KIEV, UKRAINE

2015-11-01, 14:35, JASON 

STAY: KIEV CENTRAL STATION HOSTEL

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After our adventure in Odessa, we took the sleeper train to Kiev. The ride was smooth, but mostly at the stops you would be woken up by the stopping of the train. Halfway through, a man bunks up on the top bed while we are asleep, so he's trying to make his bed while we're sleeping. We hardly get shut eye but if you've traveled via hostels, it's one of those "everyone has to make their bed" moments, and you realize how loud it is when they're doing it, subsequently becoming a bit self conscious the next time when you're making your bed because you know it can be that loud!

Our train arrives in in the early morning. We're not sure where Mr. Kim is (refer to the Odessa post if you haven't read it here). Probably a few carts down, but we do not see him. He is, however, staying at the same hostel as us. Good as this seems, this will end the story of Mr. Kim. He was a blast in Odessa, but, in Kiev, the other hostel folk do not understand him. He does not go out drinking with us, so we'll keep the memories of Odessa there, and start a new one in Kiev.

It's a very brisk October morning in the capital. Oddly quiet. We immediately start taking pictures of things on our walk to the hostel.

We check in to the hostel, the process is efficient. I kid you not folks, the price of the hostel was 4 Euro a night. You could live cheaper in Europe if you constantly traveled around Eastern Europe as opposed to stay in London. The hostel owner gives us a cool guide about the things to see in Ukraine, and we're off.

The first bit is through some gutted buildings with cool graffiti art on the side. Then, we head into a park with a lot of interesting sculptures. They're a kind of ceramic-mosaic sculpture that are set up in some installation. In the morning, we notice some small vans pulled up in the park, with each one having its own little espresso maker in the back! Since traveling in Europe, we've both got a taste for espressos, so it was very cute seeing small popup vans selling them for about 60 Eurocents a pop. There was even some snail-shaped van selling one, but I forgot to take a picture of that. I'm surprised something like this hasn't caught on yet in the U.S., but the hostel owner told us apparently it was a very "Kiev Thing."

Also, I didn't notice this before, but in the back right there is a small pink cart. That is the snail cart that is selling espressos. I had no idea we snapped it in the background and only found out as I was viewing what pictures to put on and deciding a caption for this one.

We continue walking after the park. One thing about Ukraine is you'll often see Russian Orthodox churches. They're usually built grand, with some bright coloring (a slight pastel) and, you guessed it, a lot of Au. We feel weird walking into churches to take pictures, but the majority of the time, it is a grand, spacious entrance, usually with a few religious Jesus things scattered about as you would see with a Catholic Church in parts of western Europe. The main difference is the massive standing room right when you enter as opposed to pews. They're great on the inside, but again, we feel weird. We can give you a cool outside shot, though. Well, that's not even true. The churches are often so big and depends on lighting that we are either on the wrong side (and are too lazy to move around for a good shot -- we're not photographers here just amateur lazy people), or, there isn't enough of a frame (using, at the time, a Nexus phone) to capture the grandiosity of the structure. Unfortunately we'll present a bunch of half-shaded side angles of the churches, but it comes from an honest place.

Back to the trail: We pass the park. See our first big church which is St. Andrew's. A teal thing. With some stairs, right at the corner. So fascinated by the architecture, we take 10 shots of this one. On the side, we walk down another cobbled path. More interesting street art. When we reach the funicular that brings us up to the two main churches, we decide to take a picture of the tracks. At the top, after the ride? St. Michaels and St. Sophia's cathedral, probably spaced a bit apart. They're absolutely stunning. They all center around a huge square where Thorin and I walk aroud for a bit and just do snaps. Here is the series.. no idea what the square is called:

After St. Sophia's and St. Michaels, we walk down a street that connects directly to Independence Square. This is where the revolution happened in about February. The atmosphere was heavy. Some protests going on still in the main square area, with one speaker speaking to a crowd of about 100+. Surrounded by Ukrainian military police force. A few months back, this area was surrounded in rubble, but they cleaned the place up a bit. Some remnants of revolution but, not in direct sight. When we got closer to the protests we didn't bother taking pictures, so our two only pics of this place are us, a bit further out, taking a picture of the iconic statue. 

Moving on, we decided to walk along towards the war museum. It's about early-ish afternoon, possibly around 14:00 or so. We pass by some homoerotic celebrations of chic Soviet-era communism. The architecture is amazing. Sharp Stalinism designed in a simple, structural manner and executed with effective, and bold concrete. Love it. We have a walk along the Dnieper River, in some park, that connects the area after Independence Square to the War Memorials. Along the walk, we come across a huge Monastery, Pechersk Lavra, that, upon going inside, we get lost in for like 2 hours. It's absolutely humongous. The cool things is the connecting halls are filled with small souvenir shops, but it's all built indoors and is just one long hallway of descending steps.. keeping in mind this protection is probably necessary in the winter. After arriving out the other end, it's a whole other section of the Monastery. The best part is there are still monks walking around and using it. Some of them were cute too.

After, our last stop of our sightseeing, is the war memorial. There are interesting statues carved about the war efforts in the Soviet era. The absolute best part was at the end, when we see a giant erection of a statue, called 'mother liberty', that just towers absolutely over the rest of the installations. It's massive. I've never seen the statue of liberty, but I imagine it would be just as big. The cool part was by the time we'd gotten there, it was pushing 17:00 (northern hemisphere, late October) and the sun had hidden behind the statue on its set. There was a certain dawning light effect of the sun, foreshadowing a rise (or perhaps, setting, in our global context) to communism on a large world scale. The pictures turned out back-facing the sun, but it gave a cool effect. The carvings and memorials were also grand.

On the way back to the hostel, instead of walking all the way back, we decided to take the Ukrainian metro. The hostel owner insisted that it was the deepest station in Europe, which wouldn't be hard to believe. We went down two sets of escalators that lasted -- if you stood -- about 2.5 minutes. By the time you get to the bottom, it's the most stereotypically Ukrainian thing we see: very cold, everyone has a serious face on, and so incredibly heavy in terms of air quality and mood. The experience itself was worth it. 

Therein ends our day of sightseeing. Now, to elaborate a bit on the hostel people since they were interesting. We met one girl from California (south, actually) who was a soldier in Afghanistan. She was cool -- very aggressive, maybe passionate -- about her opinions in the Donetsk region. There was one guy from Liverpool that turned out to be a laugh. And, the rest were just journalists using Kiev as a base to commute over to the east to cover the revolution. It's interesting, because they were fairly young people, maybe mid-twenties to mid-thirties who were trying to make a name for themselves doing credible journalism. As a result, most of the hostel was just a base for these people to travel out. They had interesting perspectives to offer. The entire city was safe, though, for the general tourist, although we had the privilege of blindness only being there a couple of days.

That night, the girl from the California wanted us to go drinking with them at a local bar down the street. We went in, and did some line of shots where we put on some helmets and they lit it on fire. Honestly, didn't really know what was going on since they were shouting in Ukrainian, but it was fun. The theme of the bar was 'hospital,' and so the guys and girls wore nurses outfits and there were cyrine shots, etc. Thorin and I actually went there the next day to eat a meal, and it was a good meal, one of our last few meals in Eastern Europe. Continuing on the cafe culture of Kiev, they converted a London Double Decker bus into a cafe, so we had a coffee prior. Our last espresso.

So our overall impression of Kiev was positive. Twas a great city to visit, and it was interesting to capture it in that moment of time. From here, we took a flight to Budapest on the infamous Wizz-Air because it was cheap. I hope we'll be back.