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 “one of the most remarkable tram journeys in the world”, Ana and I set off with a picnic of bottled water and bars of chocolate toward the tram stop in the Podil district. We were leaving behind a hot summer day in Kyiv, the type on which its people seem at peace with the world: a tramp snoozes on a park bench in the shade of a chestnut tree; two young boys in cotton baseball caps
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