Thus, for someone like me, that speaks only one- and then poorly- it can sometimes be tricky to figure out what you are listening to.

A few days ago, I visited my favorite kiosk to satisfy my growing addiction to poppyseed булочки (buns). My love of them knows no bounds and I am beginning to wonder if there is more to the whole poppyseed=narcotic joke, but I digress…

Usually, all the buns are sitting near the window, but this day they were hidden away in some mysterious nook of the kiosk. I asked the lady, in Russian, if she had any buns with poppyseeds and with a slightly embarassed smile, she replied ‘oh yes, we have apple, cheese, cabbage…”

Here is where I will explain the double language issue. The word for tasty in Ukrainian is смачний, from the word taste, смак (smaak). It is one of the few Ukrainian words I know because it is on ads for ice cream and other snacks all over the city.( Not since Johannesburg, with its proliferation of over-the-top Magnum ads, have I seen a city so seemingly devoted to frozen treats.)

In Russian the phrase for “with poppyseeds” is с маком (smakom).

Do we see the problem?

In the end, I had an apple bun- which is probably better for me anyway.

Alissa Ambrose is a photographer and multimedia journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. You can read her blog entries at http://alissaambrose.com/kiev-blog/