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Published: February 14th 2010
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The advice on the first night as we sat in a Kiev bar was “be careful”! It seemed a bit extreme based on our first couple of hours and be careful of what we wondered. The advice came from a couple of London based Ukrainians, who had ironically boarded with us at Luton ......... it might say on the map that you are in the Ukraine and we might have been independent for 20 years, but remember you are still effectively in the Soviet Union! A topical comment, given the previous day’s elections and the doubts over the validity of any result ....... one to chew over, as we made our way outside into the snow and minus 14 degrees.
The careful advice was a bit late - it was needed a few hours earlier, as I crashed to the ground on the ice outside the Central Railway Station. It had nothing to do with either the Soviet Union or alcohol - just a cunning few inches of snow disguising the sheet ice beneath. The arrivals hall at Kiev Borispol Airport was an onslaught of taxi sharks with no attempt to disguise the intention to relieve you of as much
of your drinking funds, given it is about 25 miles out of the city. We opted for the more competitive price option of Bus 322 - the locals route to the city centre at 25 hryvnia per person. The transport form was a little basic - ice formed on the inside of windows and the windscreen wipers were decidedly ineffective in clearing the ice and snow on the outside. The average Ukrainian seems completely unfazed by driving conditions that would (and recently did) bring the UK to a complete standstill and Bus 322 ploughed on into the city, arriving at it’s terminus outside the Southern Railway Station about 75 minutes later. The driver also received an unexpected bonus in the form of a Forest beanie hat, inadvertently left on a seat. The Southern Railway Station is actually attached to the Central Station, so we walked through the concourse and out the main entrance in search of our accommodation. It only took about 20 minutes to locate the hotel in Permohy Square, check in and head out into the freezing night - which would have been 5 minutes quicker, if the nosedive to the ground described earlier had been avoided.
The choice of accommodation had always been based on the ease of cheap transport to the airport, but the complete lack of drinking dens in the vicinity was a bit of a surprise. A trudge through the snow rectified that, although a tapas bar with hubble bubble pipe smokers wasn’t the envisaged hostelry. The beer ranged in price on the trip between 10 hryvnia in the suburbs to circa 20 a city centre bar to over 30 in the hotel. After our encounter later that night in our biker bar local - Route 66 Kyiv - with our advisors and a few too many Ukrainian premium lagers, we awoke with dehydrated mouths and headed for sausage frenzy at the buffet breakfast.
It had stopped snowing in the morning, but the temperature hadn’t reached tropical proportions. After an hours or so walking down Boulevard Schevchenko - not named after the former Chelsea misfit by the way - towards Independence Square, the face went numb with cold and an indoor coffee was required - plenty of locals on the other hand were observed taking a swift expresso and having a fag in the street outside work! The elections had taken place
Dynamo Kiev
Club badge at the entrance to the Dynamo Stadium on Sunday 7th and there seemed to be some speculation that the result would be challenged by the loser and that the streets might see some demonstrations. There was no sign of any Orange revolutions in Independence Square and only a few political heavies were observed outside what we presumed were the party offices. There was the odd TV crew on the street trying to gauge reaction as to what would happen next, but most people displayed total apathy to the whole politics scene.
The locals were just busy getting on with life - and most seemed to be doing very nicely thank you very much. The black 4 x4 seemed to be the vehicle of choice - handy for the snow too - and there is a big preference for high profile expensive branding on clothes. The young ladies seem very adept at walking over the ice in high heeled black boots carrying their pricey purchases with the confidence of a mountain goat!
We headed on to the Dynamo Stadium to check out what Andrei had returned to from Chelsea. Dynamo Kiev were almost on a par with BKV Elore in Hungary in terms of their hospitality
- OK so perhaps the security guards didn’t point any guns, but the prospects of access to take a couple of photos were never going to happen. At least there was a completed ground for the security to protect, which was more than could be said for the Republiansky Stadium. The Republiansky is the venue for the opening game of EURO 2012 and Mr Platini is right to have been sounding the warning bells about the building progress (or distinct lack of it).
The Dynamo ground is in the shadow of the nearby Friendship Arch - a huge concrete arch overlooking the banks of the Dnipro River - built as a sign of friendship with Russia.
After the extensive walking of the first day, we opted for the Metro on the second. We headed down to the station near the Central Rail Station, which was absolutely manic just after the rush hour - so busy, it was almost impossible to enter and get near the ticket cash offices. We gave up and walked up to the University area, where the Metro entrance was a bit more relaxed and allowed a purchase of the necessary tokens. The small blue
St Andrew's Church
.........by Rastrelli, who also designed St Petersburg's Winter Palace plastic tokens are a bargain for a single journey at 1.5 hryvnia - just be careful of the heavy entrance doors to the system, which can be as lethal as the ice outside and have a habit of swinging back in your face. The maps and signs inside the system are pretty exclusively in Cyrillic, so a small investment in preparation of your journey route is worthwhile. The system is in the city centre is deep - some stations being as much as 100 metres down, so get used to a long descent on the escalators and hope that they don’t pack in when you are exiting! We made our way to Podil, in search of the Chernobyl Museum - search was the right word, as it took ages to find based on the vague description and position on the map in the Lonely Planet. There were two other equally bemused Brits in the area, but we got there in the end. After lunch at a Ukrainian style cafeteria, where a three course meal can be had for £2.50 - we ventured via Andrew’s Descent in search of churches with gold onion towers. There are plenty to choose from -
St Andrew’s Church (designed by the same guy who did the Winter Palace in St Petersburg), St Michael's Monastery (the most impressive), St Sophia’s Cathedral and the Lavra complex (the bus tour's favourite) - to name the most high profile.
The Great Patriotic War Monument complex down south past the Lavra offered a vast array from military hardware and a couple of museums - one dedicated to the great fightback after the occupation of Kiev in 1941 - 43 and another featuring the involvement of Ukrainian / Russian troops in most conflicts from Angola to Afghanistan. The majority of commentary was in local lingo, so the pictures had to do the talking. We continued the conflict theme and spent the afternoon in the north west of the city at Babyn Yar - the scene of the Nazi execution camp in WW2. The return journey gave us a further taste of rush hour on the Metro - it’s probably best not to take the invasion of personal space too personally, stick your elbows out and do as the locals do.
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