The Lure of the East [Part 3: 27/7-30/7 - Ukraine]
[continued from part two here]
And the next morning we did arrive in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, according to plan.
We had got ourselves a place in some hostel outside the city centre, so we embarked on the metro journey to get to our accommodation. The metro bit was no problem at all, and nor was the 10 minutes walk from the metro station to the street where the hostel was supposed to be... then the problems began and it took us a good half hour to actually find out WHERE the hostel was. We eventually found it, a small building with no common area at all, nobody speaking a word of English (good job I can get by in Russian, it'd have been quite, er, interesting, otherwise) and not particularly nice - all in all certainly the worst we had throughout the entire holiday, but it was for one night only so we didn't particularly care. Anyway we settled down in our room - the only one available was a 3-bed room where another person, a young Russian woman, was also staying, which was perfectly fine with us but we found a bit strange; most hostels have 4 or 6 bed dorms AND private rooms (single or doubles), both of which types of accommodations are fine and both of which we used throughout the holiday.., but 3 people? weird.
Anyway, soon we were off exploring Kiev; the first day we went straight to the statue of the Motherland, commemorating victory in World War 2, a huge statue of a woman brandishing a sword that's visible pretty much from the whole city and which hosts the museum of the Great Patriotic War (that's how WW2 is known as throughout the former Soviet Union) in it's base. The whole place is fantastic and I'm really glad we went. It's in a park and the whole place is one massive war memorial: as you walk towards the statue there's all sorts of Soviet murals, statues, tanks and cannons and other things commemorating the victory, and the museum itself is very well laid out and extremely interesting, it really shows the human element and what the Ukrainian (and in general Soviet) soldiers and civilian population had to go through during the war.
After that, we proceeded towards the city centre for some dinner and then we were about to go back to the hostel when we noticed a huge gathering of people on the main street leading to the central square (which - the street - was closed to traffic and kept free from pedestrian by the police), as if they were waiting for a parade or something. Nothing seemed to happen for a while and we kept walking up towards the central square, where we finally asked someone what it was about and we were told it was a send-off parade for the Ukrainian olympic squad before their departure for China. We decided to stay a bit longer and soon enough the parage reached the square, where the was a big stage set with performers and music and - speeches by the Ukraininan president and famous past e present athletes. We then decided it was time to go back and got the metro, bumping into the Russian woman we were sharing the room with on the way back.
the next day we dropped our luggage at the station again (we were going to go to Lvov on the night train again) and then completed all the sightseeing of Kiev - a nice city, with lots of big boulevards like you would expect but also smaller, cobbled streets and on the whole very green and pleasant. The afternoon we spent visiting the massive complex of the Caves monasteries - 2 main sets of churches and catacombs you can easily spend a whole day exploring if you want (we didn't, we maanged in a couple of hours). Funnily enough during the day we kept bumping into the Russian woman from the hostel, who obviously had the same ideas as we did in terms of what to see and in which order.
In the evening, it was time to get on the train again, for the 10-hour overnight journey to Lvov, in Western Ukraine, apparently the Ukrainian heartland, where they speak Ukrainian and not Russian (like they do in Kiev, Odessa and pretty much everywhere else) and they are much more influenced by Europe than they are by Russia...
... we got there the next morning and to be honest I didn't see much difference - all I heard was people speaking Russian like in the rest of the country (and I don't mean to ME, among themselves too) and the overlal feel wasn't that different either.
The architecture is, however, and in any case the city is truly beautiful. This time the hostel we'd found was very nice and cosy and it was mo more than 5 minutes walk from the centre/old town. We spent most of the day just meandering around the small streets of the old town, and then finished by visiting a beautiful (and massive) cemetery just out of it, which some people from the hostel had recommended to us. In the evening, after a nice meal in a small café/restaurant tucked away in an alleyway and therefore undiscovered by the tourist hordes we were happy to buy some beers and spend the night in the hostel, chatting with the othe guests (mainly Germans and Americans) and playing with the three kittens (and their mother) also living there.
The next day we were up at the crack of dawn to catch the train for the stupidly long journey to Kracow, in Poland - 9 hours, to cover a 200-mile journey (and there was a 1h delay too, making the whole journey time a nice 10 hours)!!! The reasons for this are mainly two: one is the fact that the Polish border is where the European Union begins these days, and therefore the checks are extremely thorough and strict - we spent a good 2 hours just going through the Polish customs (after 1 at the Ukrainian ones). Obviously the fat cats from the West (UK, France,Germany, Italy etc.) with their paranoia about immigrants must have told the Poles that if they wanted to be part of the EU they had to beef up the checks and make sure nobody who wasn't supposed to could slip through the net. So they took a lot of time checking passports and visas, searched the cabins and all sorts of things, and - somewhat unsurprisingly - a Russian family in the cabin next to us was ordered off the train after much checking of papers etc. and we never saw them again.
Having finished with that palaver, there was another one just about to start: just like it had happened to me last year going into China, the train bogies had to be changed, cos the ex Soviet Union and some other in the same area use a wider gauge, so when you get to the countries that use the 'western' type of gauge (like Poland here, and China in the East) the Russian-size bogies have to be replaced for the train to be able to go through - an operation that takes another couple of hours. Anyway, our endless journey finally ended, when in the afternoon we finally arrived at Kracow, and could settle down and relax in our - again, very nice - hostel 5 minutes from the station and as many from the famous old-town.
..but this will be the topic of the next (and last) part of the Lure of the East, coming soon...
And the next morning we did arrive in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, according to plan.
We had got ourselves a place in some hostel outside the city centre, so we embarked on the metro journey to get to our accommodation. The metro bit was no problem at all, and nor was the 10 minutes walk from the metro station to the street where the hostel was supposed to be... then the problems began and it took us a good half hour to actually find out WHERE the hostel was. We eventually found it, a small building with no common area at all, nobody speaking a word of English (good job I can get by in Russian, it'd have been quite, er, interesting, otherwise) and not particularly nice - all in all certainly the worst we had throughout the entire holiday, but it was for one night only so we didn't particularly care. Anyway we settled down in our room - the only one available was a 3-bed room where another person, a young Russian woman, was also staying, which was perfectly fine with us but we found a bit strange; most hostels have 4 or 6 bed dorms AND private rooms (single or doubles), both of which types of accommodations are fine and both of which we used throughout the holiday.., but 3 people? weird.
Anyway, soon we were off exploring Kiev; the first day we went straight to the statue of the Motherland, commemorating victory in World War 2, a huge statue of a woman brandishing a sword that's visible pretty much from the whole city and which hosts the museum of the Great Patriotic War (that's how WW2 is known as throughout the former Soviet Union) in it's base. The whole place is fantastic and I'm really glad we went. It's in a park and the whole place is one massive war memorial: as you walk towards the statue there's all sorts of Soviet murals, statues, tanks and cannons and other things commemorating the victory, and the museum itself is very well laid out and extremely interesting, it really shows the human element and what the Ukrainian (and in general Soviet) soldiers and civilian population had to go through during the war.
After that, we proceeded towards the city centre for some dinner and then we were about to go back to the hostel when we noticed a huge gathering of people on the main street leading to the central square (which - the street - was closed to traffic and kept free from pedestrian by the police), as if they were waiting for a parade or something. Nothing seemed to happen for a while and we kept walking up towards the central square, where we finally asked someone what it was about and we were told it was a send-off parade for the Ukrainian olympic squad before their departure for China. We decided to stay a bit longer and soon enough the parage reached the square, where the was a big stage set with performers and music and - speeches by the Ukraininan president and famous past e present athletes. We then decided it was time to go back and got the metro, bumping into the Russian woman we were sharing the room with on the way back.
the next day we dropped our luggage at the station again (we were going to go to Lvov on the night train again) and then completed all the sightseeing of Kiev - a nice city, with lots of big boulevards like you would expect but also smaller, cobbled streets and on the whole very green and pleasant. The afternoon we spent visiting the massive complex of the Caves monasteries - 2 main sets of churches and catacombs you can easily spend a whole day exploring if you want (we didn't, we maanged in a couple of hours). Funnily enough during the day we kept bumping into the Russian woman from the hostel, who obviously had the same ideas as we did in terms of what to see and in which order.
In the evening, it was time to get on the train again, for the 10-hour overnight journey to Lvov, in Western Ukraine, apparently the Ukrainian heartland, where they speak Ukrainian and not Russian (like they do in Kiev, Odessa and pretty much everywhere else) and they are much more influenced by Europe than they are by Russia...
... we got there the next morning and to be honest I didn't see much difference - all I heard was people speaking Russian like in the rest of the country (and I don't mean to ME, among themselves too) and the overlal feel wasn't that different either.
The architecture is, however, and in any case the city is truly beautiful. This time the hostel we'd found was very nice and cosy and it was mo more than 5 minutes walk from the centre/old town. We spent most of the day just meandering around the small streets of the old town, and then finished by visiting a beautiful (and massive) cemetery just out of it, which some people from the hostel had recommended to us. In the evening, after a nice meal in a small café/restaurant tucked away in an alleyway and therefore undiscovered by the tourist hordes we were happy to buy some beers and spend the night in the hostel, chatting with the othe guests (mainly Germans and Americans) and playing with the three kittens (and their mother) also living there.
The next day we were up at the crack of dawn to catch the train for the stupidly long journey to Kracow, in Poland - 9 hours, to cover a 200-mile journey (and there was a 1h delay too, making the whole journey time a nice 10 hours)!!! The reasons for this are mainly two: one is the fact that the Polish border is where the European Union begins these days, and therefore the checks are extremely thorough and strict - we spent a good 2 hours just going through the Polish customs (after 1 at the Ukrainian ones). Obviously the fat cats from the West (UK, France,Germany, Italy etc.) with their paranoia about immigrants must have told the Poles that if they wanted to be part of the EU they had to beef up the checks and make sure nobody who wasn't supposed to could slip through the net. So they took a lot of time checking passports and visas, searched the cabins and all sorts of things, and - somewhat unsurprisingly - a Russian family in the cabin next to us was ordered off the train after much checking of papers etc. and we never saw them again.
Having finished with that palaver, there was another one just about to start: just like it had happened to me last year going into China, the train bogies had to be changed, cos the ex Soviet Union and some other in the same area use a wider gauge, so when you get to the countries that use the 'western' type of gauge (like Poland here, and China in the East) the Russian-size bogies have to be replaced for the train to be able to go through - an operation that takes another couple of hours. Anyway, our endless journey finally ended, when in the afternoon we finally arrived at Kracow, and could settle down and relax in our - again, very nice - hostel 5 minutes from the station and as many from the famous old-town.
..but this will be the topic of the next (and last) part of the Lure of the East, coming soon...