woods reached a pinnacle when we asked for a fireplace to be lit in our room. “But it’s not winter yet,” a nurse objected. She was right: it was the end of October, which is almost summer in Australia, but unfortunately seriously damp and dark autumn in Ukraine.

Finally, they lit the fire but forgot to open the chimney, so our Turkish stadium was full of smoke, forcing us out before suffocating.

Bursting with laughter, we checked out from this soviet version of Ritz and left without sampling another fish food for breakfast.

To be fair, sanatorium workers tried to help by offering another room (the size of a closet this time) and arranging for a doctor in the morning. The problem was that we acted as Romans in Uman, expecting it to be Rome. But staff and Ukrainians on their health break in the sanatorium seemed quite happy to follow the old ways they grew accustomed to.

Soviet attributes, of course, can be a part of charm if you are on an escapade or the one thing that keeps it from being a truly relaxing place to spend a few days. Discover Soviet history in sanatoriums and look for modern comfort in spa-hotels.

PS: Apart from a history lesson, we also got a full refund.

Yuliya Popova can be reached at popova@kyivpost.com