Kiev
Kiev is one of cheapest places you could visit. It's also full of undiscovered supermodels. Naturally, this paradise comes at a cost.
The ride in is a bumpy one. A couple hours out of Warsaw, we arrive at the border with Ukraine. Police come on board. There are questions. There are forms. The forms are badly designed. Unclear, at the least. The police demand every blank be filled in. I ask what one field means. "Where you stay!" the guard blasts back, thrusting the form back at me and stabbing it with his finger, his temper starting to rise. I scribble "KIEV" in the tiny blocks. I am grateful that I do not have children, this border crossing. I would be expected to give their names, birthdays, and other details in 10 characters total.
The border police stomps off with our passports. The train rolls backwards on the rails, then forwards again into a shed. Here the whole train goes up, lifted by giant screw gears to either side of the cars. The wheels are pushed in for narrower rails. The police come back on the train again. I don't know how they get on and off when we're 8 feet up in the air. I expect they never got off. This time it's a new officer. A girl. Kind of cute, but she's practiced at being severe. She has me take out each of my bags in turn, and hast me go through them, asking about the protein powder, the anti-malarial pills, the sleeping mask, and on and on and on. By the time she's gotten to the neglected box of condoms at the bottom of my toiletries her professional severity has given way to an amused grin. I think she's holding back a laugh. Then she has to hurry away to harass the next passenger. It's almost as bad as American customs..
Two more officers appear: Grumpypants the First and a new guy. They have more questions for the other guy in my cabin. They escort him away. An hour later the stewardess enters the cabin and silently strips the sheets from the bed my cabinmate was staying in.
Another hour, the train is back down to the ground and at the border station again. The police come back a third time. Officer Grumpypants hands my passport back to me. I ask what happened to my cabinmate. "Back. Back to France. ha. Ha." he responds, then walks off, happier than at our first meeting. The train starts to roll again. After long thoughts, I lay down.
Should I have stood up for my cabinmate? What do I know about him? What did the border guards believe about him? Eventually, night slips in.
A knock on my cabin door. It's 3:30AM. I slide the cabin door over and there are two small, potbellied men there. They reek of vodka and sweat. They mount the remaning bunks, and one drifts off, while the other speaks loudly to no one in particular for the rest of the night. Knowing no Ukranian, the only words I can make out are "Amerikanski Presidente" in the midst of an angry diatribe.
From the train station to the minibus to the hostel is tricky. The bus stops aren't labeled, and I miss mine. Half an hour later, I'm walking around the right city block, but can't make out which building is Perova 16-V. There doesn't seem to be a v. An hour and a half later, it sinks in that like the rest of the directions, this was translated from cyrillic phonetically and I need to be looking for Perova 16-B. Which I find. Apartment 3 is unlabled. It doesn't look like a hostel. A babushka answers the front door and eagerly waves me in.
She doesn't speak English either. Or German. No point trying Japanese.
But I'm in the right place. She makes a bed and takes my payment for the three nights, and gets Kristina, who speaks English, on the phone. I ask for a map, and Kristina tells the babushka, and she digs out an old one that has been carefully preserved from falling apart any further by the application of select pieces of tape.
So begins the time in Kiev.
The first day is immensely frustrating. I don't expect to be able to explain the idea of "vegetarian" to the normal restaurants here, and I've been warned many times that the whole idea is considered bizarre and unwholesome in Eastern Europe. There are small farmers markets on every block, but I don't see a proper grocery store and a I'm not sure the kitchen in this hostel is for my use, or even if I could make the stove work. It doesn't seem to have pilot lights, and simply turning the knobs doesn't produce the sound of gas flowing. I set out to find wifi, a restaurant that looks workable, and a book of Ukranian. By midnight I'm headed back to the hostel, having found a bag of chips and a cafe that will let me pay to use their computers. These, at least, are in good repair, and the guys behind the counter are the first who speak English I've found in all of Kiev.
I start the second day off frustrated, still looking for a veggie-friendly restaurant and a place I can get online with my own laptop to upload pictures, somewhere I can be certain that my keystrokes and passwords aren't being recorded as I log into my bank. A book on Ukranian would be nice, but as the time I have left there dwindles, the time I'm willing to invest learning the language shrinks. The joy of realizing that I can read half the signs here (once you learn to sound out cyrillic, many of them turn out to be English words or close enough) is fading.
By the end of the second day, I've found one overpriced restaurant that almost understands vegetarianism, the central street where one cafe and one bar advertise free wifi, and where I can make myself understood.
There's also this park.
There is a bridge full of locks. This shows up elsewhere in Europe. A young couple fall in love. They buy a lock, they hang it on a bridge, they toss the key over the edge. And they hope their love will last as long as the lock hangs on the bridge, steel on steel. But this bridge is packed with locks and paint pen scribbles and bits of ribbon. There is more love here than I have seen in Stockholm, or Barcelona, or elsewhere.
There are grown ups rollerblading, and young couples swing dancing to Elvis.
I never did find a vegetarian restaurant, or a book on learning Ukranian.
Turns out half the people in Kiev are speaking Russian. You can have an entire conversation where each side speaks a different language and people are used to this. They don't understand that it's not a universal principle, as daily someone comes up to me and starts a longwinded conversation where my side is to respond "I can't understand a word you're saying" every two minutes.
The train ride back to Warsaw, and from there to Berlin, was without event.
Kiev is one of cheapest places you could visit. It's also full of undiscovered supermodels. Naturally, this paradise comes at a cost.
The ride in is a bumpy one. A couple hours out of Warsaw, we arrive at the border with Ukraine. Police come on board. There are questions. There are forms. The forms are badly designed. Unclear, at the least. The police demand every blank be filled in. I ask what one field means. "Where you stay!" the guard blasts back, thrusting the form back at me and stabbing it with his finger, his temper starting to rise. I scribble "KIEV" in the tiny blocks. I am grateful that I do not have children, this border crossing. I would be expected to give their names, birthdays, and other details in 10 characters total.
The border police stomps off with our passports. The train rolls backwards on the rails, then forwards again into a shed. Here the whole train goes up, lifted by giant screw gears to either side of the cars. The wheels are pushed in for narrower rails. The police come back on the train again. I don't know how they get on and off when we're 8 feet up in the air. I expect they never got off. This time it's a new officer. A girl. Kind of cute, but she's practiced at being severe. She has me take out each of my bags in turn, and hast me go through them, asking about the protein powder, the anti-malarial pills, the sleeping mask, and on and on and on. By the time she's gotten to the neglected box of condoms at the bottom of my toiletries her professional severity has given way to an amused grin. I think she's holding back a laugh. Then she has to hurry away to harass the next passenger. It's almost as bad as American customs..
Two more officers appear: Grumpypants the First and a new guy. They have more questions for the other guy in my cabin. They escort him away. An hour later the stewardess enters the cabin and silently strips the sheets from the bed my cabinmate was staying in.
Another hour, the train is back down to the ground and at the border station again. The police come back a third time. Officer Grumpypants hands my passport back to me. I ask what happened to my cabinmate. "Back. Back to France. ha. Ha." he responds, then walks off, happier than at our first meeting. The train starts to roll again. After long thoughts, I lay down.
Should I have stood up for my cabinmate? What do I know about him? What did the border guards believe about him? Eventually, night slips in.
A knock on my cabin door. It's 3:30AM. I slide the cabin door over and there are two small, potbellied men there. They reek of vodka and sweat. They mount the remaning bunks, and one drifts off, while the other speaks loudly to no one in particular for the rest of the night. Knowing no Ukranian, the only words I can make out are "Amerikanski Presidente" in the midst of an angry diatribe.
From the train station to the minibus to the hostel is tricky. The bus stops aren't labeled, and I miss mine. Half an hour later, I'm walking around the right city block, but can't make out which building is Perova 16-V. There doesn't seem to be a v. An hour and a half later, it sinks in that like the rest of the directions, this was translated from cyrillic phonetically and I need to be looking for Perova 16-B. Which I find. Apartment 3 is unlabled. It doesn't look like a hostel. A babushka answers the front door and eagerly waves me in.
She doesn't speak English either. Or German. No point trying Japanese.
But I'm in the right place. She makes a bed and takes my payment for the three nights, and gets Kristina, who speaks English, on the phone. I ask for a map, and Kristina tells the babushka, and she digs out an old one that has been carefully preserved from falling apart any further by the application of select pieces of tape.
So begins the time in Kiev.
The first day is immensely frustrating. I don't expect to be able to explain the idea of "vegetarian" to the normal restaurants here, and I've been warned many times that the whole idea is considered bizarre and unwholesome in Eastern Europe. There are small farmers markets on every block, but I don't see a proper grocery store and a I'm not sure the kitchen in this hostel is for my use, or even if I could make the stove work. It doesn't seem to have pilot lights, and simply turning the knobs doesn't produce the sound of gas flowing. I set out to find wifi, a restaurant that looks workable, and a book of Ukranian. By midnight I'm headed back to the hostel, having found a bag of chips and a cafe that will let me pay to use their computers. These, at least, are in good repair, and the guys behind the counter are the first who speak English I've found in all of Kiev.
I start the second day off frustrated, still looking for a veggie-friendly restaurant and a place I can get online with my own laptop to upload pictures, somewhere I can be certain that my keystrokes and passwords aren't being recorded as I log into my bank. A book on Ukranian would be nice, but as the time I have left there dwindles, the time I'm willing to invest learning the language shrinks. The joy of realizing that I can read half the signs here (once you learn to sound out cyrillic, many of them turn out to be English words or close enough) is fading.
By the end of the second day, I've found one overpriced restaurant that almost understands vegetarianism, the central street where one cafe and one bar advertise free wifi, and where I can make myself understood.
There's also this park.
There is a bridge full of locks. This shows up elsewhere in Europe. A young couple fall in love. They buy a lock, they hang it on a bridge, they toss the key over the edge. And they hope their love will last as long as the lock hangs on the bridge, steel on steel. But this bridge is packed with locks and paint pen scribbles and bits of ribbon. There is more love here than I have seen in Stockholm, or Barcelona, or elsewhere.
There are grown ups rollerblading, and young couples swing dancing to Elvis.
I never did find a vegetarian restaurant, or a book on learning Ukranian.
Turns out half the people in Kiev are speaking Russian. You can have an entire conversation where each side speaks a different language and people are used to this. They don't understand that it's not a universal principle, as daily someone comes up to me and starts a longwinded conversation where my side is to respond "I can't understand a word you're saying" every two minutes.
The train ride back to Warsaw, and from there to Berlin, was without event.
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At some point (and when I can remember most of it) I'll have to tell you the story of this Swedish couple I met that tried to get to Greece overland; Macedonia was especially fun. Passports were taken and not returned. A night was spent at the police station. Not all of them made it out. Relatively speaking I think I got off easy with my own 67 hour journey to Greece.