http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Vinovat-Sudarynya/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Vinovat Sudarynya en-us Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:50:06 +0000 Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:50:06 +0000 I'm trying to find the right balance between attracting new readers to my blog and annoying existing ones by bombarding them with information about it. If you don't want to receive an email when I publish a new blog you should be able to unsubscribe from it just by clicking on a link within the email from TravelBlog.J. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/Druzhby-Narodiv/blog-451408.html November is Ukraine's most melancholic month. The temperature falls below freezing and the orange and yellow leaves that make October so picturesque fall on to the street and are trodden into dirty puddles the Ukrainian word for November Listopad means fall of leaves. The plain snowless clouds feel low enough to touch. People discard their colourful autumn clothes and clamber into black an http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-449986.html Autumn in Ukraine is beautiful but lethargic. Instead of wrapping dull stories around my photos I have updated the list I made in 2007 of all the places I have slept during my travels. I enjoyed reading it back to myself life these days has too much work and not enough Tatar witchdoctors.Places where I have slept during my travelsProspekt Tolbukhina Yaroslavl Russia with an old woman who cu http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-439890.html A collection of photographs from Kyiv Khersones and Chernihiv. To view them as a slideshow click on the first photo to enlarge it and then click on slideshow to see them in sequence.You can find more of my writing and photography on my journal Short stories and photographs from across Europe. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/blog-428380.html The Isle of Mull is an island in the Inner Hebrides a few miles from the coast of western Scotland. On its northernmost point lies Tobermory an adorable port town which is the setting for the BBC childrenrsquos program lsquoBalamoryrsquo at the very south of the island generations of Scottish kings are buried at Iona Abbey. Between its heralded tips are forty square miles of raw nature http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/Scotland/Isle-of-Mull/blog-418407.html There is much to enjoy about early mornings in Kyiv the cool air and peaceful blue tint in the sky or whimsical snow in winter the purposeful stomp of expensive shoes on the street as its businesspeople make their way to work the unflustered rhythms of the metro before it becomes crowded the melodious whirr of the coffee machine in the kitchen in my office churning out triple espressos to b http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/Zoloti-Vorota/blog-409520.html Thinking of ways to spend my birthday I remembered having read an article about the number 12 tram whose route takes its passengers out of Kyiv and through a pine forest to a small town called Pushcha Voditsa. Exhausted by the city desperate to explore somewhere beyond it and intrigued by journey that the writer of the article described as ldquoone of the most remarkable tram journeys in the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyivska-oblast--/Pushcha-Voditsa/blog-407603.html Pok pok pok pok pok pok pok the sounds drifting through the chestnut trees outside my new building from games of tennis on the clay courts nearby are a soft Saturday morning wakeup call. The new neighbourhood is a refined one sometimes a red squirrel appears in the tree opposite our balcony or a husband and wife step into the courtyard below and help their toddler to practice wa http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/Maidan-Nezalezhnosti/blog-397395.html In March I moved with Ana to Kyiv's Arsenal'na district between Maidan Nezalezhnosti Independence Square and the right bank of the river Dnieper. It is one of the city's most attractive areas scattered with lush sweetsmelling chestnut trees and punctuated by dozens of landmarks.It is home to the KievoPecherska Lavra The Kyiv Cave Monastery completed in 1015 a guardian of Eastern Orthodo http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/Livoberezhna/blog-397391.html Pitching up at the apartment in Lviv which I had rented for Ana and me to spend three days in over New Year gave me an improbable sense of dj vu. As we entered the cosy flat on vulytsya Fedorova I felt as though I was not stepping into the home of a rotund lady called Marianna but of my imagined thirtyfive year old self. It was clean light and decorated in a comfortable style that subco http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Lviv/blog-360304.html I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time it's more a case of me having lost my mojo now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunchhour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination.Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise I still have my notes and some of t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-308956.html I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time it's more a case of me having lost my mojo now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunchhour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination.Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise I still have my notes and some of t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/blog-308955.html The smell in the corridor is a familiar mixture of boiled cabbage and cheap cigarettes. A brown carpet in the bedroom is fixed to one of the walls instead of the floor. In the bathroom half of the bathtub sits under a chimney and the lock on the toilet door is on the outside. The kitchen is decorated in eight shades of beige a flat so infuriatingly fragile could only be Ukrainian.I was staying w http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/Lybidska/blog-363094.html Maybe itrsquos because Irsquom not a Londoner that I love London so.I grew up in Sussex just an hour away from the capital but the journey on the train was always so expensive that the only opportunities I had to experience life in the big city were when my parents would take me to watch sport. My Dad and I used to lose our voices singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot at the Twickenham rugby 'S http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/Holborn/blog-342979.html I haven't got around to writing much since my trip to Hungary last summer. I would be lying if I said I haven't had the time it's more a case of me having lost my mojo now I'm not able to scribble my ideas down in lunchhour long bursts and without Mr. Volkov's coffee machine to boost my imagination.Perhaps one day an article about Budapest will materialise I still have my notes and some of t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Hungary/Central-Hungary/blog-308953.html The best answer to why I haven't written anything since August is I've just been too busy when the law firm where I was working finalised a merger I found myself doing three jobs translating editing and proofreading for two companies. I worked late most nights before going straight home to bed. It was a stressful autumn but there were good moments sipping hot chocolate with Ana on Saturd http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ukraine/Kyiv/blog-338892.html I'll write up the diaries from the first part of my summer trip when I have the time. In the meantime here are some holiday snaps of Yalta the Southern Crimean port next to the Black Sea where..... Ana and I rented a room in an uncomfortable small stone cottage that belonged to a tiny Armenian woman named Anna Vakhrudinovna her two sons and their fiances. We bought an inflatable green hoo http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-308168.html The most entertaining moments in Ukraine are the ones that come around when you least expect them like a conversation I had in the chemist in my neighbourhood late one night with a man and his dog. They had been chased away from the local market earlier in the day the man explained with mischievous pride after the dog had tipped over a stall and stolen a lady's carrots.When they arrived home f http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-288390.html Some pictures that there is no room for in my next diary or which I missed when writing previous ones that would otherwise have gone to waste.Some are of a barbecue with friends one Saturday evening others are from various strolls around the centre of Kyiv after work or at weekends.As with all of my diaries click on any photo to enlarge it and then click on slideshow to see them in sequen http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-297414.html The concert by Sir Paul McCartney on Independence Square on June 14th the biggest outdoor event of Ukraine's year coincided with a spectacular storm. Rain fell out of a sky the colour of Donbass coal and saturated our hair and clothes as soon as we stepped out of the metro. The street between Evropeiska Ploshcha and Independence Square flooded in the time it took Ana and me to gratefully slurp http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/blog-288396.html