Kyiv, Ukraine
This time last week, we were sat in our apartment in Kyiv saying we couldn’t believe we were in Ukraine. I’d wanted to visit Kyiv for so long that it still doesn’t seem real. Rather how I felt before and after visiting Moscow. I’d love to see more of Ukraine and I’ll most definitely return to Kyiv, preferably in spring. My dad wasn’t keen on the idea and warned me I’d be mugged, scammed, attacked etc. We didn’t have any problems, I never once felt threatened and most of the people we met were friendly and helpful.
Our Wizz Air flight landed in Kyiv shortly after 6pm, Ukrainian time, on Monday. When I travel, I worry Passport Control will clock the Checkpoint Charlie stamps which apparently invalidate your passport. It takes a while to clear Passport Control in Kyiv as you have to fill out landing cards and they’re quite thorough with all the passengers coming through. Sure enough, my passport was stamped and I was allowed to enter Ukraine! I love having my passport stamped and wish more countries would stamp it. I hear you can request stamps, but I also hear many refuse to do so. I now have 5. It’s a shame some Latvian stripper (or pimp) stole my old passport with the Russian visa.
We decided to book an apartment rather than stay in a hotel. The guide book I bought recommends staying in well known, international chains. However, they’re so expensive and you’d be looking at paying around £250-£300 a night! We found an apartment we liked the look of and paid the deposit, despite Julia telling us not to do that. I trusted the rental agency seemed genuine, although I did worry that we’d come through arrivals that the driver wouldn’t be waiting for us and there’d be no apartment.
He was there. Holding a sign with my surname written on it. And a very nice man he was. The apartment also existed and was a lot nicer than we imagined it to be. It’s actually a lot nicer than our flat here in London! Much bigger. Better view. The building is one of the most famous buildings built by Stalin in Kyiv and Alex (the driver) told us movie stars and politicians live in it. It’s right on Kreshatik, which I suppose is Kyiv’s version of Oxford Street.
We didn’t have much time to settle in before we went out to meet Julia. It was so nice to finally meet her and also great to know someone in the city. She is so lovely and helpful. Little things like lending us an old mobile phone with a Ukrainian SIM so we could contact her and informing us of safety tips and general information. Julia took us to Il Patio, which is probably my favourite Russian ‘Italian restaurant’ chain. I ate there four times in Latvia! Julia’s friend Julia later joined us and she is also really nice. They’re both funny girls.
Julia showed us where the supermarket was so we could stock up on essentials and food for breakfast. The greatest discovery, for Peter at least, came in the form of Vanilla Coke! Makes for a happy Burke. I love looking around supermarkets in foreign countries.
Most of Tuesday was spent looking around shops. It rained and rained and rained some more. Our favourite thing was looking at DVDs and translating the titles back to English (Mall Cop = Shopo Cop). As with the supermarkets, I like seeing things we know but have different lettering on the front. We ended up buying the Ukrainian version of Home Alone, just because it’s all foreign and that.
We quickly discovered that to get across the road in Kyiv, you have to go under the road. Sounds simple, but it’s really not. You go down steps, through doors and you’re confronted with underground shopping centres/kiosks/cafes and exits going off in all different directions. Handy in the winter, I suppose – living your life under the streets where it’s warm. More often than not, we took the wrong exit and ended up on the wrong side of the road or on the wrong street altogether.
The greatest discovery was Lush! I didn’t know Lush had made it to Ukraine. We went in, just to have a nosy, but the assistant followed us around and made us touch and smell almost everything – so we felt forced into buying something to keep her happy. She was pretty sweet, but could barely speak English. She picked up something honey scented and shouted ‘BEE’ rather excitedly. Her request for us to ‘COME BACK’ seemed rather desperate. I have a feeling people don’t go in there often.
Guess where we went for us tea? Yup, Il Patio. The plan for the evening was to meet Julia in the park to walk her dog, but the heavens opened and we were all forced home, drenched. We’d taken the Metro to Arsenalna (the stop near the park) and that was quite an adventure. Their stations are so, so deep. Arsenalna is the deepest station in the world. If I knew how long the escalators up and down took, I’d have packed a picnic beforehand! It’s rather like the Moscow Metro and you have to fight your way on and off the trains. Another train we took later in the week was showing Mr. Bean clips on TV screens. Curious.
The rain forced us to spend Tuesday evening indoors, watching football on TV and laughing at a lot of the sex tourism websites in Kyiv. Double relaxtion, anyone?
Wednesday was glorious! The sun was shining and it didn’t rain again for the rest of our stay. The plan was to visit both the Wax and Chernobyl Museums, but we failed to locate both. All we really did was go for a very long walk. We headed up Kreshatik towards Independence Square, then up towards Saint Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery – which is stunning. Love that shade of blue.
We continued up towards Saint Andrew’s Church and down into Podil, which is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Kyiv. We made our way down Andriyviskyy Descent – which is full of little stalls selling tourist tat to paintings and well, all sorts of things. Bulgakov’s House is down there, but I forgot all about it at the time and missed it. I think I was concentrating too hard on not slipping on or tripping over the cobbles. It’s hard work. I felt sorry for all the stray dogs and cats. Podil is quite a rustic part of town!
In the evening, we met up with Julia and a whole bunch of her friends in a Czech restaurant. The menu looked great, but concerned I was coming down with something, I played it safe with a plate of chips. It was great to go out for a meal with lots of people. One end of the table conversing in English and the other end in Russian. Everyone was so nice. Spent most of the evening talking to a Dutch man who speaks fantastic Russian. There were also a few Americans around the table. I wish that kind of thing happened in London. Julia walked us most of the way back to our apartment, showing us the second, hidden crocodile on the House with Chimaeras along the way.
I felt a lot better after a long sleep.
It turned out my guide book had pin-pointed the Chernobyl Museum on the wrong street, so we headed back to Podil first thing (well, after breakfast at lunch time) on Thursday to track it down. I would have liked to have visited Pripyat, but there were no tours running during the week. I suppose the museum is a lot safer (no radiation!) and gives you a better idea of what happened. The guide said the museum isn’t very well maintained, but I thought it was great! There is so much detail and the use of light/music works really well. Although, Some of it does seem a bit too arty and pretentious.
After the success of finally locating the Chernobyl Museum, we had another look for the Wax museum, but never did locate it. I really wanted to meet Lenin. Even the Lenin statue was covered up, so I didn’t get to see him at all. Shame.
A great chunk of Thursday was spent walking around the Caves Monastery. There’s a lot to see there and unfortunately we didn’t see it all or go inside as we also wanted to head down to the Great Patriotic War Museum. There’s quite a lot of walking involved and I didn’t realise how hilly Kyiv is!
The Great Patriotic War Museum was closed by the time we made it down there. There’s quite a few monuments and tanks and helicopters and things to look at, though. We found our way there, using the Mother Motherland monumental statue as a beacon. She’s huge – 200ft tall! At her feet, there are really nice views over the Dnipro (river), looking towards the left bank.
When we decided on booking an apartment, we thought – great, we can buy food from the supermarket and eat in every night. Thursday night was the only night we ate in. Peter couldn’t figure out how the oven worked and there wasn’t a frying pan, so we ended up trying to fry very-expensive-bacon in a big saucepan. It didn’t turn out too bad in the end. After us tea, we attempted to meet up with Julia to walk the dog but again, that didn’t quite work out. We later met in the street to return her phone and meet her adorable Labrador puppy, Darcy. He’s so cute. It was a shame to say goodbye to Julia and also a shame we weren’t staying longer/over the weekend. I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.
On Friday morning, the Russian cleaner came to the apartment earlier than she should have. Trying to communicate with her was hard work, so we went out while she got on with it. There was another church we could see from our balcony, which we went to hunt down but never located. We also intended to check out the Pinchuk Art Centre on Julia’s recommendation, but the Damien Hirst exhibiton had recently come to an end and it was closed. Not a successful morning. The driver arrived at the apartment at 3pm to take us back to the airport. Passport stamped. Back to London.
The last photo I took in Kyiv before our driver arrived to take us back to Boryspil.
There’s so much we wanted to see/do but never got the chance to. We talked about going to the theatre to see Romeo & Juliet, visiting a casino, try borsch, seeing the dolphins, seeing the circus (closed during the week) and several more churches and museums. I guess we didn’t account for how far you have to walk from the metro station to the places we did make it to and also, we were too afraid to chance the buses/marshruktas.
I’d love to go back in the spring for a couple of weeks. Probably in 2011? That gives me enough time to get a better grasp of Ukrainian and/or Russian. I really envy the people we met who are studying/researching in Kyiv and wish I could do something more interesting with my life like that. I really want to visit Lviv and ride the trolleybus from Simferopol to Yalta.
Ukraine, I’ll see you again!
