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Published: October 7th 2008
We were lucky to have met Iryna on the train, from Kiev she spent holidays with her parents in Crimea, she speaks good English and bless her she offered to show us her city. We watched a movie on my storage device then slept, the cabins are open in the train but the beds are quite comfy but could not sleep well. Glad to get off the train finally after 17 hours but Kiev is cold and gloomy. Iryna showed us where to buy train tickets at the station and she took the subway with us, we promised to contact her once we are settled in our hostel. The direction was confusing, I asked locals around and pointed to the right direction, when we got to the street we thought is where the hostel is a lady i asked pointed us to the next one(could not find a street sign at that time), got lost then decided to trace our footsteps and realized the lady we asked was an ass! She is standing right where the street address we are looking for, We probably would have slapped her if we saw her standing there again.
We are staying at Yaroslav
Hostel, went for a walk after checking in and had lunch at Uno Pizza place then went on the net but it was crappy you cant open a lot of windows, so we gave up walked around again and found a big supermarket where we shopped for our dinner.
The next day we called Iryna and she met us at a train stop in town then we walked to the Golden Gate, she has never been inside herself and it really was nothing much it but interesting to climb it. It was a gloomy day and started to spit but we headed to St. Sofia Church anyway but it was closed so we visited the St. Michael church on the other end of the square, the Foreign Office building is also there and was quite impressive. Iryna said goodbye to us as she needs to be back to work, so to kill time we walked towards the St.Andrew church, also visited the rainbow monument, Unification of Ukraine and Russia, all i remember was we were wlaking around most of the time and my feet hurts and was relieved to to go back to the hostel. The train here is
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GOLDEN GATEvery reliable the stations quite deep just like in Russia. As by now I can read a lot of Cyrillic letters, it was easy to find places. We went out again to have dinner with Iryna, she took us to the place next to where we do our groceries. There we met here friends Sergei and one other guy cant remember his name. They want to practice their English so we talked to them for awhile then we decided to have a walk, Iryna and the other guy left us and Sergei showed us around, went to the President Palace and Cabinet building, both quite impressive and huge!
The agenda for the next day is to meet up with Sergei again , I woke up earlier so i headed to town first to internet and met up with Craig and Sergei later, there were some activities going on in the center of town, looks like Olympic athletes being honored, took some photos then we headed to Kyivo-Pecherska Lavra, where we saw monasteries and mummified monks! Then off to the Mother Russia statue, it started spitting again and is very cold so after visiting the very interesting war museum we
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MONUMENT TO THE UNIFICATION OF RUSSIA AND UKRAINE headed back to the hostel and chilled. Another very long day!!
Next day we visited St. Sofia again this time it is open and we climbed the Bell Tower, I felt a bit dizzy looking down and it was cold so hurriedly went back down once I reached the top. The next day the 17th is when we left for our day trip to radioactive Chernobyl. Then left the next day for Kamyanet Podilskiy, it was rainy and a bit cold so we did not see much on our last days in Kiev apart from the Dynamo and Arsenal match at night when Craig bought scalped tickets so we can see the game, the crowds are rowdy but not violent, I liked the spirit these guys put in the match, it was a draw , but what I remember the most are the spectators enthusiasm and also the f..king chain smokers in front of us.
When we got on the train I needed to pee badly but the restrooms dont open until we are out of the city. It was a beautiful train, neat and lots of space, we were minding our own business when all of
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IRINA ON THE TRAIN a sudden a middle aged woman came to us and offered us plums then vodka and a few other things! She is part of a group of people from the tax department in Kiev and travelling to some town for a football match, they already had a few drinks and she wants to talk to the "foreigners", she is so funny, a few others in the train got involved, well those who speak English,this is the kind of experience I was looking for that I only read on the LP. Luda the old lady gave us her cell phone number in case we run into problems anywhere as she claims she knows people everywhere, she has connections. One girl noticed Craig was very quiet in the corner, and asked me if my friend is quite shy i said yes. Oh Luda started kissing me and one landed on my lips to the delight of the crowd in the train! Lots of fun, they got off a few stations before us by the time we arrived in Kamyanet it was past 11 pm.
Looked for a taxi, very cold and the taxi drivers are overcharging as usual, we found one
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CRAIG ON THE TRAIN reasonable price and off we go, at the hostel TIU we met Marcus the owner and a german guy they bought us drinks and we drank and talked till about 4am. Was in bed most of the next day then we forced ourselves to see the town, the old town is about 1/2 hour walk from the hostel, wasnt that bad aside from occasional rains, we saw the Castle and other attractions, would have been better on a sunny day.. Then we decided we have seen enough and want to leave for Lviv that night so we went to check the bus schedule and then the trains, no trains to Lviv so we ended up going back to the bus station, long walk!! Bought tickets and bought food to cook for lunch, by now we are starving.
Marcu was already up and as I cooked we chatted and he gave me informations on how he set up hostels in Ukraine, he plans to open hostels in Crimea which is good as it is very difficult to find cheap accomodations there, I took notice for in case in the future I decide to open a hostel myself. He let us
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CHERNOBYL MUSEUM use the internet for free, then he called Natasha at the Leo City Hostel in Lviv and booked us a dorm for a few days. All sorted we chilled then started walking to the bus station. The bus was not crowded at all and leaving at 8pm stopping at a few towns we still arrived around 3:30 am in lviv, an hour and a half early, so we slept in the bus at the bus station in Lviv until 7ish, the driver woke us up and we took a taxi to the hostel.
We kept ringing the bell but the guy must be sleeping well, he finally opened the doors for us and we went to bed right away. Woke up and met Yulia, the sister of the dude from this morning, they both work for Natasha in the hostel, she is quite friendly and speaks good English, she gave us a map and showed us the highlights of the city, we also met an older Canadian couple who told us the best place to shop for food. So out we went to see the sihts of the city, raining a bit so really bad for photos, after walking
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CHERNOBYL MUSEUM around and getting lost in the city we went to the food shop and got our dinner. Back at the Leo City Hostel we started cooking. This is one of the best hostels I have been to, boutique style, very clean and tidy. We met a Norwegian dude her and the German guy now i remember his name, Markus!! He gave me helpful tips for Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria and Slovakia, quite an adventurer himself. Craig and I got drunk sampling all the local brews forom this part and we played around in the internet annoying Jack on the facebook chat.
Next day is departure day for us, we checked out and walked around town again, visited the weapons museum which i thought was cool, went up the tower and also went to the toher sights to take hotos as it is a nice sunny day. We also went up a hill where there is a antenna, cant recall the name of the sight, at the top we can see the whole of Lviv. The city is quite nice but unfortunately for us quite rainy so we did not enjoy it as much. We decided to spend our last dibdobs
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CHERNOBYL MUSEUM at a bar drinking, we went to one nice lokking bar and we saw the Norwegian dude there, James I called him as I cannot pronounce his name. We were just chatting there when this big dud came and sat with us and joind in the conversation but knows no English, he had gashes and bruises behind his ears looks like he was newly beaten up! He is a big dude and very touchy feely, craig warned me not to joke around much as he was getting rough, so he was a bit of a racist, we hearsomething about the blacks, asians etc on what little we can understand from him, we reckon he despises them and probably those are the people who beat him up!! When we got tired of him we paid our bill and bid him bye and left, We tried to go to another bar but james forgot the password at this exclusive bar he went to the night before! So we headed back to the same bar luckily the dude is gone, we stayed at the back table.
Bus leaves in the evening, Yulia showed us where to buy tickets for the tram but
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CHERNOBYL MUSEUM as we waited at the bus stop the tram never came and in panic as we have only about 1/2 hour to get to the station we hopped on a minibus but we realized we dont have any more local dibdobs as we all changed them into the Polish money earlier in town. so as the bus goes we try in vain to find loose coins anything to pay for the fare, it was one of the funniest situations me and Craig have been into on this trip, I was in tears laughing as Craig scrambles for left over coins, then at the end we decided not to pay, as we were seated at the back we jumoed out quickly as soon as we reached the last stop, the bus station. Hopped on to the bus to Zakopane for Poland.
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Nelly
non-member comment
very funny
Thanks for posting. it was enjoying and quite funny to read. sorry about that ass lady who direct you in wrong direction in Kiev lol