19 Jun 2026 6 min read

Great news! That's the dacha... sandy road?

It's a James May joke. Dacha Sandy Road... Dacia Sandero...

Today we were headed for the annual visit to grandparent's dacha. I feel like it's really hard to explain the concept of a 'dacha' in English. Sometimes I say holiday home, to try and give the vibe of something a bit more rural but not necessarily for holidaying. Sometimes I say 'rural house' but that makes it sound like it's something from a relaly old Ukrainian village.

Then I end up going back and forth and just trying to explain it's a bit of land they bought and they built their own house on it, and that is a 'dacha' in the sense of it's a house away from your city apartment that you can retreat to, which makes it seem like a holiday home - but they live their full time, so it isn't.

Gosh isn't language translation so difficult? Why can't I just say 'dacha' and stupid westerners understand me?

You see, that doesn't help at all. So it's seasonal or year round (so not seasonal). It's a second home (in this case it isn't), and it's located outside cities. Okay, like every house outside a city??

A little farm, really

With allthe gardening and chicken rearing that my grandparents-in-law do, it might as well just be a farm. I'm talking dozens of varities of vegetables and fruits, which they then make sure they harvest to feed us until we explode.

A lot of different stuff! Even fruit trees. As a side note, I think the way that Ghost (the blogging software I use) displays images is very nice.

I know I mentioned that they rear not just vegetables, so I can show you some pictures of chickens!

Can I put videos here?

0:00

/0:06

omg i can

I took a lot of pictures at the dacha, so this one might be more picture heavy than word heavy. Though I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, I think I have given you more than enough to read over the past few days. I will let you rest your eyes and brain on something a bit easier than my rambles!

Feasting

Part of going to the dacha is about filling up on so much good food that you have to drink vodka and sleep after to recover. If you didn't have vodka then mother would probably try to give you digestion pills after. I have learned my lesson though, the first time we came to Ukraine in 2023 I ate wayyyy too much too fast and ended up in a lot of stomach pain. Now I have learned to manage how I eat at the dacha.

Trust me, grandma never stops. In fact, when we leave she usually gets into an argument with mother about how my mother should take even more food home. Last time it was about taking an entire stack of pancakes (blini) home, which was just a funny sight. They were shouting and swearing and grandma just holding a fat stack of pancakes...

We helped grandma finish off making Varenykyy.

Lots of countries try to claim a form of dumplings as their own. You have Georgian dumplings (Khinkali), Chinese (bao), Japanese (gyoza), Polish (pierogi). Ukrainians also have a dumpling to call their own, which is Varenyky (вареники).

They differ in that they can have soft cheese with dill, or mushrooms, cabbage, potato etc.

The most Ukrainian ones you can get are Cherry Varenyky which were made this time with cherries grown my grandma herself. You eat all types with sour cream/smetana, sweet or savoury.

Doggy interlude. Grandma also has a grandma dog. She must be 12 or even older. Poor thing is blind and deaf but still sniffs and flops for a belly rub if she likes you. (She likes me ofc).

We also had the chance to look at pictures taken by parents and grandparents over the years. It is tradition to look at the photo albums every time we visit the dacha, even though the pictures won't change. We usually do this while the grill heats up so we can be efficient.

Grandpa is extra cool. He took part of the evacuation and 'liquidation' of the Chornobyl disaster. I am sure that some of you have seen the HBO Series, he will have been one of those officers going door to door to evacuate people. And the 'liquidation' I assume is about the unfortunate culling of animals, but I don't know exactly, so I won't accuse him of doing that without knowledge!

Hopefully by now you know some cyclic characters and can recognize Chernobyll.

And now we feast!

In order of top left down in 'columns': 1. Cabbage varenyky, cherry carenyky, forest mushrooms (picked by grandpa), 2. More forest mushrooms, grilled peppers, onion, tofu, zuchinni/courgette, eggplant/aubergine, 3. Cheese + dill varenyky, crab salad (crabstick, egg, potato, mayo, cucumber), 4. Dill garlic butter baby potato, 5. Mushroom varenyky, fresh salad. In mother's hands is cauliflower fried in egg mixture.

I then got roped into (I was fully willing) drinking vodka with Grandpa. Usually vodka is clear so this was interesting.

It was some real Ukrainian stuff from the Carpathians. My god it burned but it was great. You drink a shot then eat some dill pickled cucumber. I love Ukraine.

After you eat, you walk

After eating is important you get to the forest for a walk to make sure that Grandpa can't drink with you until YOU pass out (he won't, he is a pro).

It started raining near the end of our walk, but it made it look even cooler.

Ukrainian forests are much different to British ones. I could only describe it as being more 'natural'. As much as we like to think that British nature is beautiful, most of it is actually barren deserts with not much biodiversity. Most of it is farms or grazing land for sheep over hundreds of years, which cause it to essentially be pretty much dead. Did you know that Scotland used to (it still does but its very small) have rainforests? Like proper ones, with ferns etc layering the ground.

A lot of forests in the UK are 'managed' as well - so they don't really look wild at all. It's a real shame.

I also bully my wife about her trees being little skinny long boys. In the UK we have a lot of Oak etc so they end up being thick and strong.

My wife also collected some flowers to make a bouqet to give Grandma, isn't she cute?

Thank you, sleepy time!

We didn't do much for the rest of the day besides argue with car rental people. Originally we wanted a car to drive around Kyiv to make things easier, as it's the same price as like 3 taxis, which is about the average of what we use. We also value being able to escape to a car and having it be your 'space' quite nice - nothing like escaping a horribly overstimulating mall to a quiet cool car.

I hope you are having fun reading these... but I'm getting really sleepy, goodnight!