When in Kiev

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When in Kiev… have Chicken Kiev
What a great city. It is kept very clean by old women with brooms made of sticks sweeping the streets and scrapping gum off the pavement at 6am and 6pm. It was a very walkable city with 3 of its main attractions being orthodox churches with gold domes. Jim and I went one day on the metro 3 or 4 stops away from anything touristy what so ever. It was not as clean as the city center, and the architecture was a soviet block style apartment houses. What is very interesting about this city are the stalls to sell things. They are everywhere. They pop up on city streets (both in city center and away) and under the street, which I will get to later.
The nightlife was great. Somewhat cheap, and so many of the woman on a Tuesday evening dress like they are going out to a club in Las Vegas. Just walking up and down the street during the day you can tell that all woman care a lot about fashion. The men, not so much. The streets are mostly cobble stone and the women still insist to wearing high heel stilettos. On 2 occasions I saw woman get their shoes stuck.
There is an entire culture of small stores and shops underground. If you want to cross a main street you cannot above ground. You must walk down a set of stairs and then cross underground, handicapped people are screwed and there are no elevators. I think this is a main reason why the women are so skinny here. On an average day of walking around I must have gone up and down 40 flights of stairs. Getting back to once you are underground. Some of these intersections are attached to metro stations but all of them are mini-malls, right under the street. They could vary from having American mall style mini- food courts, shoe stores, jewelry, street vender style food, everyday clothes, leather goods, flower stands, ect. All set up very formally in permanent kiosks or store fronts. Some of the intersections might have had 20 shops, others close to 75. What a great way for the city to collect some rent, have everyone safe by not crossing the street, and able to stay warm during the cold winters. It made the traffic on the main boulevards go better too because there was no pedestrian traffic.
The metro by the way cost 25 cents, there were only 3 lines but it got me where I wanted to go. It was difficult because they use a different alphabet, so I had to match symbols to what I was reading. I missed one train by about 5 seconds- Just watched it passed by and the next one was there within 90 seconds- no exaggeration. The longest I waited was 3-4 mins for a train. And these stations were WAY below ground. Kiev has the deepest underground station in the world, I think the deepest one was 120 meters. You would be on multiple escalators for a couple minutes. Once at the bottom you could not see the top.
I did not see many beggars, more than Krakow though, but many of the poor set up temporary stands selling cigarettes, stray puppies and kittens, and other small portable goods in the hallways when entering and exiting the underground areas.
I had some chicken Kiev with Jim on his last night for a nice dinner. We had some red caviar (not as nice as black I am told) and then went out with some Brits we met.
On my last day before my flight I stumbled upon 2 food markets. One was individually owned stalls. There must have been 8-12 stalls just selling caviar. Most were fish and meet. This was in the heart of the city, and I am kind of bummed I did not find this sooner. I am going to have to remember to start each city with a trip to a local market. The other market was your run of the mill grocery store. It is interesting to see how people buy their daily food in different parts of the world. Everything was MUCH cheaper here than in the street kiosks that I have been buying my things at. I got 2 desserts for breakfast and they were great and only cost $1.30 total, not each. The quality would be similar to something at Wholefoods.
Overall Kiev’s food was good which includes the cheap and plentiful street food. Though there are a lot of kiosks underground, above ground on the main streets there are ice cream, beer tents (like mini liquor stores), and street food vendors in permanent small structures. I could walk 100 yards and have passed by 5 permanent large kiosks selling only ice cream. Beer at these mini stores were only $1 to $1.50 for a 16oz Stella or other beer, almost the same price as bottled water. There is also a fermented bread drink that vendors sell which has like 1% alcohol that is slightly carbonated. You could get a cup at from a vendor for a 4 ounce cup that goes for 37 cents and a 7 ounce cup for 62 cents. It was very dough-y tasting but actually refreshing.
This ends my rein in Eastern Europe, for now. (August 12, 2011) I am taking a plane to Venice Italy for an off the schedule stop, there are only so many places in Italy I can fly to from Kiev. My tentative plan is to be in Venice for 1.5 days then off to Bologna in northern Italy and then off to Siena on either the 14th or 15th for the Palio horse race.
I left to the airport with $25 of Ukraine money in my pocket. So instead of losing most of it in exchange booths I bought a bottle of duty free Russian Standard Vodka, lunch and some chocolate. I even was able to get my change at the duty free in Euro’s so that all worked out. Overall Kiev was a great city, great people, great views, felt very safe, good mass transit, and cheap considering it was a major city. I’ll be back.

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