gappers in town

after ben and bo spent a couple days in lviv, they took a day train back to kyiv...i picked them up at the train station, and first things first, of course we had to find something to eat...the boys hadn't really eaten anything all day, except for a few rolls from a stranger on the friend, and a couple beers...they were famished, and i can always eat:)
after food, the next item on the list was to find a hostel for ben...we found the one he'd picked out in the guidebook...but it was full...argh...howeva, the chick who owned the hostel said a few people were going out to a bar, and said that there was another hostel very close to the bar, and that they'd take ben along...a quick subway ride and walk home, i went to sleep fast...
the next day i went to work, ben and bo met up in the city center...they told me later that they had trouble figuring out where to go to follow the walking tour suggested by lonely planet...ben is HORRIBLE when it comes to reading maps...after all the traveling he's done (he makes me look as though i've never left my sofa) you'd think he'd be able to read a map...but he can't...he's constantly getting lost...granted, some of my best travel adventures have happened because i get lost, but ben does it all the time...even when he's already gotten somewhere once w/out getting lost...anywho...it was pretty chilly that day, the boys told me they kept finding places to duck inside and warm up for a few minutes...i don't blame them...
the boys picked me up at work, we went home and dropped off my stuff, then headed to the grocery store...one of my requests of bo for staying with me was that he cook a meal for us...(he's a chef, this isn't a crazy request)...ben had come up with the idea that bo cook thanksgiving for us...i liked the idea, and cloe and her mom were keen, as they'd never experienced an american thanksgiving...bo knew what he needed from the grocery store, ben and i were there mostly just because...and, we knew it would be a little while before the food was ready, so we also picked up snacks...(hanging out with these two means nearly nonstop eating...not good for my waistline!)...

thanksgiving dinner was great...chicken, homemade stuffing, salad, pumpkin/carrot something, and mashed potatoes...YUM...we all ate too much, everyone else drank wine...none of us ate nearly the amount i remember eating when i had thanksgiving as a kid, but it was still too much...some how or another, i was the only one not drinking, and i was the only one who woke up the next morning with a headache...NOT FAIR... oh well, such is life...
i only had to teach the next morning, i was able to meet up with the boys just after noon...we took the subway and walked a bit to the lavra, one of the two UNESCO sites in kyiv...on the way to the lavra, we stopped by two memorials...one is to the soldies who fought in WWII...the other is to victims of the famine in 1932-1933...this was a man made famine, and millions of people died...there was enough food, but stalin made some decisions, and people starved as a result...it was pretty sobering to see the memorial, even more sobering to think that it shouldn't have happened at all...

there are two areas in the lavra site, the upper and lower...in the upper, the bell tower and one of the churches currently have scaffolding around them...darnit...the bell tower was covered the last time i was there as well, i'm hoping to see it without scaffolding at some point while i live here...i think there is a joke out there that it's not really a UNESCO site unless some part of it is covered by scaffolding? we still had fun taking photos...ben and i had fun making a wedding congratulations video for one of his friends in taiwan...between the upper and lower sections, we each had a snack...bo and i had snickers, ben went with hot tea...we also visited the lower area, mainly to see the caves...the caves aren't really "caves" as one would normally think of them, but that's the name they've ended up with...it's actually a set of tunnels under a church, where monks went to meditate, live, and eventually die...there are sarcophagi in the tunnels, they're glass...the bodies are covered, but a few of them have hands sticking out...as the bodies are mummified, the hands are dark and dry, and a bit creepy...eeeeee...i didn't notice this when i visited these caves before, i don't know why...

on the way from the lavra back to the subway, we stopped to eat...i ate too much, ben and bo both outdid me, and still had room for waffles afterward...the subway took us back to the center of town, and we headed toward st sophia, the other UNESCO site in town...ben and bo had already seen the inside of a number of churches, and didn't feel the need to see another, which saved us the biggest part of the entry fee to the site...instead we walked around the outside of the church, and climbed up the bell tower...i'd done that before, but the view is completely different at night, of course...

then came dinner...as always, my eyes were bigger than my tummy, but i was impressed in my resistance to eating what i ordered...bo ate most of it instead...note to self: do not eat lunch and dinner less than two hours apart...from dinner we decided to do something not very intelligent: follow ben to a bar...remember what i said earlier about ben not being able to read a map? thank goodness none of us minded the extra walking...the bar is a student bar, and the prices are redic cheap...$1 vodka shots...$1.25 beer...our total bill had 4 beers, 2 vodka shots, and two sprites, and was less than $10 total...woo hoo!! ben and bo said goodbye as we left, and the next morning i put bo in a taxi to the airport...it's always sad to say a temporary goodbye to a gapper...we always assume there will be a 'next time,' which makes goodbye a whole lot better...:)

 ben moved in the next day...ever since he's been hanging out at the flat, occasionally getting out and seeing the city...mostly though he's been figuring out what comes next in his life...where he'll go, how he'll get there, and what he might see along the way to whereva he goes next...how long he'll be there, what he'll do there, etc...ben has also been working on his blog, i've written a couple posts for him:)...we've shown him the yumminess of ready made food from the closest grocery store, attempted to go bowling, etc...he and cloe have had fun with nightly glasses of wine, i've stuck with juice...(it isn't the same...even non alcoholic wine or beer isn't the same)...it's been nice to have a friend around, someone i've known for a long time...

odessa (одесса)

Since Bo (a friend from when I lived in garmisch, germany) had mentioned coming to Ukraine to visit, he’d also mentioned wanting to see a couple other towns in the country, other than Kyiv…then, not too long after Bo said he wanted to visit, another gapper friend, Ben, said he wanted to visit…yippee!!! It’s always fun when ex gappers get together around the world…

Bo arrived in Kyiv on a Thursday evening (thanks to a strike by Italian air traffic controllers his flight was four hours late) and crashed at my flat while I went to work Friday…Friday evening he and I went to the other airport in Kyiv and flew down to Odessa, a city down on the black sea…the city was really really important to the soviets during the days of the USSR, and the area is still very pro Russia…russian is definitely the language of choice there…these days Odessa is still a huge port, but is also known for crazy partying on the beach, particularly during the summer…

Bo and I flew in late Friday, and took a taxi straight to a hotel…normally I hate doing that, but I also hate arriving somewhere in the dark and cold…our hotel was once grand and elegant, now it’s just faded…really high ceilings in every room, which was great, and we had a great view…but the paint was peeling, and the walls/doors had about an inch of paint on them…if anyone ever wanted to fix up the hotel they’d have to gut it…I’m not sure it would be possible to update it, but I’m sure there are fixer upper people out there who would see it differently…we enjoyed the feeling of elegance, even if it was completely outdated…

It turned out ben arrived Friday night as well, by bus from Chisenau, Moldova…he arrived a few hours earlier than we did, but didn’t find a place to sleep until the same time we got to our hotel…not being able to read Ukrainian or Russian made it difficult to find anything…plus, ben had a few adventures with police demanding bribes…as we found out, there are laws prohibiting any sort of signage on the street for hostels in Odessa, and much of Kyiv…which means that trying to find a hostel in the dark is pretty much impossible, especially when nearly all the hostels listed are only seasonally open, but you don’t know that ahead of time…ben ended up finding a room at the train station that night, after hours of wandering around in the dark and cold…

The next morning, bo and I ate the breakfast included with our hotel, (not a great breakfast at all, but better than nothing) then went walking…we made it about 10 minutes, then ben called me…thank goodness for skype, that was the only  way of us contacting each other…we arranged to meet in front of an irish pub 30 minutes later…on the way to the pub, bo and I found the 12^th chair in the city park…the 12^th chair comes from a russian/Ukrainian story, which takes place all over the country…I don’t know if any of the other chairs from the story have been built in any other cities in the country…we took photos, which seems to be expected…according to lonely planet, in the summer you’ll see heaps of people taking photos around this chair…

We found ben, and he told us his story…at this point he was completely annoyed with traveling, and it’s inconveniences…not being able to read or understand the local language is frustrating, to say the least…(especially when it results in being asked for two bribes in 2 countries less than 5 hours apart)…we went searching for a hostel, which ended up being a lot of walking, getting slightly lost, 2 missed hostels and then finally finding a hostel…(which turned out to be for sale, and ben is considering buying it)…

After dropping off ben’s stuff, our next project was food…bo and I had eaten breakfast, but he’s a chef, and can always eat…we ended up at a place mentioned in the guidebook, the food was decent…and they had pastries…woo hoo!! Ben doesn’t eat sweets much, but that changed a bit after a couple days with bo and I, who pretty much mainline sugar…ben’s first experience with Ukrainian food, bo’s second…lunch included split pea soup (which wasn’t the green stuff I grew up eating) and borsch and vareniky (think polish pierogis – sp? – or Korean mandu)…and pastries to go, of course…

Then the walking around town started…after all the walking to find ben a hostel, we knew a couple streets really well…those turned out to be streets we walked again and again getting to the places that sounded interesting…we saw the outside of the opera house, (which is apparently a common backdrop for wedding photos) and city hall, and the statue of Catherine the great…we also saw the Potemkin steps, which were once the gateway to the city from the port…ben can tell you about the optical illusions built into the stairs…I didn’t think they were all that…how interesting can stairs be? The stairs are featured prominently in the movie “battleship Potemkin”…

It gets dark early now, night falls by 1630 or so…as the sun was going down, we started making our way to the train station, so ben and bo could get train tickets to lviv…on our way to the train station we got distracted by a march…at first we thought it was supporters of a football (soccer) team, but later on I figured it was actually a march in favour of the recently imprisoned former opposition leader, yulia tymoshenko (sp?)…lots of orange smoke everywhere…

A nap, then dinner, which ended up being at a milk bar/cafeteria…it’s a great, cheap way to taste lots of different traditional Ukrainian food…ben being the social butterfly that he is convinced us to go out to a bar for a beer…bo was keen, I didn’t care one way or the other…I ended up with some fruity drink…it was a whiskey bar, plenty smoky…

The next day ben was late meeting up…he said he got distracted boiling eggs, I think he slept in…he also says he was talking to the hostel owner about buying the hostel…but we all know ben is more likely to continue exploring the world rather than make such a large monetary and time commitment…since Odessa is known for it’s beach scene during the summer, we decided to go visit…

Finding the tram to the beach turned out to be pretty easy…and cheap…who doesn’t love an 18cent tram ride? From the spot where you get off the tram all the way to the beach are little stalls selling stuff, or bars, or carnival type games…a few of them were going, but at this time of year most everything is closed…but there were still plenty of people there…as many people as are there now, I can’t imagine how crazy crowded it is in summer…walking along the beach we saw heaps of bars/discoes/clubs…it must be nonstop drinking, sunning, and playing during the summer…we got cold and somewhat bored after a little while, and hopped the tram back into town…

At that point, it wasn’t much longer until the boys needed to get back to the hostel to pick up there stuff, and I had to make my way to the airport…on the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a café that served the most wonderful hot chocolate…very thick, it was almost the consistency of chocolate pudding…YUM…and the pastries were good tooJ…it was our second time in the café, we’d stopped there the evening before as well…

From there the trip ended pretty quickly…the boys got details of a hostel in lviv, the hostel owner called a taxi for me…I wished the boys good luck, and they started walking to the train station…my taxi took me to the airport, and I flew back to Kyiv…after two days of nonstop talking with great friends, it felt weird to be by myself again…

chernihiv (чернигив)

Our second trip outside Kyiv! Cloe and I had originally thought we’d be going to Chernihiv in mid October, but those plans changed, and we ended up doing the trip in early November. Travel plans are always changing, neither one of us really cared. We were just excited to see another place in Ukraine.  This trip was with our friend Violetta.  We used to work with Violetta, but the school didn’t treat her well at all, and still expected her to give everything, so she quit.  We miss having her at school.  Anywho, she found out the information we needed on transportation, cloe and I were in charge of figuring out what to see when we were in the city. 

Our day started with an early wakeup, too early we thought.  Who wants to wake up at 0600 on a Sunday morning? Not us.  But that’s when we had to wake up in order to leave the flat by 0700, in order to meet Violetta at the subway station at 0800.  We basically rode the subway across the entire city to get to Violetta.  She found the correct marshutka (which is basically a minibus) to get us to Chernihiv, and we climbed aboard.  There is no set schedule of departure times, the marshrutka leaves when it is full.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long.  Only about 30 minutes.  The ride was easy, only 2 hours, and quite smooth.

The marshrutka dropped us off in what appeared to be the center of the city.  Lonely planet doesn’t have a city map for it’s entry on Chernihiv, so I’d printed something from google maps.  The first thing we did was duck into a cafeteria so cloe could get some coffee.  While there we figured out where we were on the map, and cloe asked someone how to get to the place we wanted to start our walking tour.  It turned out not to be far away. 

It is called red square…before arriving, I’m not sure exactly what we expected, but I guess I thought there would be something more defined…something more majestic…instead, it was just a wide open huge traffic circle…I can see how it would be used as a gathering place for citizens of the town, especially when those sorts of gatherings happened regularly during soviet days…but it was boring…I’m not sure where the name came from, as we didn’t see any red…perhaps from the way the colour is associated with communism? I don’t know…cloe and I had fun running through the pigeons, and making them all take flight…one local lady told us something, though I’m not sure what…it seemed as though we weren’t supposed to be running around? Hmmm…

We kept walking, into the middle sidewalk of a park…I think violetta mentioned the walk of heroes, something like that? There were statues (busts) of various soviet/Ukrainian heroes along each side of where we were walking…needless to say, I didn’t know any of them…neither did cloe…in the middle of these was a memorial to Chernobyl, which had (and continues to have) a big impact on this country…after then end of this park, we crossed the street and were able to see our first church in the city…it was white, and orthodox…we peeked inside, a service was going on; so we didn’t stay long…plus, I didn’t have a scarf with which to cover my head, so I felt a bit uncomfortable…by now, I should know to bring a scarf everywhere I go…I ought to just keep a scarf in my purse, just in cases…that way I’d have it handy, in case I want to explore a church anywhere in this country…they don’t seem to be as particular about making women wear skirts…the local women all wear skirts, but it isn’t such a big deal if tourists are not doing so…I don’t know how anyone wears a skirt in this weather!

From there we could see several other churches, and since lonely planet hadn’t given us a map, we figured we would check out one of them, then try to figure out the rest of the walking tour lonely planet suggested…that first church wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, but I still enjoy looking around…I think a service had just finished, as there were quite a few people coming out of the church…from there we opted to follow the street signs directing us toward a monastery and caves…both were mentioned in the guidebook, the caves in particular being a place we really wanted to see…

We got to the caves, these are somewhat like the caves I saw with cousin bryn in Kyiv…in that, they’re not really caves…merely tunnels hewn out of the rock under the church, and off those tunnels were little rooms in which monks meditated and were sometimes buried…since the weather conditions in chernihiv are different from Kyiv (it’s generally drier and warmer in Kyiv) so there were no mummies in chernihiv…the caves in chernihiv are different in that tourists/pilgrims are able to explore the entire area, not just 2 main hallways…

We came out of the caves/tunnels/whateva you want to call them, and headed to another church on a hill…I think it was part of the same complex, but I’m not entirely sure…this church had a bell tower, which you could climb for the whopping fee of 25cents…before climbing the tower, we went in the church, and got to watch most of a traditional Ukrainian wedding…the bride looked to be a few months along, I don’t think that’s very traditional…the bridesmaid was wearing a very short dress…for at least 10 minutes of the ceremony, the bridesmaid and groomsman held crowns over the heads of the bride and groom…that had to hurt after a few minutes! As we were leaving the church, we saw another wedding party waiting in the back…I wonder how many people get married there each weekend?

Climbing the bell tower was fun…and very very windy…we were able to see quite a ways, and take a few photos…on the way back down we noticed some of the priests (they looked young) ringing the bells…cloe wanted to take a photo, but we missed that opportunity…argh…

After asking a few people which direction we needed to go (and getting different answers from each of them) we hopped on a tram back to the center of town…I was keen to walk, violetta wanted to ride, and I don’t think cloe cared one way or the other…it wasn’t a long ride, and in searching for a particular restaurant for lunch we ended up walking quite a bit anywho…oh well…the restaurant seemed to be more about dessert, so we had that, and tea, then went out walking again…the dessert was a slice of apple tort, and a slice of pear torte…yum! The walking included more churches, another park, and 12 cannons…each cannon was different, I’m presuming they were used in different time periods?

After seeing all that, we’d seen everything there is to see in chernihiv…so we walked back to the center of town, looking for real food…and we found it…after a cheap, quick meal from a cafeteria, we found the spot to catch the bus back to Kyiv…it left around 1700, we arrived back around 1900, and cloe and I were home an hour later…a great day trip