Chukotka chic and Kievan whispers.

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Anyone arriving in Ukraine this evening with preconceptions about what being in Eastern Europe feels like would have had each of them confirmed during their drive to the centre alone. Low, dark grey clouds lashed rain onto the windscreen of my dilapidated taxi, its windscreen wipers creaked in time with the soft folk music playing on the radio, dirty blocks of flats flanked both sides of the motorway, and the only specks of colour to be found in the dismal outskirts of Kyiv came from hundreds of billboards, advertising everything from cigarettes to the upcoming elections.

My driver was good value, as they always seem to be here. He gave me a cheerful rant about the congestion during the evening rush hour and the poor state of the countries' roads, and in spite of them both he found the Prospekt where Ana was waiting for me in less than an hour. After two months in hibernation is was good to wake up my Russian.

Prospekt Radyanskoi Ukrainy 22, where Ana has moved to from Lugansk on the Russian border, is miserable. It is in a place known as the Vinohradar, which I suppose refers to the dozens of identical, soulless grey housing blocks packed tightly together, like grapes in a bunch. It is in the very north-west of the city - any further north, so I was told, is just a forest. Beyond that is a different town. We are on the seventh floor and the lift is broken. It is a building built dutifully from the Soviet template; similar to the ones myself and my friends have lived in before, similar to the ones that most of Kyiv's population of 3 million live in, and similar to the one Anna Politkovskaya was shot outside. Such apartments exist from Vladikavkaz to Vladivostok. In defence of this particular neighbourhood it feels more depressed than outright dangerous, although there are several black and white 'wanted: reward 10000 hriven' posters for criminals on the walls of our local supermarket.

My suitcase is taken at the entrance by Andrei, the teenage son of the woman from who Ana is renting a room. Nataliya Petrovna is a short lady in her thirties, who has apparently driven Ana to distraction this month by talking too much. Ironically, she won't say a word to me. The bathroom is also typically 'Russian', in as much as it is cramped, untidy and the sink is liable to fall off the wall at any minute. Besides myself, the soap and toothpaste are the only things in it which are less than thirty years old. The room that myself and Ana are sharing combines orange curtains with a pink duvet and mauve wallpaper. It will do.

Our nearest metro station is Nivki - the cute name hardly makes up for the ugliness of the area it finds itself in. Even the metro is a 20 minute journey by trolleybus, and almost as soon as I arrived myself and Ana squeezed on to get to the centre for something to eat. By now it was already getting dark. The trip felt as if I had stepped into one of my favourite photographs, which Jonas Bendikssen took while on a similar trolleybus in Moldova. Condensation runs down the dark blue windows, and the tired faces of ladies returning from work is lit by the yellow of the lights on the street outside. There are no tickets. People pay as they step on, by passing their one hryvnya fare to the person in front of them and saying "pass it on". When the money gets to the passenger at the very front of the trolleybus they then give the handful of notes and coins to the driver, and say how many people it is for. The driver then gives change to that passenger, who hands it to the next person ("pass it on...") to be transferred from hand to hand all the way to the back. All this takes place in the dark, while each of us is struggling to keep our balance. This evening I found myself at the front of the crowd, and had hryvny and kopeiki forced into my hand by several women at once, numbers whispered at me, and was met by less than impressed glances having turned with their change, for not distributing it fast enough.

We went straight back to the flat after our pancakes, to allow me to unpack and get ready for my interview the following day. We drank packets of coffee with water heated on the stove, and let each other know what little news we had from the last two months. Ana didn't know why I was planning on putting on a suit for the meeting. For a moment I pondered dressing as the businessmen on the plane had done, in a collared shirt and suit jacket above their faded jeans. I decided against it. It's a style that has been adopted here, to dress as a certain oligarch likes to at certain football matches in London. He is an example of post-1991 wealth; there are certainly many people becoming extremely well-off as a result of Ukraine's growing business connections with the rest of Europe, but as a whole the country is still very poor.

Я вернулся в мой город, знакомый до слёз....

I got up at 7 the next day, to get to the centre of town by foot, trolleybus and metro for 8.30. Ana had to work, so I was left with an entire day to wander around the town. The weather had cheered up, the sky was cloudless and clear blue, but there was a morning chill in the air to show that autumn had already begun. The leaves on the trees along each street are turning from green to orange. I started my stroll in the old part of town, where the Cathedral of St. Sophia and Mihailovskii Monastery stand within two hundred paces of one another. Their golden domes were shimmering in the sunlight, and the heels of my shoes clicked on their stone courtyards. An old town, a new camera, a free day; what could be better?

The calmness of the area in the early morning settled a few of my nerves ahead of the interviews. This part of town has survived from the eleventh century, when Kyiv led the Kievan empire. Prince Volodymyr brought Orthodox Christianity to the land, and Kievan culture developed first under him, and then his son Yaroslav. The empire grew for a couple of centuries, before squabbling between princes over land made it vulnerable. No longer the authority that it once was, Kyiv was invaded and damaged by Mongol hoardes. After that, Kyiv became subservient to the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in the middle ages, then to Russia from the 1720's until 1991. Even when not independant Ukrainian language and culture developed (despite the cruel mistreatment of the people by each foreign ruler, especially Stalin), with important figures in the middle-ages such as the scholar Petr Mohyla involved in shaping an identity for the land. To this day the country is divided; the Western oblasti (provinces) speak Ukrainian, whereas the Crimea and Donbass in the East maintain their Russian heritage. Kyiv is a bilingual city, where each person knows both languages but has a preference; 95%!o(MISSING)f signs, menus and so on are written in Ukrainian, and 95%!o(MISSING)f people speak Russian on the street. Kyiv is still known as 'the Mother of Russian towns', and 'Northern Rome'. The history of the place is fascinating, and for an outsider like myself makes the hardship of life away from the attractive centre easier to digest.

I walked down the hill to the centre of modern Kyiv, Khreshchátik. Khreshchatik a long, tree-lined avenue, with Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square, the scene of the Orange Revolution) at one end. With its fashion boutiques and outside cafés it is a small piece of Europe, between the 'Russian-ness' of the old town and the lack of identity within the outskirts. Women are impeccably dressed, and take their fashion very seriously indeed. And - although I certainly didn't come here with it in mind - they may well be the most beautiful in the world. From there I stumbled across a photography exhibition in Park im. Tarasa Shevchenka, with pictures of Kyiv through the eyes of several local photographers. They cover all of the town's moods, from the bleak to the extrovert.

Both of my interviews went extremely well, although not without incident. I walked into the girls toilets at the school mistaking it for the interview room, and I arrived on the right street for the law firm a whole hour early, only to spend the next 55 minutes looking for the right building. How naive I was, thinking number 72 on a Ukrainian street would be anywhere near number 71! I ran up the stairs and had no time to be nervous, only to wipe the sweat from my forehead with the pajama trousers in my bag which I hadn't unpacked yet. The language school has given me a job, but I am waiting to hear more from the law firm, which would be such a privilege to work at. My meeting with their Personnel Manager went well (although nerves played havoc with my Russian for most of it), and they will organise another interview next week.

Next diary: The irony of not enjoying your bath.

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Photos

Statue to St. Volodymyr, looking over the River Dnieper.
Kyiv.

View from my bedroom window.
Prospekt Ryadanskoi Ukrainy, Kyiv.

Park im. Tarasa Shevchenko.
Kyiv can be portrayed as bleak, but its young people bring it to life. Kyiv.

Statue, Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
Kyiv.

Our kitchen.
Prospekt Ryadanskoi Ukrainy, Kyiv.

My bedroom.
Kyiv.