August 26, 2001
Kyiv, Ukraine
I spend a lot of time planning my travel. I love to pore over Lonely Planet guides as if they were the bible and I a devout acolyte. I surf the internet, monitor message boards, talk to my friends, and do virtually everything in human power to prepare for my trip. Unsurprisingly, I've been planning this trip for months upon months.
Yet it seems to me that there is always a moment in your travels when you finally come to a striking and clear realization that you are actually doing the things you've been planning for so long. When I went to Australia it was when I saw the sun glinting of the cliffs outside of Sydney. This time, it took a bit longer. I enjoyed my entire little side trip to Cambridge, but felt as if in a daze the whole time. Much of that was probably mere fatigue. Also, I actually had chores to do in Cambridge. I felt as if I'd been wading through a murky mental cloud the entire time (though miraculously the sun was shining brightly).
The moment finally came in Gatwick airport. I had arrived at the airport four hours before my flight to Kyiv, which was an unfortunate necessity based upon bus schedules. I elected to take a nap in the international waiting area. I kept waking up every five minutes or so. Around 10:30 I woke up and could have sworn I heard an announcement that I was missing the final boarding call for my flight! Shit! I grabbed my bag and raced full force through Gatwick, arriving winded at my gate only to find it not even boarding yet. Nevertheless, I felt so aware, so awake. I hadn't felt that way since before I left Houston two weeks ago. This was really happening.
I landed in Kyiv to a totally different world. The people here speak very, very little English: making me about as helpless as an infant at times: only my keen wit (ha!) to get me by. I rather confusedly negotiated the customs area (after a long, very tense wait to see if British Airways had successfully transported my luggage this time) and emerged on the other side to see my great friends Lada and Paul waiting patiently for me (Paul had landed two hours ago) with a beer in hand as my welcoming gift. I gratefully quaffed the beverage during our ride to our apartment.
Drinking and smoking can be done anywhere in this country. And I do mean everywhere.
After some difficulty we located our apartment in the middle of the city center (hidden in a side alley), and set about exploring. The main street downtown was, and has been for the past three days, packed with revelers. August 24th was the tenth anniversary of Ukrainian independence and literally millions have converged on downtown Kyiv to glory in that event. There are street performers, trinkets being sold everywhere, tragically poor babushkas pegging for kopeks (a kopek is less than a fifth of a cent), and everywhere the most gorgeous women I have ever seen. I cannot possibly exaggerate this point. I don't know what it is about the genetic stock here but the women are virtually without exception, stunning. It's like strolling down Miami beach anywhere you go. And they all dress extremely well (and extremely revealingly). It has been a perennial source of amazement to me.
Though I can now transliterate (though not translate) Cyrillic pretty well now, the first few days were quite interesting. Not only could Paul and I not speak the language (Lada is Ukrainian), but we could not even pronounce words since we didn't know the alphabet. We were absolutely useless. Communication for us has been restricted entirely to waving our hands around and using fingers to indicate numbers. It has been, needless to say, challenging. But fascinating as well. I think everyone would benefit from an experience like this. One quickly comes to realize exactly how ignorant one is of virtually everything about them (though we did learn the word for beer very quickly). At the same time, rather paradoxically, you realize how very much you can accomplish without the use of language.
Having Lada around has obviously eased the situation, but Paul and I frequently travel around without her owing to her family obligations. Also she lives in an apartment several blocks away. Naturally, our phone doesn't work so communication between parties often becomes a bit challenging. In fact, it is 6pm today and we haven't seen Lada once.
Lining the main streets are some of the most intimidating buildings you can imagine. Stalin filled the area with massive, imposing stone structures carrying real majesty, but simultaneously a sort of grim feeling of danger. The buildings are tall, yes, but even more important they are blocks long. The tops are lined with carvings, but otherwise they are relatively unadorned. They simultaneously provide beauty but evoke a harsh menacing presence of oppressive power. In fact, throughout the city there are Soviet style government buildings like this. One can easily see how people could, for so long, follow such a deeply oppressive government. The buildings alone make one want to obey.
The independence day celebration was an intense experience. We missed the military parade in the morning, which apparently features thousands of marchers as well as a procession of tanks and troop carriers. From our window we managed to notice some of the fighter jets racing over the scene. We descended upon the celebration around noon to find the streets full of what we have quite seriously estimated to be nearly a million people. I have never in my life seen (or even imagined seeing) so many people in one place. Imagine Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, but imagine that Bourbon street was eight lanes wide and stretched for longer. It is breathtaking. Everywhere people were wearing bandanas and headbands celebrating independence. Naturally we quickly purchased some for less than a dollar and cheerfully wore them.
We spent most of the day on the streets, with a short diversion to nearby Svechenko park to watch some singing, dancing, etc. This wasn't really necessary as the whole area is a breathtaking extravaganza of performances of various natures. Even today, two days after the independence day, shows persist. We hopped around the streets drinking, feeling the energy of the whole scene, and marveling at all the people.
Saturday we strolled over to Andriyivsky Uziz, a long winding cobblestone path leading down to Podil, the old merchants quarters which is now the center of the arts in Kyiv. To our great surprise, only a block away from our apartment we found ourselves on a street bookended by two majestic cathedrals: St. Sophia's and St. Michael's. Though I had heard of both, I had no idea we were within a two minute walk! Both cathedrals are incredible complexes, headed by a mighty blue belltower covered in elaborate plasterwork. The actual cathedrals are done in ancient Byzantine style. The walls are completely covered in religious frescoes. Grand golden alters sit at the front of both. Five towering gold spires rise into the sky on the outside.
Here is the kicker though: St. Sophia is 1000 years old. St. Michael's has been entirely rebuilt in the past five years with a degree of accuracy virtually incomprehensible to the less history oriented Western mind. It makes for a lovely contrast to see the old fading glory of St. Sophia (now a museum) and compare to what St. Sophia must have looked like a thousand years ago merely by crossing the street to St. Michael's. Lovely.
We strolled through a few nearby parks affording fabulous vistas over the Dnipro river. Kyiv is an amazingly hilly city (owing to the military wisdom of building defensible cities on hills). Several hills dominate the city and the views from the top are lovely. In this particular place a giant statue of Uman (who brought Christianity to Ukraine) towers mightily in the foreground while behind him quaint but beautiful Podil sits. Further away still (for you can see forever) lies row upon row of featureless Soviet housing blocks and smokestacks. The contrast is striking and not just a little poignant. If the seeming prosperity and joy of the center city deceives one into forgetting the misfortune of these people (which it easily does), a view such as this helps drive reality home.
The Uziz itself is a steep cobblestone path dominated by Kyiv's biggest market. Many vendors are targeting tourists (you see identical chess sets by the dozen, along with little babushka toys, and former Soviet trinkets), but this does not diminish the excitement of the place much. There are also locals buying whole dried fish to eat with their beer (Obolon) and lots of other local life. The highlight of the market was the long winding side street full of the various works of Ukrainian artists. The true surprise for me was seeing the diversity of their work. We see Japanese style woodprints, lots of African inspired paintings (complete with African people in the painting though there are none to be seen in the city), as well as striking modernists works, paintings made of velvet (I suppose it's not a painting per se), and numerous other styles. I could have spent hours (and did spend one or two) marveling at the talent of the artists here. It was better than a museum.
We ended our day with another party. Lada had a Ukrainian friend (Andy) of hers (who speaks impeccable English) show us around the nightlife. We started at a beachfront club (on an island in the middle of the Dniper) but cover was rather excessive so we did not go in. Instead, we sat on the beach and drank for a while before moving on to one of the much more lively (sadly, not beachfront, but luckily rooftop) clubs nearby. We split a bottle of Ukrainian vodka amongst ourselves and quickly found ourselves dancing wildly with the Ukrainians on the dance floor.
We took a cab to what we thought would be home. Little did we know that Andy had different ideas. We stared perplexed as the cab sped past downtown where we lived. Eventually we stopped at the amazing train station here. We raucously and drunkenly made our way through the station, enjoying ourselves to a far greater degree than a trip to a train station (even one so beautiful) merits. Then we took a cab out to an old Soviet era neighborhood (Andy casually warned us to be careful… great advice since we barely knew our names at this point and certainly had no idea where we were) where we climbed five flights of stairs in one of the dodgiest buildings I've ever seen to go to an apparently very wild club located there.
Unfortunately, (though perhaps, in the end, fortunately for our safety and next day hangover) the club was either nor open or permanently closed. The world may never know. We started walking home, ("only two or three hours!" said Andy flippantly), but it started to rain so we hailed the next passing car (NOT a cab). This is quite standard practice in Ukraine and sort of exciting. At breakneck speeds we flew to our home and were eventually delivered very intoxicated but very much enjoying ourselves to our apartment. It was a priceless, stimulating, and memorable (amazingly!) evening. I can't wait for tonight.