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...