![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I got here safely, with no more fuss than you'd expect from getting up at 5:45 to get a taxi to get a train to get a plane to get a маршрутка to walk to the hostel. I got quite lost on the way to the hostel, but waving a map with a suitably plaintive 'скаджите мене, где Я?' was enough to find myself again.
Kiev is big - half a London, two to three Birminghams. It's sewn through with six-lane highways, though they usually have underpasses, built in majestic granite after the War and not maintained since. There's a Metro, which on a Sunday morning is as crowded as a London rush-hour; the city's quite hilly, so the elevators to the Metro go down forever. I can make myself understood in my vestigial Russian, though I'm trying to get at least 'please' (будт ласка) and 'thankyou' (денкуиу) in Ukrainian.
The very centre has what you would expect in the way of Central European monumental architecture, insensitively covered with large adverts for the kind of Western luxury goods that I wouldn't contemplate buying on a Western salary, mixed with the occasional large Soviet memorial obelisk with a big gold star on top. This is supposed to be one of the greener cities of Europe, but the green is in a thick band down the Dneipr rather than particularly visible from the centre.
Tomorrow the monastery complex and the Great Patriotic War exhibition; church-hopping on a Sunday during orthodox-Lent may not be quite ideal, but that's my plan for today. Some sort of large march with drums is proceeding down the street outside the window of this Internet-cafe, and outside the Metro they were handing out what looked like political leaflets.
Kiev is big - half a London, two to three Birminghams. It's sewn through with six-lane highways, though they usually have underpasses, built in majestic granite after the War and not maintained since. There's a Metro, which on a Sunday morning is as crowded as a London rush-hour; the city's quite hilly, so the elevators to the Metro go down forever. I can make myself understood in my vestigial Russian, though I'm trying to get at least 'please' (будт ласка) and 'thankyou' (денкуиу) in Ukrainian.
The very centre has what you would expect in the way of Central European monumental architecture, insensitively covered with large adverts for the kind of Western luxury goods that I wouldn't contemplate buying on a Western salary, mixed with the occasional large Soviet memorial obelisk with a big gold star on top. This is supposed to be one of the greener cities of Europe, but the green is in a thick band down the Dneipr rather than particularly visible from the centre.
Tomorrow the monastery complex and the Great Patriotic War exhibition; church-hopping on a Sunday during orthodox-Lent may not be quite ideal, but that's my plan for today. Some sort of large march with drums is proceeding down the street outside the window of this Internet-cafe, and outside the Metro they were handing out what looked like political leaflets.
