Let's try to do this in English! If it takes more than a week to write a post then I'll go back to Polish, ok? Yes, I need a lot of time to write something...
By the end of November we went to Odessa for an on-arrival training, which is obligatory for every EVS volunteer. We met there other volunteers who do their EVS in Belarus (which is the best country in the world!), Moldova and Ukraine. This training was really useful, I found out I'm not alone in my reflections on Ukrainian society. And I found out that in some cases situation in Moldova is similar. In Belarus of course not, because it's a wonderful country!
As always, we were so busy during the training, that we didn't have time to get to know the city, but our trainers provided us a guide to show us Odessa. She was very nice and showed us a lot. On the last day we decided to discover the city on our own, so together with our friends from Lviv we were wandering around. Odessa is nice, but as one of Magda's friends says, it's like Sopot. What can you do there? Spend money in restaurants? Lie on the beach all day? Party whole night long? I told you - it's like Sopot. How we say in Poland, szału nie ma. I understand why my friends from Donetsk like it so much: it's a young city, with straight streets in american style - it's like Donetsk! But there is a sea and no террикон's, so it's still something different, but similar enough to feel like home there.
We agree with Magda, that we won't miss this city.
We moved to Kyiv* on Monday night. Our train was new and we liked it for the first two hours, but later happend what had to happen - taka жарко, że aż ужас. And toilets didn't work. Проводник didn't give us any nappies, so we had to survive 8 hours without visiting a toilet. Only 8 hours - uff. We got to our hostel - the best hostel in my life. Why? Why not? ;) In fact, for owners this hostel is not a business, it's a lifestyle. So they are not strict on the conditions of agrereement: you booked a 8-bed dorm? But 4-bed dorm is free, we will give you this one. And you will be there alone. So we payed for 2 beds in 8-bed dorm, stayed in 4-bed dorm, just the two of us. And we payed on the last day, just because we reminded Вова we should finally do this.
How is Kyiv, you ask? Strange. I thought that relics of the past are characteristic for the Eastern part of Ukraine, but suddenly in the city centre we saw...
My friend Dani would be very happy...
What we've learned very quickly was that Kyiv is an underground city. Not just because of metro or a big number of переход's, but especially because of underground shopping malls. They are enormous! In fact, these 3 things are strictly related to each other: to get to metro you have to use переход first, and in переход's there are these shopping malls. Under the Майдан Незалежності (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) there is another Maidan! Similar situation is on almost every square in Kyiv.
We love Kyiv metro. It's... different. Sometimes travel on the train is shorter then travel on escalator. Especially on the stations like Khreshchatyk or Arsenalna (the deepest station in the world - 105.5 metres). And metro tokens look like this:
Stations look very nice, here you have Золотi Ворота (Zoloti Vorota)
Kyiv has a lot of churches, mainly Orthodox ones. Do you know what Ola likes most? (Apart from music, pierniki, football, cereals, volleyball, marshrutkas and grapefruit juice.) Yes, sacred architecture. My favourite cerkiew is this one, Патріарший кафедральний собор св. Володимира (Volodymyrsky Cathedral):
But our favourite building is House with Chimaeras* (Будинок з химерами) by Władysław Horodecki, who is called the Antoni Gaudí of Kiev.
Although I'm not a fan of capital cities, in Kyiv I feel very good. Maybe I would even be able to live there.
But it's good to be home.
*Kyiv is a transliteration from Ukrainian Київ, Kiev is from Russian Киев, that's why I use the first one. And if you take a look on posters or videos promoting EURO 2012, you will see they use transliteration from Ukrainian.
*Information for Beata: House with Chimaeras is a headquarters of the Day Watch of Kyiv :)
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