The Ouk-rra-i-nah Story by Warren Metzler Table of Contents
14. Overcoming the language barrier
I then thought of Regina, my Russian instructor. If you remember, I had been taking Russian lessons since my first trip to the Ukraine. Why not have a three-way conference call with Regina, Vlad and I? My phone system had conference calling capacity, and I had two voice lines, so it could work. I presented this possibility to Regina at my next lesson, and she agreed. But she lacked the capacity to send emails to the Ukraine in Russian, so I needed an additional person.
Then I thought of Aleks. He was a friend I’d met in Poltava, who was communicating with me on a regular basis via email and an occasional phone call. If there was any written information I wanted to send to Vlad, I could send Aleks an email, he could translate the message into Russian, and send that translation to Vlad.
*(In case you don’t know, when email is sent over the Internet there are many connections where the incoming message is processed. And any one message can leave one of those connections in a different condition compared to when it arrived. This is especially true when the message is in non-Roman letters, and the email is being sent from one continent to another. You can install special software on your computer that eliminates this phenomenon. But until you do, what you send to Europe [from the US] in Cyrillic script —the Russian alphabet— often arrives as gibberish.)*
Early one morning (the Ukraine is ten hours ahead of West Coast —US— time) I established a conference call setup with Regina, and I then called the sales office at the vodka factory in Zhitomir. Fortunately Vlad was at work. We talked that day, and talked many times since, and every issue I need resolved was eventually settled quite satisfactorily. Therefore my need for a way to communicate with Vlad was fulfilled.
By the way, Igor and I again have begun to communicate in a friendly manner. But we have not returned to a business relationship.