I'm back with a single entry from my 3-day getaway to Kiev, Ukraine. It's been a while, especially since I ended up deleting my last couple of entries from my time in Greece for various reasons, and then because I'm now "stuck" in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so travelling suddenly became a lot more expensive and time-consuming - which I can't really afford (time-wise) in my new and super cool job.
Anyway, this isn't about work. This is about travelling! And God, did I need to get away from the Nordic countries for a few days! I love them, as anyone who knows me is probably well aware of, but I'm also too used to being able to see new places every now and then, so staying in one country (or I guess five countries...) drives me kinda crazy in the end. So not having been a tourist since December, I needed a break. Thankfully, I was sent to Copenhagen on a work trip, and so I decided to make use of being on the European mainland with a wider variety of low-budget airlines, and had booked a trip to go see a friend in Kiev.
Day 1 - Arbitrary airport security and homemade borsch
I headed to the airport early Tuesday before Easter, with a quick layover in Latvia, where I'd never stepped foot before. Everything was very smooth in terms of not having any delays and I had left most of my stuff in Denmark (since I was going back for another meeting) so I only had a backpack with a few extra clothes and my camera.
When I arrived to Boryspil airport, the passport control lady let me through so quickly that I wasn't even sure if I had got a new stamp in my passport - but I had. I went out to the arrival halls in search for signs to the train or bus station but there were no such signs. Then I was about to head out to see if there were any signs there, and I swear to God, I had only stepped one single foot outside the terminal before I decided to get back inside, I think because I decided to rather ask at the information desk. But when I turned back inside, there was a woman sitting on a chair by the door who wiggled her index finger, explaining that this was the exit; I could not re-enter. I had to use the entrance - and pointed to the door just next to us. I looked where she had pointed and saw that they were doing bag- and personal security check there. I tried to protest; she had seen me come from inside the terminal building! I had stepped one foot outside. But nope, she strictly explained, in international body language, that I had to re-enter through the other door.
I couldn't be bothered to re-enter so I went outside, completely, and found signs pointing both towards the train and bus station. There was a bus that was heading into the city for 100 Ukrainian…money (nobody can pronounce their money except themselves, or so I joked, so I've already forgotten the name of their currency…). However, they didn't accept cards so I went back inside, yes, through the goddamn security, and withdrew some money.
The bus was rather old but got us into the city and central station in about an hour. Since I arrived (late) in the afternoon and I was only staying for three days, my plan was actually to make use of the time and see some of the city and maybe eat out. But I was pretty exhausted after a weekend full of meetings and social gatherings, so my friend and I just decided to meet after he was done working and head straight to his place. We got some groceries on the way so we could make borsch, traditional beetroot soup.
If you've read my previous posts, you probably know that I'm fascinated by markets, and I generally like exploring what kinds of food they sell in other countries - or in this case, how they sell it. I should perhaps remind you that, when I was in Odessa last year, my friend and I only went to a tiny local shop to get some breakfast, so I had never been to a proper supermarket in Ukraine. So I was quite amazed at what I saw; they sold flour, oats, pasta and other similar cereals in loose weight(!) Cookies and biscuits were sold in grams/kg as well. I have never seen that. I find that both amazing and funny. Funny because it's weird. Amazing because if we did that, we would save packaging (although I suppose our flour is packed in paper anyway) although they probably don't because there was like single-use plastic bags for the flour and pasta.
Then we went to his place. He lives in a very typical ex-Soviet, communist building, and I was instantly reminded of my friend's home in Moldova. The staircase, the facade, the doors…everything was so similar. We first got some snacks since dinner wouldn't be ready in a while and…Russian cookies! The super chewy ones I had in Moldova that I loved so much! The ones my friend had, had different fillings from the ones I had tried in Moldova; these had apricot jam in them, while the ones in Moldova had usually had some sort of flavour but without any filling. But these were just as delicious. And our borsch turned out very nice as well, accompanied by the mandatory smetana (Russian/Ukrainian sour cream).
My friend had left me an extra key so I could catch up on some much-needed sleep while he went to work. He had given me instructions on how I could take the tram and then the metro into the city centre, but I decided to go straight to another part of the city (which he had also recommended), to which Google maps suggested I take the bus. So I left the house after having taken a slow morning, showered and had my morning dose of tea, which was particularly needed to warm up since they had switched off the central heating. I had slept wearing double socks, cardigan and my running hoodie…
To my joy and excitement, the bus was one of those very local experiences; a mini bus that they stuff with people. You pay 7 Ukrainian to a driver who gives you change while driving, and a tiny piece of paper that serves as a ticket. The transport cards that work for the big busses, metro and trams are not accepted here, and there is no stop button; you just shout out when you approach your stop - but at least there are stops with actual signs, unlike the way it was in Rwanda…
I got off at the last stop in an area known as Podil, which is supposed to be an old, charming part of Kiev. Except the city centre itself, apparently this is the only other part of Kiev that has its own 'city centre'. The first thing I saw when stepping out of the bus was Puzata Hata; a Ukrainian fast food place but, importantly, with real food, that my friend had told me about. He recommended it for trying out Ukrainian specialties, and since I hadn't had anything in the morning except tea, I decided to start by going there.
After a lot of travelling in Eastern Europe, you start realizing that many of their countries have their own variations of something that's essentially the same thing. So in Romania and Moldova, they had their own type of Turkish-inspired dolmas. The Balkan burek has its own variation in Turkey (börek) and Albania (also börek if I remember correctly, or barek or borek…something like that anyway), which is, I'd say at least, very similar in concept to placinte in Romania and Moldova; a pie ish thing with cheese or potatoes or meat, depending on where you are. But, never having travelled to Russia where this is apparently common, I had never seen anything in Eastern Europe inspired or directly based on East-Asian cuisine; the dough felt, tasted and looked exactly the same as Chinese dumplings. They were also folded the same way. No Turkish or Middle Eastern vibe going on at all. Just entirely Chinese dumplings but with a Ukrainian filling and eaten with smetana instead of soy sauce. Very interesting, and quite tasty. I was expecting the potato one to be a bit bland, you know, carbs inside carbs, but I actually found it to be more flavourful than the ones with meat.
I spent the afternoon walking the old streets of Podil. This part of the city reminded me of the beautiful, colourful houses in Odessa. I passed several churches, all equally colourful with golden roofs. Saw a few branches of the bank I worked for in Germany and Macedonia; haven't seen them in ages, so it made me smile to think of all the people I've been lucky enough to meet through the job, and wondering whether any of them worked at the branch I was passing. I walked towards the city centre which is connected to Podil so you didn't go through any 'boring' residential areas. There were very few tourists or other languages around, but I went to see a big church, Sofia's church I think it was, which was probably the only place I heard familiar languages.
That evening, I was meeting with a friend of mine from the bank. I had told her that I'd bring my friend as well (since my original plan had been to have like a small gathering with more people from the bank but they were either out of town or busy…) so it was quite unexpected when my friend and I arrived to the place where she had asked us to meet her; it was a very fancy looking Italian restaurant where they helped guests take their coats off, and brought special chairs so that my bag didn't have to be on the floor. I think the part that surprised us even more was that she specifically stated that this was on her - my friend's meal too. So generous of her!
When the main dish arrived, the waiters also unfolded the napkin for us and placed it neatly in our laps, much like when I was in Odessa with my Moldovan friend. And the food was almost equally amazing. We, the girls, were the only ones who ordered dessert and I got this insanely good pistachio "toplo ladno" as they'd say in Macedonia, i.e. molten pistachio cake, you know, where the middle is still liquid and 'leaks' out of the cake. So good! With an arugula purée. That was definitely weird. It was sweet and tasted and had the texture like marzipan to begin with, but then the arugula/healthy flavour kicked in, and that's when it became a bit weird…
My friend and I walked to the central station after the lovely meal, where we took the metro and them tram back to his place. We got back really late and ended up talking until even later. I think I was in bed around 1.30… So needless to say, I decided to sort of sleep in the next day as well. After all, I was on holiday!
Upon my arrival, I had checked some day trips to Chernobyl. They were meant for this day. However, the were both really expensive and it seemed you needed to book at least 4-5 days in advance to get some sort of visa/permit, and with my Icelandic disability of planning ahead, I obviously missed that opportunity. So I didn't really have any super concrete plans for Thursday. I ended up taking the tram, switching to a (normal sized) bus that took us a bit out of the most central parts of Kiev. I got off just outside a big green area, and the first thing I saw was this massive statue of a woman with a sword and a shield. I think when I say massive, you imagine a big statue. But then enlarge that by maybe 5, then you might get close to the size of this. It was way bigger than any of the statues in Skopje. Bloody huge!
Underneath the massive statue was the Ukrainian museum of the Second World War. I paid a small fee and probably spent about an hour or a bit more walking through the freezing cold exhibits of the museum. Most signs were in Ukrainian; they only had like an A4 sheet in English in every room with information about what kind of 'theme' that room represented, but the individual items on show had no information in English. And since I've never been good at retaining history knowledge, I'm not sure how much I learnt despite reading those signs. But two things almost made me sick to my stomach; a sign above one of the concentration camps that read (in German obviously) 'you get what you deserve'. And a pair of gloves that the prisoners had been forced to made, that were made of human skin. Now, I read horrible stuff during my global crime studies, but the thought of his, especially when seeing the gloves, made my stomach turn.
It was nice to get back outside, both because it was sunny and because I had got really cold in the museum, while it was spring outside. I walked through the park that contained some more (smaller, but still big) statues that also connected to the World War, and there were other restricted parts of the park with tanks and warplanes and helicopters that you could pay to get a closer look at. However, I hadn't eaten any breakfast and was now getting rather starving. Maybe those pistachios at the market would have been a good idea…
I didn't really find anything. I entered another park that my friends had talked about and recommended with lots of churches but they only had small shops with bready things and pastries. I was craving something more substantial (read: protein), so I walked back and forth for quite a while in search of the best place to go. Or at least something nicely traditional. I ended up getting a long bread thing that supposedly had some filling that the lady couldn't explain in English. It wasn't all that great, and by 'luck', some man approached me and pointed and said, probably not in English, but I somehow understood that he hadn't eaten and was hungry. So I tore more than half of my bread off and very happily gave it to him. It had only cost 0,40€ anyway, so I could easily get something else, hopefully better. My next purchase wasn't much better though. They called it pizza but it was just bread with some white cheese, cabbage and maybe something else on top.
I gave up on my food hunt and decided to go check out the churches. There were so many though, and the park was quite hilly, so it was hard to navigate where to go to see it all. So I'm pretty sure I missed some bits, and I also ended up backtracking quite a bit, so eventually I also gave up on the park and started heading towards a bridge near the city centre where I was maybe going to meet up with my friend after work. I got to the river bank and a big road that wasn't very pleasant nor interesting, as there was nothing interesting around, so I decided to hop on the metro and ride one stop that got me closer to the bridge and out of the deserted area.
The station I arrived at, Arsenalna, is the deepest metro station in the world (over 100 m), and getting upstairs from the escalators took…a long time. They vibrated and didn't move completely smoothly, so after I while, I felt like I needed to actively focus on standing still so that I wouldn't lose my balance and just fall backwards.
Once upstairs, there was actually a (very small) market just outside the station. I checked out the nuts, baklava, halva, sausages, but they didn't really have any proper meal or even anything smart to go. I wanted to get baklava, but there were always some people who were getting so much, or spending so much time on decided what to get, that I couldn't really be bothered to wait for my turn. So I went back to the first tent and just got 100 grams of pistachios that I immediately started snacking on.
Then I went through some more parks; If you look at a map of Kiev, you'll probably be surprised at how green it is, even in central Kiev. I headed towards the bridge which is apparently a pedestrian-only bridge, and takes you from central Kiev to a purely recreational island on the Dnipra river. I had meant to write to my friend during the day to update him on my plans and travels, but I hadn't come across a single wifi, so in that sense, there wasn't any point in me going to the bridge because there, there would definitely not be any wifi, and we wouldn't be able to meet up. So I turned off my path, and soon realized I had somehow got back to the main street. There, I sat down on a bench where I finally found wifi, and messaged my friend.
I told him to come meet me in a nearby café that seemed to have nice Google reviews, and then we could go have dinner together. So I walked to the café where I got a cup of tea and a small but much needed chocolate cookie. They didn't have any foody stuff and I also didn't want to eat something more since we were about to have dinner. I took the table by the sofa and almost sat down on a very fluffy, grey cat that happened to be well-camouflaged against the dark colours of the sofa. He looked at me and then started walking back and forth over my lap, acting quite attention-seeking. He was cute, nice and fluffy so I petted him for a while but eventually reached for my kindle in my laptop. I had finished my cookie, though not my tea, when my friend arrived.
We discussed where to go for dinner. We could go to the nearest Puzata Hata and eat something Ukrainian, or go this other restaurant he had been the week before with a group of Swedish teachers and students, but where we'd have to wait for longer because it was an actual restaurant. This restaurant was quite 'hidden' and you needed a password to get in. This was something so intriguing that of course I had to vote for that, and let my cookie, not-even-half-eaten 'pizza' and few pistachios keep me going for a bit longer.
Behind the door, there was a dwarf who, in Ukrainian, asked my friend for the password. The password is a line from a poem by a Ukrainian author who…is associated to the restaurant in a way I can't remember. The dwarf nodded and led us through another part that looked very non-public, through some black curtains, until we arrived into…not even sure how to describe it, but basically where you wait to be seated, but we weren't in the actual restaurant part yet. They told us it was full but that we could wait in the bar if we wanted, then they'd have a table ready for us in probably about 20 minutes. My friend seemed to want to skip, but now we were here, and I was so excited by the weird door, the dwarf and the password, that I couldn't just leave now. So we decided to wait in the bar.
The bar was perhaps the part that resembled a 'normal' bar the most, but since we were actually inside the shopping mall, the big windows that reached from the floor to the ceiling just showed the shops down below the bar.
I'm pretty sure we didn't wait for 20 minutes. At least it didn't feel like that long. A woman led us, and another set of guests, back to the waiting hall, and through some doors with lit-up silvered hands as door handles that she pushed to make it turn. Honestly, this was such an exotic place that it can't even be properly explained in words… Like how do I even explain the way the door opened? It didn't open like a normal door! Anyway…
My friend ordered dumplings that were served on a long wooden 'plate', though nobody would see that thing and call it a plate. I got 'Kiev chicken', which is chicken coated in bread crumbs, with mashed potatoes and I think I got some mushy peas with it. It looked quite fancy but being Ukraine, it was of course very affordable.
They had a type of dessert dumplings that not even my friend had heard of; dumplings with halva! So he decided to try that, while I had another Kiev specialty; Kiev cake. Since the place was a bit fancy, the cake wasn't 100% traditional. For example, the sides were green from pistachio decoration, while the cake would usually be brown from frosting/cream of some kind, if I remember correctly from what my friend told me. But who cares when it was absolutely delicious. My friend's dumplings came in one of those wooden steam things that Chinese dumplings are steamed in. My friend had never seen one of those before while I was, if possible, even more fascinated by their weird Asian fusion. But unlike the Ukrainian cherry dumplings, these were like the Chinese sweet, steamed, rice cakes but with halva instead of whatever the Chinese put in them. Very nice, particularly the halva, though my dessert was definitely even better.
It had got dark by the time we had finished dinner, so crossing the bridge to an island that only contains a park wasn't very appealing anymore. But we still headed in that direction towards an arch I had seen on the map, but not reached; the Arch of Friendship. Again, if I say huge, you imagine something like Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But no, no, no, my friend. First of all, this was an actual arch. Not a building. You can't enter anything. It's just an arch, like a rainbow, but grey, and then imagine you can stack at least 2, if not 3 Arcs de Triomphe underneath this one, and probably 3-4 lengthwise. That's how massive it was. Apparently, it was built during the Soviet Union and was meant to represent the friendship between Ukraine and Russia. However, after the invasion in Crimea, somebody painted a big crack in the arch to reflect the fractured friendship. In the dark though, it looked like an actual crack rather than just paint. The Arch was in another park overlooking the Dnipra river, the bridge we had meant to cross, and the island that was pitch dark by now, and then across the next river, you could see lights from the eastern parts of Kiev, where I hadn't gone.
On the way home, we shopped for Kvass, a traditional Ukrainian wheat-based drink, but non-alcoholic. Somehow, when talking on Skype ahead of my trip, he had told me about this and that I needed to try it. So we got a bottle of that, as well as a sample of some typical Ukrainian sweets. I wanted to try some so I could decided on something to bring home and share with my colleagues. But unlike 'smart' places where you just pay a price per grams of loose weight sweets, these sweets all cost different things. So it was rather complicated to sample; you needed one bag per type of sweet - and then weigh it and put a sticker on it! So we got four pieces of two different types of chocolates that my friend said were very typical in Ukraine. I also got some Russian cookies, of course.
The sweets were brilliant, as I'm sure my colleagues can vouch for. Kvass however - not my cup of tea. I don't really like carbonated drinks and especially not beer so kvass was pretty doomed from the beginning. Apparently, and probably not so strangely, kvass is really popular in summer, then completely cooled.
My friend was expecting to finish work early since he works with Swedish clients, and nobody works in Sweden works on Good Friday, which basically meant he wouldn't have anything to do at work. I heated some leftovers of the beetroot soup we had made during my first evening for breakfast; after all, soup gets better on the second or third day so I felt like I had to try some now. I must admit that I didn't feel much of a different, but it was delicious nevertheless. I got all my things and then went to a nearby Roshen; their most popular confectionery/chocolate producer. The chocolate I had tried the night before was really good, so I had decided to get that for my colleagues. I had saved the paper wraps in case I needed to ask for it.
This Roshen was a small branch compared to some of the branches I had seen in town. I immediately found one of the chocolates and counted 20 pieces, which was a rough estimation of the people on my floor and maybe some additional ones for me and/or other friends and family. It was clearly the most popular type, because everyone else who was in the store got at least that type, and perhaps one or two other types. There were lots of other sweets that I wanted to try, but again, the different prices made sampling very difficult so I ended up with only one other type of white chocolate egg kind of thing. However, I couldn't find the other type of chocolate I had tried the night before. So I got the wrapper out of my bag and asked if they had it. The shop assistant shook her head, so I just paid for what I had so far.
Just next to Roshen, I saw a nut shop. Being on my last day but not yet having bought the nuts I wanted, I decided to in. First I just looked at all the delicious nuts and quinoa and dates etc. Then across the nut section, there was a (layered) cake sektion with really beautiful, delicious-looking cakes. An old woman was also checking out the cakes and started talking to me. Without knowing if the words are even similar, I reacted by saying 'I don't understand' in Serbian. She didn't seem to mind and kept talking and pointing at the cakes. I think she was talking about how pretty they were and I also understood when she started counting the slices on one of the cakes, but except for that, I didn't really understand much. But she was old and cute and kept smiling at me even though she knew I didn't understand any of it.
After having got some nuts (and baklava!), I took the tram to meet up with my friend for lunch. However, I was a bit early, so I decided to take the tram an extra stop and walk through some parks I had seen on the map, towards my friend's workplace. The 'parks' turned out to be part of campus, as evident from the university buildings. I walked through the long campus area for about 15 minutes, at one point sitting down to rearrange the baklava I had got; I had got two types but asked for only one plastic container. Both because I didn't have space for two, but also because I didn't want to waste the plastic, but just like the sweets, he 'couldn't' put them in the same container because he had to weigh it and the price wasn't the same…
Since this was my last day, my friend suggested we go to Puzata Hata where I could try the last couple of things I still hadn't tried; the cherry dumplings and sweet cheese, either in dumplings or pancake. It happened to be on the other side of campus, so we walked back where I had just passed through.
I got some dumplings, both savoury and the cherry ones to share with my friend, and then we got a typical spinach pancake. It looked more like a green tortilla than pancake, and had spinach filling, and I think a bit of cheese too, because it was so good, and I don't really like the taste of plain spinach. The cherry dumplings were also just like Chinese dumplings with that slightly shiny texture, but with cherries inside - and eaten with smetana. I can definitely recommend it. It was really good. But we still hadn't tried the dumplings or pancakes with the weird sweet cheese. So that went on our unwritten to-do list.
Puzata Hata was actually located inside a shopping mall, where they had another nut 'shop' where they had saffron that I wanted to buy because it's most definitely cheaper than at home. I don't really use it for cooking, mostly Swedish baking, where you buy a tiny package that's just enough for one batch. Now maybe I can start using it for cooking, or just make plenty of batches when Christmas comes around. We also went down to the basement where they had a supermarket, where we could buy the chocolate I hadn't found in Roshen. Turned out the other type of chocolate wasn't actually from Roshen, so it wasn't strange that they didn't have it. The also had a fresh deli section where they had sweet cheese pancakes so I could buy one to bring with me on the plane. I'll say already at this point that as a dessert, I'd much prefer the cherry dumplings. They weren't bad, just bland…
Now that I was finally done shopping and trying everything I wanted, chocolate and cookies for my colleagues, sweet cheese, cherry and savoury varenyky, we took the metro downtown. My friend had, as suspected, not had anything to do at work, so he was free to go after lunch. Even though it was a normal working day (Orthodox Easter is a week later than Protestant Easter this year) and only around 2 PM, the metro was absolutely crowded. Even more crowded than it had been when we had gone home around 10 PM the two previous evenings, and it had been real full those times too. We were a bit confused by all the rush; where were they going? There was going to be a presidential candidate debate ahead of the final round of presidential elections on the Sunday (two days later) at a football stadium but that wasn't until in the evening so it was all rather mysterious.
We got off at the main station that was also full of people. Once we got out onto the main street, we saw people wrapped in Ukrainian flags so I thought that perhaps there was a football match or something. We also noticed that the main street had been closed for cars, something they otherwise only do at weekends, so people were literally everywhere. Then we heard someone speak through a microphone, and it started becoming clear that this all had to do with the presidential elections.
'I think that might be the president…' my friend said, as we headed towards the bridge we had meant to see the evening before through the masses of people.
We approached the Square of Independence, where they had set up a big stage that had not been there when we had left the restaurant the night before, and correctly enough, the president was on stage giving a speech about what-do-I-know. We got pretty close as it wasn't that crowded (only compared to being Friday early afternoon but not compared to a political rally) and there was hardly any security around, which I found interesting for a country who is, after all, in war. After he had finished speaking, they started playing the national anthem in the speakers and he and everyone else who was on stage put their hand on their chests and started singing. We watched. I filmed. When the song was over, we continued walking. First a bit closer to the stage but then towards the bridge. We saw reporters interviewing people, more people wearing flags around their shoulders. They started playing some other song in the speakers, a very rocky or even rappy song, but the funny thing was that even to this song, the president was singing, or at least miming along. He definitely knew the lyrics to this song but my friend didn't really know the song. Said it could possibly be old lyrics in a new version.
We headed downhill towards the bridge but quickly discovered that the path we had meant to take was close because they were building another bridge between two hills just above us. There was another path to the bridge but it'd be a huge detour and we just didn't quite feel like going so far downhill and then back uphill. So we decided to continue walking, towards Podil, instead. We walked to some square just by the river where some guys were doing tricks on their skateboards, from where you could see a small church with golden roof in the water. It looked very dramatic since the sky was turning grey over this other bridge up ahead and a few drops of rain had started falling. Further away it seemed to rain a lot.
When we finished, it was perfect timing to start heading towards the airport. Our original plan had been to take a taxi because it was so cheap anyway (I was flying from another airport than the one I had arrived to), but because of the main street being closed, we figured it'd be faster to take the metro just to get out of the city centre at least, before we'd jump into a cab. While we were on the metro, you know the line above the door that shows you the name of the stops, we saw that we could get off in two different places where there'd be a bus that went straight to the airport. So we ended up doing that instead. The right bus didn't show up immediately, and we later figured it also had to do with the traffic jams downtown, so first we took this other bus that at least got us closer to the airport, and then once we got off that one, the right bus eventually arrived, getting us to the airport just about an hour before departure, which was more than enough for such a tiny airport. I still had some cash left but found some of my favourite tea in the duty-free shop that was cheaper than back home, so, though I'm not a big fan of spending just for the sake it, this felt worth it.
Overall impression? It's always nice with a few days' holiday. Even better when you have good company. The city was interesting and surely, I could have spent more time there if I wanted to visit all the museums and other parks or something, but I was quite satisfied with my three days. I'd rather go explore Lviv next time or spend some more time back in Odessa. The only reason (I think) that I'd go back to Kiev would be to actually visit Chernobyl. Can I recommend it? If you're like me, who likes going off the beaten path, and feel comfortable travelling to weird holiday destinations where people probably don't speak English, then yes. If not, then Kiev is probably not for you.
That was all for now.
Hope to be back in the not so distant future!