germany: hamburg

since one of my cousins had visited me in kyiv in january i felt it was only fair to visit her...so i booked flights to hamburg over a long weekend...one advantage to an early morning flight is the total lack of traffic on the way to the airport...the taxi ride was fast :)...on the way i could see the remains of roadblocks that had gone up during the madness of Maidan...
my cousin picked me up at the airport in hamburg, then we rode a couple different s-bahn trains, and walked a little to get to where she has been living...she told me the home was once a rowing club, but was purchased and renovated by the family into a private home...it's fantastic!!

after dropping my bag, we went to the supermarket to get lunch: warm pretzel rolls, salami, butter, frischkase, cheese, etc...i love these kinds of lunches
after lunch we started walking...tyra has had a few visitors, and has worked out one and two day tours of hamburg, hee hee...we crossed a canal or two on the way to one end of the big lake...she pointed out some of the huge houses along the canals, wow...these homes stay in families for generations, and often have multiple generations living in them at the same time...

hamburg is the 2nd largest city in the country, and does not have enough housing...
since we were out walking earlier on a friday than tyra normally would've been able to do so, we came across a fleamarket she doesn't normally get to see...stands with yummy food, yahoo...of course i bought too much, i figured we could have snacks a few times through the day :)
walking around the lake we stopped a couple times to eat the snacks, and enjoy the view...something about relaxing in or near water always makes me a happy camper; if only i could do it more often...

we weren't the only people out by the lake, it must be one of the most popular places in the city...plenty of people out running along the path...as we passed one gelato stall i bought some, even though tyra said it was too cold...(i live in ukraine, it's never too cold for ice cream!)
after walking most of the way around the lake, we made our way over to a main shopping street...postcards are crazy expensive in hamburg, argh...lots of people out strolling, window shopping, enjoying each other's company...

we saw the rathaus, a very complicated building...there is no place to get a good photo, it obviously wasn't built with photographers in mind, hee hee...maybe someday i will get to go to the top :) ...the roof is green, and was obviously not always that colour...
it rained a bit as we made our way home, stopping at a supermarket again...i bought cereal and ritter sport bars to take with me back to ukraine...(ukraine is sorely lacking in the cereal department)...even though we'd already been in one supermarket earlier in the day, i was still happy to wander all around this one...

dinner was a family affair...tyra and another girl living with the family made risotto, and did a fine job considering they hadn't made it previously...i added hot sauce...it was nice to chat with the mom and the roommate...
when i took my socks off that evening i noticed splotches of red on the insides of each ankle...i have no idea where it came from, or what it was...it didn't itch, or feel anything at all...i fell asleep as we were watching inglorious basterds...(i fell asleep in the middle of the movie again the next night...is it that bad, or was i that tired?)

the next morning i was the first awake in the house, which didn't suprise me at all...(i'm a morning person, and i normally live an hour ahead of germany)...when tyra got up we had tea and yogurt for breakfast, then got on our way...
i got a haircut! the first time since argentina the previous july...i needed it...i know i could get it done in kyiv, but i'm always worried about translation...
we walked a lot again this day...after the haircut we walked to a justice looking building, with an exhibition in front...i think it was an art exhibition?

the weather was awesome, i was thrilled...this was really close to brahms platz...another side of the platz had a theatre, and yet a third side had the building in which tyra works...one of the entrances has an elephant on the side of the building...
we visited st michaels church next...a big church, with a great open, airy feeling...lots of light pouring in through the windows...not far from the church was an apartment residence building, it looked a bit like a ship...given that hamburg is on a lot of water, it made sense...i love the feel of the variety in architecture in the city...traditional, but modern at the same time...

we visited an alleyway that used to be where wives and children of sailors would live when the men were out at sea...it's a tight alley, and was the sight of a disease outbreak at one point because of the close quarters...now it's a touristy area, with cafes and tourist shops...i bought a coffee mug...
we walked to a waterway which was actually pretty big...along the way we passed 4 scandinavian churches! one of my family members is obsessed with the swedish side of the family, so of course the scandinavian churches were a point of interest...

i bought my first (and so far, only) fisch pushkin...basically a fish sandwich...there are fried and 'raw' options available...apparently it's a very hamburgian food...i didn't love it, i didn't hate it...
walking along the waterway, tyra pointing out that some of the boats are public transport, how awesome is that? just like a trolley or bus, but on the water...we walked down a lot of stairs at one point, and walked through a tunnel all the way under the water, and up the stairs on the other side...(i was breathing hard when we came up)...a nice view over to the side on which we started...after soaking up the view for a bit, we went back down and under...

tyra then walked us over to the speicher stadt...it's her favourite area of the city...the old warehouse district...i can't describe it, but there is definitely a feeling to it...picturesque in a way...it was neat to see how everything used to work in terms of shipping and delivery in the city...some of the old warehouses have been renovated into modern apartment buildings, i didn't like any of those i saw...not really my style...
we briefly walked into another church, neither of us thought much of it...so we walked into one of many branches of balzac coffee shop...several hot chocolate options, yay!!

dinner that night was another family affair, with ellie and tyra cooking again :)...the next morning was sunday, and apparently brunch is extensive in this house...everyone gathered around the table again, including a couple more living in the house...lively conversation, and i got to tell what i thought of the events in ukraine...
then i flew back to kyiv...

maidan madness

anyone who is connected to world news heard about what happened in kyiv, ukraine during a week in mid february..the protest camp that had been set up since the end of november was growing, political demands were becoming more and more clear as days went by...i don't know why everything happened on these dates, but the short way of saying it is that maidan went mad...government forces started to make moves, opposition protestors fought back, fires were set, snipers shot at people, etc...specific details still aren't known, and likely never will be...by the end of everything, the (ex) president had fled the country, 70-100 people were dead, and the middle of the city was burned...tragedy...
one of the churches near maidan became a makeshift hospital, the bells rang a lot during the violence...the entire complex of the church became a staging point...you can see materials for molotov cocktails...there was a press center, there were canteens set up, fire areas to keep warm...
one of the biggest points to make in everything that happened was that the people of ukraine supported each other...they came with supplies...when they didn't have supplies, they donated money...when they didn't have those, they came themselves to do whateva they could...
the main post office on maidan was taken over as a makeshift hospital, so were several other buildings in the area...(i still don't know how to get mail out of the country, as that particular mailbox has not returned to its previous location...but mail is getting to me from europe and the states)since maidan is close to where i work, and the entire city metro was shut down during the three plus days this all happened, i did not work...i was safe in my flat on the outskirts of town, bored out of my mind...yet at the same time, i was super stressed...i barely moved all day, i was glued to my computer and phone...not speaking the language was tough...i watched live streaming of a lot of what was happening, despite the face that i couldn't understand a word being said by the commentators...

rumors were flying, the worst one being the threat of military control being asserted over the country...i was terrified phone and internet would be cut off, thankfully that never happened...the week after, i walked through maidan...it had become a large memorial...flowers EVERYWHERE...pictures of the fallen, EVERYWHERE...the burned out hulks of busses and other vehicles...bricks taken up from the streets still ready to go in case violence erupted again...even two weeks later, you can still smell smoke/fire, and the buildings are still black...who knows when any of them will be fixed or torn down...there is an unreal sense of sadness and disbelief that everything happened...
these photos were taken after the violence of 19-22 feb, in the first couple weeks afterward...

ukraine: zhytomyr and berdychiv

susannah and i took an early morning bus from zhytomyrska station in kyiv to the town of zhytomyr...we were dropped off on one end of town, it was easy to figure out where to go...we grabbed a couple rolls for breakfast, then started walking...
the walk ended up being quite a bit longer than either of us expected, but it isn't as if we had anything else to do...by the time we got to the platz at the center of town, we were hungry, so we looked for a cafeteria type place to eat, but never found one...we ended up in a pub of some sort...i think it was a microbrewery, but who knows how good the beer was, since this is ukraine...

after eating, we walked toward the flat we'd booked, which ended up being on the very edge of another side of town...this walk also ended up being quite a bit longer than we'd expected...again, oh well...along the way we walked past a large platz, which was the home of the maidan protest camp of zhytomyr...not as impressive as that of kyiv, but still incredible...this country really did pull together in their fight for freedom, soooo many towns have these camps, regardless of size...a couple tents, flags, and barricades of a large government building...
we eventually found the flat, and checked in...it was really nice to be able to drop our bags, and figure out where we would be walking next...
after warming up and relaxing for a while, we walked back down the street we'd just followed...we found the cosmonaut museum, (after walking too far, then turning back) the one real sight in the city...
the museum is small, but really well done...most of the signage was in both ukrainian and english, and the displays were put together nicely...we could still feel a bit of the cold war, as almost every display showed the former soviet union in a slightly better position than the US...

the display i remember particularly well was that of some of the first food sent into space...gross...who wants to have coffee with milk in a tube? there were multiple patches and models on display as well...
we had dinner at an 'italian' place, and took advantage of the free wifi...as each of us turned on our machines, we got notifications about russian troops being in crimea, and putin having received permission to use russian troops in ukraine from the duma in moscow...how far is this going to go?

we already knew of large pro-russian demonstrations in crimea and the east, as a result of what had happened only a week earlier in kyiv...
the next day we walked to a bus stop, and caught a local bus to the main bus station, then caught the next bus to the town of berdychiv...not particularly well known, and not particularly big...there wasn't much to see, and the town is very small, but one of my guidebooks mentioned a church and a cemetary, so we thought we'd try...

we found the church, though it was closed, and it seemed as if we weren't even welcome on the grounds...booo...on the way to the church we wandered through a couple neighborhoods, which were particularly picturesque in a ukrainian soviet kind of way...(that probably makes no sense)...
after the church, we headed up the 'main' street of town...susannah spotted a cafe (thank goodness, we didn't see any other places to eat!) which had pretty good salyanka...(meat soup)...we decided to skip looking for the cemetary, and head back to the bus station...

 walking that way we found another church, and a small store from which to buy snacks :)
i bought a ticket back to kyiv, susannah bought a ticket to her next destination...(she had a week off, and wanted to take full advantage of time to explore ukraine)...i got back to kyiv around 8pm...