KIEV, UKRAINE — I went out today to get a new camera after my previous one was broken last night.

I walked from the press hotel, the Radisson, where they've grossly overcharged us, down Yaroslaviv Val, to a main road that on the map is represented as vul. Kreschatyk. I'd been told there was a mall with electronics inside on that road, so I headed there.

After I picked up the camera, I had to use the men's room. Few people speak English here. So I was flying blind. I searched around and eventually found one on the second floor of the shopping center, which was more like a humongous office building with little merchandise stalls packed into the huge ground floor lobby, and then tailors on the upper floors, with wide marble staircases.

As I made my way into the bathroom, however, an older Ukrainian women sitting behind a counter snapped at me. When I indicated my bewilderment at what she was saying, she pointed to a sign on the wall, and said, "One hryvnia!" I realized she was saying that I had to pay to use the bathroom.

I had seen a woman drop a small coin in the staircase, and leave it behind. So I went back and picked that up and brought it back to the woman. That was not a hryvnia. The woman sneered at it.

Then the real surprise. I pulled out a dollar bill. I didn't care if it cost that much to go to the bathroom. I was ready to pay it. But the woman sneered at that, too.

I had seen a currency exchange counter on the other side of the building on the first floor. I went back to that. I pulled out two five dollar bills, and slipped them under the glass. The young woman behind the glass pushed them back, pointed up and held up two fingers. I guessed she was saying there was an exchange counter upstairs that changed dollars.

So I went upstairs. I went to that exchange counter, and showed them my two fives. The young man behind the counter pointed down, indicating I should go downstairs to the window I'd just come from. I told him they had said I should come up here. I was beginning to feel as if I were calling customer service for a consumer electronics or telecom company.

The young man sighed and said, "Next window over."

There was a young woman there, and finally someone spoke semi-fluent English. She said she'd learned it at the British consulate.

I asked her about the dollar, and whether they were reluctant to take dollars because of their low value. She said that, in fact, they are so worthless here that when they take them to the national bank, the bank usually destroys them.

She may just have been saying that because I was giving her such low denominations, but I still thought it was fairly remarkable.

I was just thankful to get to the bathroom.

— Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times