Can you take me to Gargarina street please?

Can you take me to Gagarina street please? 

Haharina street? Yes. 

No Gagarina street. 

Haharina street?

No gagarina, it’s at the top of Karla Marksa. 

Yes Haharina.

It was at this point that I remembered something I had been told about 2 months earlier. For some Ukrainians, even those who speak Russian most of the time, they can not actually pronounce the sound Geh, and instead pronounce a Heh sound [hence the source of the above confusion with a taxi driver, for further amusement the actual street I wanted was Gogolya street].

In fact in the Ukrainian Alphabet the letter Г is pronounced as an H there is no G sound. What is interesting Is how long it actually took me to realise this. In addition to my conversation with the taxi driver I have noticed it two other times, Once when returning from a friends wedding in the UK where my fellow sleeper train riders wanted Hariachi water [rather than Gariachi which means hot] and also recently when I was at a salsa party and heard the instructor also say something being Hariachi too.

Perhaps this has been more due to fellow people understanding me when I pronounced G’s rather than H’s and my lack of Russian knowledge making me just not know words as well but having previously never encountered this difference in pronunciation [despite being around at least one of these people on many occasions before, I know have noticed it several times.

It really goes to show that sometimes we can be completely blind to things that people are saying or doing around us until we know what we are looking out for.