Transformers 7.4.7

We had a weird first night in the apartment. We were still on East Coast time and Kiev is 7 hours ahead. Then at around 7 pm there was a marching band at the concert hall directly across from our apartment - which we could see from our enclosed balcony. It lasted awhile. The next day we met our new driver at 8 am. It was raining a heavy, cold rain. I hired him from a company based out of Odessa and I think he was from Odessa. His name was Igor and he didn’t speak a word of English, but was very nice. I had hired him for the two full days we would be in Kiev. We asked him to take us somewhere so we could eat breakfast and while driving around I spotted a McDonald’s and so we ate there (this time, unlike in Amsterdam, they didn’t have any breakfast items only hamburgers.) We ate and then Igor drove us to an Internet Cafe. I got my mom and sister set up (the guy there spoke fairly good English and it was less than $2 for an hour.) I left to go to my interview/meeting at a language school - the whole purpose of the trip to the Ukraine. I was dropped off at the building (a small side-street) and couldn’t get into the building because I didn’t know the code of the front door. I went through another door - that was open - and found my way through some hallways and to the office I needed. I was there about an hour and before meeting up with Igor (I had arranged beforehand for Igor to pick my mom and sister up at the Internet Cafe in an hour, drive them back to the apartment and then for him to come get me) I went to a near-by Post Office (Пошта in Ukrainian and Почта in Russian) and bought some post cards and stamps to mail to my family and friends. It was a good thing I did that because I never saw any sold on the streets.
Igor picked me up (I was soaking wet) and he drove me back to the apartment so I could dry off a little and get my sister and mom. Then Igor drove us to Kiev Monastery of the Caves (Києво-Печерська лавра in Ukrainian and Киево-Печерская лавра in Russian.) It is the residence of the head of the Ukrainian Orthrodox Church (Metropolitan Volodymyr or Vladimir.) There are two sides of the Monastery: the Upper Caves (where you have to pay to see a bunch of museums and churches - most foreigners only go here) and the Lower Caves (which is free and you can go down some underground caverns and see the most famous saints of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches.) We went to the Lower Caves and walked around for a while until I asked someone where the caves were - there were no signs. When we entered the caves (my sister and mom had their heads covered as the Orthodox religion demands) and while we waited to buy a candle (my guide book said to buy a candle for light as there was no lighting in the caves - it turns out there was lighting.) The old woman selling the candles to the people ahead of us was nice and right before we got to the counter she was replaced by as nasty old woman. I bought the candles and then she started going off in Russian about my mom and sister (I could understand her, but since she was yelling at us I cut her off and kept saying in English that I didn’t understand her. She was thrown back by that and it shut her up and we went down the caves.) I found out later that there were two different underground caves in our section and we had gone in the shorter of the caves. It was fine since the climb was steep and we had to keep stopping so the people in front of us could kiss the glass of the dead saints.
When we left the Monastery and waited for Igor (we had told him we would call him on my sister’s cell phone and even tried it before leaving his car), but when we tried to call him to pick us up it didn’t work. We waited in the rain and saw a monument to the Ukrainians who had died in the 1979-1989 Soviet War in Afghanistan - the only monument like it in all the former USSR. To get out of the rain we had coffee, tea and dessert in a nearby cafe (one of the few places we could use credit cards.) We then went back to the pick-up point and after waiting some more I finally went over to a taxi driver and asked him (in Russian) if I could pay to use his cell phone to call our driver - in hind-sight I shouldn’t have said driver, but I did. He was a little nasty, but in the end he dialled the number I got a hold of Igor and when I asked the driver how much I owed him and just brushed me off.
We had Igor then drive us to Babi Yar (Бабин яр in Ukrainian and Бабий яр in Russian.) It is the site where the Germans killed 33,700 Jewish men, women and children from September 29-30, 1941 (it is known as “the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust.”) An additional 120,000 (Jews and Communists) were killed there from October 1941 until the Red Army came in November 1943. Igor drove us to the “Monument to Soviet citizens and POWs Shot by German Fascists at Babi Yar” which was built in 1976. He then drove us further down the street where a large park was and we walked to the different monuments.There we saw the “Monument to the Children Killed at Babi Yar” (built in 2001 by the Metro Station) and ” the Menorah-Shaped Monument to the Jews Massacred at Babi Yar” (built in 1991.) I found it very disgusting that women were pushing their strollers and there were soccer goals at Babi Yar. This is a site where thousands upon thousands of innocent people were shot and here people are walking their dogs and playing. My guide book also said that in the summer it is the local “lover’s lane.” What a way to remember so many innocents murdered. I will never forget this sick Ukrainian way of remembering the dead.
We then had Igor drive us to a restaurant called: Tsarskoye Selo (Царське село in Ukrainian and Царское село in Russian.) It was designed to look like a Cossack village. We got menus and ordered in English. The majority of food was excellent (except some of the cheese and the traditional Ukrainian dessert I ordered called: Salo in Chocolate (Сало in Ukrainian and Russian.) I tried to bite into it but it was too hard. It was a good thing because it turned out to be slabs of pork underskin fat which is cured in salt. When I found that out it made me sick. I have to say that service at Ukrainian restaurants starts out fast and good and then turns bad at the very end (such was the case here.)
After our dinner we went to a very busy supermarket, got a few things and then had Igor drop us back at the apartment for the night. Of course I gave him a good tip before leaving for the night.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.