Kiev - Euro 2012
Well, football fans, you’re in for a treat next month with the Euros being held in Poland and Ukraine. Poland I’ve written about before, since I live there – it’s a great place, and increasingly Westernized so you’ll feel right at home. The beer is good too. And the food.
But Ukraine? I had no opinion as I’d never been there. So a couple of weeks ago, as we had two public holidays here and my company owed me some time off after weekends travelling to and from Orlando over Easter, we decided to take a trip there for a week. We had the advantage of Ania’s brothers being there, for business reasons, for some months, which meant no hotel bills and decent guides.
So off we went.
* * *
From Warsaw, it’s a fair old trek to Kiev, over 800km. The train does it, with a couple of changes, in about 12 hours. Flying time is only an hour and a half but the ticket costs were ridiculously high. So we drove. The first couple of hundred kilometers through Poland were ok, through Lublin, past the Majdanek concentration camp (I wrote about that previously on here) and on to the border crossing at Dorohusk. I drove that quite happily, and the road has been improved since my last visit to Lublin the best part of 10 years ago. Between Lublin and Chelm there is an extensive stretch of road construction still going on, probably part of the program of infrastructure improvements being undertaken in preparation the Euros, and it will no doubt improve the journey still more. Will it be ready next month? No. Absolutely not.
The border crossing started well enough. On the Polish side, they took our passports, checked there was no obvious contraband in the car and waved us through. Terrific. We drove half a kilometre to the Ukrainian customs post. They took our passports and checked the car, again cursorily, and we made ready to head off to Kiev. An hour and a half later we were still waiting. The problem was with my passport – presumably recent stamps from such outlandish places as Abu Dhabi and Orlando confused them. In any case, they took the thing away and carried out (unspecified) additional checks that presumably meant they had to contact someone in Kiev or somewhere, check a database or two to make sure I’m not a spy, then scratch their arses a bit more before stamping it and waving us through. It was all very frustrating – keeping two little kids occupied and amused while sitting outside a customs booth is not easy at the best of times.
Anyway, we were in, and Ania took over the wheel for the remaining 600-odd kilometres. The road was good, motorway standard, we had a Google Map of the route, and Ania had already spoken to her brother on the Polish part of the drive and got a better route from him, so we were well set. Ten kilometres on and enjoying the scenery, we were waved down by the local constabulary. Every 50km or so along the roads there are little buildings, like two storey sheds of corrugated iron or clapboard. These are manned by the boys in blue, who watch for unsuspecting motorists whose number plates are not Ukrainian and flag them down. Our Polish plates were a dead giveaway, and sure enough P.C. Plod flagged us down. We had been warned this might happen and told to make sure we had about 500hryvnia (the local money) just in case – problem was the ATM at the border wasn’t working so we had none. We managed to muster EUR5 and USD5 plus about PLN100, and Ania (who speaks some Russian, in common with all Poles) went off to discuss things with the fat, smug looking officer. It seems we were doing about 3km over the speed limit, but more to the point didn’t have an insurance Green Card. The fact that we didn’t even know we were expected to have one was of no consequence. There was some discussion to and fro, apparently, and he relieved Ania of our zloty, advising us that there was a place at the next garage, a couple of hundred metres up the road and on the other carriageway, where we could buy a Green Card. So off we went, made our way back to this garage and bought to document we needed for another hundred zloty or so (fortunately they accepted Visa). It had been an interesting introduction to Ukraine and its endemic corruption: the money went straight into P.C. Plod’s back pocket in return for his not issuing an “official” ticket that would have cost us a lot more to settle.
From there, the drive up to Kiev was ok – but long. We stopped a couple of times on the way, once in a small village where we spotted a cash machine (I had to climb a set of very rickety home-made wooden steps to get at it but it worked ok and we got some cash) and once in a forest for a comfort break. The road was quite empty of traffic and of a surprisingly good standard – better than Polish roads in fact – so we made good time across the huge and seemingly unending Ukrainian plain. The place has some of the best agricultural land in the entire continent, which makes the famine and widespread poverty dating back to Stalin’s time all the more criminal. With good management there is no need for there ever to be grain shortages there. But of course resource management was never one of Stalin’s or Communism’s strengths, was it, despite what the propaganda would have us believe. It’s beautiful country, wide open spaces and forest and rolling meadows, a rural paradise, but very poor still. We saw many horse driven wagons rumbling along the roads, including bizarrely on the motorway when we rejoined it (and at one point, hacking along at 170kph were terrified when we saw ahead of us a couple of people lurching drunkenly across a pedestrian crossing pushing bikes – you would never see anything like on any motorway anywhere else in Europe, I’m sure: certainly not on the M25….). Another time, as we came round a corner into a typically poor Ukrainian village of bungalows and bars with the ubiquitous gold domed Orthodox church (but no obvious store, school or surgery) we had to brake hard and weave our way slowly through a herd of cows being shepherded back for milking by a couple of women on bikes.
* * *
We arrived in Kiev around midnight, after nearly 12 hours travelling, and Ania’s brother met us on the outskirts of the city. He led us another 20 or so kilometres across the river Dniepr to the far side of Kiev, where the apartment is. Our first glimpse of the city therefore was of a brightly lit modern city not dissimilar to Warsaw or Frankfurt or even London – plenty of high-end shops and night clubs, many very good quality cars (Bentleys, BMWs, Infiniti, Jaguar, Range Rovers….) and an equal number of jalopies like Ladas and even old Russian Zil limos, plus equally scrappy trams and buses, and once we had crossed the broad expanse of the river (that here makes the Thames look like a stream; it must be over a kilometre across with islands midstream and marinas and docks along both banks) clusters of apartment blocks and huge sprawling railway yards and factories that reminded me of Almaty and Warsaw and other Eastern European cities. The apartment, when we arrived, was in such a block and very reminiscent of one I used in Almaty a few years back, except that the block itself, while not of a particularly high standard, at least had functioning lifts that didn’t smell of stale cabbage, tobacco and piss, and had 24-hour security at the entrance and car park. The flat was fine, very comfortable and spacious and on the 6th floor.
Furniture shopping - Kiev style
The next day, we all piled in Radek’s car for a tour. Kiev is a big city – at least as big as London, and sprawled out on both sides of the Dniepr. The roads, given the good quality of highway up from the border, were surprisingly poor, full of potholes and badly maintained, lacking white lines (at least clear ones) so making driving challenging at best, but with plenty of traffic lights that were often ignored. We crossed the river by one massive bridge and at the far side hit a big maintenance operation, with rollers and tarmac spreading machines and workmen everywhere – but no effective traffic control. There was a guy waving a small red flag that was tangled around the stick and everyone ignored it anyway, but no barriers or temporary lights as you would find anywhere else. The traffic flow, including us, basically weaved around the various bits of machinery as they continued to work, and cut each other up as cars made for road entrances that were haphazard to say the least and lacked any intelligible signs – and those that were visible were of course in Cyrillic script and meaningless (to me at any rate). It reminded me very much of Beirut.
But Radek happily carved his way through and we were soon at one of the main shopping areas, close to a big square and parkland. The street was pedestrianized, and we parked in a side road (half on the footpath) and strolled along the broad avenue. It was the day before the big May Day celebration (still big in Eastern Europe, and a public holiday) so there were plenty of entertainments along the street. There were many people singing and playing guitars, individually and in groups, balloon and toy sellers, a guy renting those Segway two-wheeler vehicles you see at a lot airports these days, jugglers – the lot. At the top of a flight of steps on the other side of the street were many ice-cream and burger bars and a lovely old carousel that Ally fell in love with. It was hot and sunny – the weather was great all week, up in the high 20s Celsius – and we enjoyed the walk and the ice creams (though not as good as the ones you get at the seaside in Poland).
With some new friends
We went to a park along the end of that street, on the side of a hill overlooking the Dniepr – the views up and down stream and across to the other bank were spectacular. There were the usual Stalinist monuments to the Glorious Soviet Workers, straddled by a big arch that after dark was floodlit in many colours like a rainbow, several burgers stalls – and a small funfair (well, one highly dangerous looking ride – a kind of rotating pirate ship - , a kid’s trampoline, bumper cars and a guy renting out pedal cars for kids to ride in circles around the trampoline. Our kids had a go on them and did very well, and got a good long ride for the money. But I couldn’t help wondering how Uncle Joe would react if he were resurrected and found all this materialist entertainment at the Worker’s Monument….probably kick off another pogrom, I suppose.
Monument or fair...what would Uncle Joe think?
We went back the following evening, as it was getting dark, and it was super. There was a carnival atmosphere still, and we spent a good couple of hours wandering around eating McFlurry’s from the inevitable McDonald’s outlet, riding the carousel and enjoying the street entertainment. At the end of the street there is a big square that will be one of the viewing areas for Euro 2012 – the big screens were being assembled and there was some kind of bar or UEFA exhibition centre under construction, designed to look like half a football. I would guess there will be a great atmosphere there. Then sharp at 10, alarms went off, and a couple of police cars cruised from one end of the street to other and back again – and the street was no longer pedestrianized but open to traffic. Efficiently done.
* * *
Close by was another park overlooking the river. At the top is the Museum to the Great Patriotic War (that’s World War 2 to you and me). Surrounding the building is a good array of tanks and armoured vehicles, field guns, jeeps, helicopters and in one separate section some aircraft and Soviet era missiles. The aircraft ranged from WW2 fighters, through Korean War MiG fighters, 1970s and 1980s Sukhoi supersonic fighters (one of them, for a fee, you could sit in) and, a bit incongruously I thought, a US manufactured Dakota freight plane. We had a stroll around and paid the extra for Kuba to sit in a MiG 21 fighter – got some decent photos – but I have to say the exhibits were not in the best condition. Probably standing outside in all weathers (and Ukrainian winters are vicious) doesn’t help them much.
Once they used to be scary....
The museum itself forms the plinth for a massive statue to the Mother of the Nation. It’s a huge statue, not unlike the Statue of Liberty, but carrying a bloody great sword and shield rather than the torch of peace, and instead of white marble it’s made of stainless steel and towers 62m above the Museum roof (overall the height goes to over 100m – 330 odd feet). It’s an impressive monument, especially when floodlit at night. You can see it for miles.
Statue or Museum? You decide....
The Museum itself is circular and on three floors so you kind of spiral your way up from the lowest to highest, and of its kind is pretty good. It’s well laid out and has some great exhibits, but at the end you’re left with the impression that the only combatants between 1939 and 1945 were the USSR and Nazi Germany – no-one else gets a look in. Now I know there were more Russian casualties than any other nation during the war, and that their switching sides after Hitler ordered the Barbarossa attack in 1941 essentially ensured that the Nazis would lose in the end but still….it’s an incredibly inaccurate and slanted view of history that Uncle Joe would be proud of. Whatever else it may have done, the USSR did not save the world. I wonder if Ukrainian educationalists are doing anything to change that, and owning up to some of the more blatant untruths and inaccuracies…… Do they admit the famines that decimated the local population in the 20s and 30s were Stalin’s fault? Do they admit that behind every patriotic regiment advancing fearlessly on the Nazi lines there marched a regiment of NKVD killers who were to shoot dead any soldier retreating?
Probably not.
* * *
There are still, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that precipitated the demise of Communism, many monuments to the Old Guard scattered around the city. My favourite was one to Lenin, in typical pose, head thrust forward in mid oration, that stands perhaps twenty feet tall and is in a little park area at one end of the main shopping drag. The thing I liked about it was not the statue itself (that is no better or worse than any other of its kind) but that on the little paved area at the foot of the plinth there is a small tent topped by the old Red Flag, and in the tent were a group of guys in military fatigues who were keeping watch on everyone who paused there for photo opportunities or whatever. Whether they are genuinely members of the Ukrainian army or merely a bunch of unreconstructed Communist sympathizers who are enjoying playing soldier I have no idea, and the banners and placards draped over the tent, as they were of course in Russian, were meaningless to me. They left us alone while we took our pictures, as did the police on duty (the adjoining road junction is quite busy at all times) – even when we pulled off the road and parked on the footpath next to the monument and, later, reversed back into the traffic flow.
Some Russian bloke.....with a LOT to answer for!
* * *
Another trip into town gave us the opportunity to ride a funicular railway up the side of the hill from the main road alongside the Dniepr to the top of the hill and visit the beautiful Cathedral and Monastery of St. Michael. The building is exquisite, painted a pastel blue with white pillars and stunning gold domed roofs. Inside, every flat space on the walls, the floor and the ceilings is covered with beautiful frescoes. There are a number of places to light prayer candles (that can be purchased from a small shop just inside the main door), but no seating – everyone stands. When we visited, a monk or priest was leading a small ceremony of some kind: there was no congregation, but he was chanting his prayers in a deep and sonorous voice, with responses coming from the choir of monks in a balcony facing him. Although I understood not a word, it was very moving somehow, and beautiful. Like most such places, no photography is allowed inside, which was a shame – I would love to have been able to shoot off a bunch of pictures because this paragraph just doesn’t do the building justice.
St. Michael's Cathedral
Before visiting the Cathedral, we spent an hour two strolling in the Botanical Gardens in the sunshine. They’re pleasant without being spectacular, but at the bottom of the hill there is a rather tatty looking building that is home to a collection of tropical butterflies and other exhibits likes snakes, chameleon, tortoises, lizards and parrots, all in cases and cages – except the butterflies that are restricted to a central atrium and fly to and fro above your head. There were also several display cases with dead and pinned collections of insects and spiders that were impressive or scary depending on your point of view. I don’t like spiders at the best of times, and some of the exhibits – in particular one bloody great hairy tarantula as big as my spread hand (that’s a good 9 or 10 inches across) - made me shudder, as did a pinned grey cockroach about 6inches long with even longer spread feelers. Disgusting things……but the kids, predictably, loved ‘em.
* * *
One evening we went swimming. There are many lakes and pools scattered throughout the city that provide popular outdoor swimming and sunbathing areas: most of them are man-made, like flooded quarries or refuse pits with a few tons of sand dumped around to make a beach. The weather all week was hot and sunny, so we saw that a lot of people were making use of them, even in midweek and the first week of May, despite them being generally alongside busy roads to and from the city centre and surrounded by apartment blocks. Apparently topless bathing is de rigeur in summer…..
However, we went to a pool complex. It was an hour’s drive, into the city, then across a bridge onto one of the biggest islands in the river, and along its length through the most affluent area we saw all week. The pool was on the top floor of a massive and modern shopping mall, and was without a doubt the best I’ve ever been to, anywhere in the world. Once you’ve negotiated the communal changing room (all the lockers together in one big open space, with small cubicles dotted around to change in – no concept of separate Male and Female rooms here) you go through a shower area into the recreation space – and it’s huge. There were four or five pools, including a water polo area, two kids pools that had a wide range of slides and stuff to play on (a bit like a Total Wipeout course), one that had a wave machine, and a selection of slides and flumes into their own individual splash pools. There was also one ride where you sit in an inflated tyre and get washed around a little course under bridges and through little white-water rapids areas – great fun and very relaxing that one. Some of the flumes are pitch black inside, so you barrel down in darkness, lit on a couple of bends with strips of multi coloured light that you pass in an instant, mildly surprised to find that your tyre is on the wall not the floor……Kuba loved that one.
Every pool is surrounded by sun loungers to relax on while you watch the kids play, and there are pool and table tennis tables, dart boards and fussball tables everywhere, plus a couple of snack bars and a real bar. As there is no limit to admission times, once you’re in you can spend hours there trying all the stuff in your own good time. We spent a couple of hours there, and had an absolute blast.
* * *
The next day we headed home.
Once we had cleared Kiev (that took the best part of an hour, including a ten minute Drive-Through McDonalds stop) we made excellent time. We followed the same route as before, and again the traffic, once we had cleared the fifty kilometres or so of road works just outside Kiev, was light so Ania was able to put her foot down – which she loves. The 600-odd kilometres to the border took a little under six hours – very good, with only one comfort stop by the side of the road and one pit stop to fill up with cheap Ukrainian petrol. We left the apartment around 1:30 and were at Dorohusk before it was fully dark. The Ukrainian guys this time accepted my passport without question, and waved us through.
Then the fun started. There is a significant amount of smuggling between the two countries, the vast majority of it being in a westerly direction, so the Polish border controls are much stricter than those in Ukraine. Part of it is due to the price differentials – many Poles living close to the border happily cross into Ukraine to buy certain goods – notably cigarettes and booze – because in Ukraine it’s massively cheaper. The temptation to exceed the legal allowance as obviously there, and many people I’m sure do just that, so the customs guys do their best to catch them. There are also high levels of organized crime in Ukraine, so narcotics smuggling into the EU from Ukraine and beyond funnels through the Polish frontier – more reasons to be vigilant. People smuggling is not unheard of.
The upshot of all this is that, once we had cleared Ukraine, we joined an ever-lengthening queue of vehicles filtering through the half-dozen or so open Polish customs booths. There were cars, Transit vans, HGV trucks, coaches – you name it, all in lines with their engines switched off waiting to be called forward. Most of them carried Ukrainian and Polish number plates, but there were German and Dutch too, and the Toyota in front of us was from Estonia (clearly taking the scenic route). Now and again, a line would move forward a car or two’s length before stopping again, and at times tempers were a bit frayed. Some people, exclusively Ukrainian, were desperately reversing out and trying to jump from line to line to speed up the process and get into the EU quicker – that little stunt went down like a pork chop in a synagogue with other driver patiently awaiting their turn.
If the crossing from Poland to Ukraine the previous week had been bad at an hour and half, the homeward one was tortuous. We inched forward, and finally got to the booth – it took three hours. The officer was apologetic when he saw two tired kids (who were wonderfully patient and well behaved throughout) sitting in the car, and told us we should have asked earlier to be expressed through, it wouldn’t have been a problem…. Great, now he tells us, I thought. Anyway, the guys did a fairly cursory search of the car (we opened the bonnet and boot, all the doors and he shone a torch underneath) and told us to get the passports stamped. Ania joined a small queue, and we were soon on our way again. The total crossing time came out at just under three and a half hours. I’m glad I fly everywhere usually….
From there, we had another couple of hundred kilometres (and one fuel stop at Lublin) to go. Ania drove again, insisting she wasn’t tired, and we made pretty good time still. The traffic, after clearing the roadworks at Lublin, was pretty light again and we were home indoors in Warsaw by 1:00. Despite the interminable border crossing, we had made door to door in a little under 12 hours – over 800km that Google Maps reckoned would take around 11 ½ hours.
My wife is brilliant.
* * *
So. Final thoughts.
Apart from it being a great trip, and so good to see the brothers after many weeks, Ukraine is a country that from its sheer size offers massive potential. We saw relatively little of it, but it’s beautiful and I’d like to see more – the coastal resorts on the Black Sea on the Crimean Peninsula are lovely, I’m told. Kiev is an interesting city, huge and sprawling and diverse, with plenty to offer the tourist. By western standards it’s cheap, but because of the country’s recent past it’s still very poor (unless of course you’re a successful businessman or, like many, merely corrupt). The contrasts in Kiev were at times stark – on one of our trips into the city, in Radek’s Infiniti four-wheel drive (a luxury car, very popular in Kiev) driving from one of the more affluent neighbourhoods, we passed a big and sprawling rubbish tip. Whole families were there – parents, kids, even grandparents – scavenging amongst the crap, trying to find something that could be salvaged to sell and make a few hryvnia to live on. Street beggars were common – although to be fair you see them everywhere these days.
So for anyone heading East for the Euros next month – I’m sure you’ll have a blast. Ukrainian beer is good, the food ok, there are plenty of restaurants and clubs to spend your evenings, at least in Kiev. Just make sure you base yourselves in Kiev or for that matter Donetsk, the other city where England is playing – remember, that place is another 500 or so kilometers further east. What the trains are like, or the roads, east of Kiev I have no idea – I’m told the roads are ok (and based on those between Poland and Kiev I can believe that) but the railways less so. If anyone is thinking of basing themselves in Krakow with the England team, and travelling by road to the matches – forget it. The roadworks in both countries will slow you down, and I dread to think what the border crossing will be like when the traffic volumes inevitably increase during the tournament. I only hope the FA have had the common sense to charter a plane to fly from Krakow to Ukraine and back for each game – they’ll never make it by road.
But Ukraine? I had no opinion as I’d never been there. So a couple of weeks ago, as we had two public holidays here and my company owed me some time off after weekends travelling to and from Orlando over Easter, we decided to take a trip there for a week. We had the advantage of Ania’s brothers being there, for business reasons, for some months, which meant no hotel bills and decent guides.
So off we went.
* * *
From Warsaw, it’s a fair old trek to Kiev, over 800km. The train does it, with a couple of changes, in about 12 hours. Flying time is only an hour and a half but the ticket costs were ridiculously high. So we drove. The first couple of hundred kilometers through Poland were ok, through Lublin, past the Majdanek concentration camp (I wrote about that previously on here) and on to the border crossing at Dorohusk. I drove that quite happily, and the road has been improved since my last visit to Lublin the best part of 10 years ago. Between Lublin and Chelm there is an extensive stretch of road construction still going on, probably part of the program of infrastructure improvements being undertaken in preparation the Euros, and it will no doubt improve the journey still more. Will it be ready next month? No. Absolutely not.
The border crossing started well enough. On the Polish side, they took our passports, checked there was no obvious contraband in the car and waved us through. Terrific. We drove half a kilometre to the Ukrainian customs post. They took our passports and checked the car, again cursorily, and we made ready to head off to Kiev. An hour and a half later we were still waiting. The problem was with my passport – presumably recent stamps from such outlandish places as Abu Dhabi and Orlando confused them. In any case, they took the thing away and carried out (unspecified) additional checks that presumably meant they had to contact someone in Kiev or somewhere, check a database or two to make sure I’m not a spy, then scratch their arses a bit more before stamping it and waving us through. It was all very frustrating – keeping two little kids occupied and amused while sitting outside a customs booth is not easy at the best of times.
Anyway, we were in, and Ania took over the wheel for the remaining 600-odd kilometres. The road was good, motorway standard, we had a Google Map of the route, and Ania had already spoken to her brother on the Polish part of the drive and got a better route from him, so we were well set. Ten kilometres on and enjoying the scenery, we were waved down by the local constabulary. Every 50km or so along the roads there are little buildings, like two storey sheds of corrugated iron or clapboard. These are manned by the boys in blue, who watch for unsuspecting motorists whose number plates are not Ukrainian and flag them down. Our Polish plates were a dead giveaway, and sure enough P.C. Plod flagged us down. We had been warned this might happen and told to make sure we had about 500hryvnia (the local money) just in case – problem was the ATM at the border wasn’t working so we had none. We managed to muster EUR5 and USD5 plus about PLN100, and Ania (who speaks some Russian, in common with all Poles) went off to discuss things with the fat, smug looking officer. It seems we were doing about 3km over the speed limit, but more to the point didn’t have an insurance Green Card. The fact that we didn’t even know we were expected to have one was of no consequence. There was some discussion to and fro, apparently, and he relieved Ania of our zloty, advising us that there was a place at the next garage, a couple of hundred metres up the road and on the other carriageway, where we could buy a Green Card. So off we went, made our way back to this garage and bought to document we needed for another hundred zloty or so (fortunately they accepted Visa). It had been an interesting introduction to Ukraine and its endemic corruption: the money went straight into P.C. Plod’s back pocket in return for his not issuing an “official” ticket that would have cost us a lot more to settle.
From there, the drive up to Kiev was ok – but long. We stopped a couple of times on the way, once in a small village where we spotted a cash machine (I had to climb a set of very rickety home-made wooden steps to get at it but it worked ok and we got some cash) and once in a forest for a comfort break. The road was quite empty of traffic and of a surprisingly good standard – better than Polish roads in fact – so we made good time across the huge and seemingly unending Ukrainian plain. The place has some of the best agricultural land in the entire continent, which makes the famine and widespread poverty dating back to Stalin’s time all the more criminal. With good management there is no need for there ever to be grain shortages there. But of course resource management was never one of Stalin’s or Communism’s strengths, was it, despite what the propaganda would have us believe. It’s beautiful country, wide open spaces and forest and rolling meadows, a rural paradise, but very poor still. We saw many horse driven wagons rumbling along the roads, including bizarrely on the motorway when we rejoined it (and at one point, hacking along at 170kph were terrified when we saw ahead of us a couple of people lurching drunkenly across a pedestrian crossing pushing bikes – you would never see anything like on any motorway anywhere else in Europe, I’m sure: certainly not on the M25….). Another time, as we came round a corner into a typically poor Ukrainian village of bungalows and bars with the ubiquitous gold domed Orthodox church (but no obvious store, school or surgery) we had to brake hard and weave our way slowly through a herd of cows being shepherded back for milking by a couple of women on bikes.
* * *
We arrived in Kiev around midnight, after nearly 12 hours travelling, and Ania’s brother met us on the outskirts of the city. He led us another 20 or so kilometres across the river Dniepr to the far side of Kiev, where the apartment is. Our first glimpse of the city therefore was of a brightly lit modern city not dissimilar to Warsaw or Frankfurt or even London – plenty of high-end shops and night clubs, many very good quality cars (Bentleys, BMWs, Infiniti, Jaguar, Range Rovers….) and an equal number of jalopies like Ladas and even old Russian Zil limos, plus equally scrappy trams and buses, and once we had crossed the broad expanse of the river (that here makes the Thames look like a stream; it must be over a kilometre across with islands midstream and marinas and docks along both banks) clusters of apartment blocks and huge sprawling railway yards and factories that reminded me of Almaty and Warsaw and other Eastern European cities. The apartment, when we arrived, was in such a block and very reminiscent of one I used in Almaty a few years back, except that the block itself, while not of a particularly high standard, at least had functioning lifts that didn’t smell of stale cabbage, tobacco and piss, and had 24-hour security at the entrance and car park. The flat was fine, very comfortable and spacious and on the 6th floor.
The next day, we all piled in Radek’s car for a tour. Kiev is a big city – at least as big as London, and sprawled out on both sides of the Dniepr. The roads, given the good quality of highway up from the border, were surprisingly poor, full of potholes and badly maintained, lacking white lines (at least clear ones) so making driving challenging at best, but with plenty of traffic lights that were often ignored. We crossed the river by one massive bridge and at the far side hit a big maintenance operation, with rollers and tarmac spreading machines and workmen everywhere – but no effective traffic control. There was a guy waving a small red flag that was tangled around the stick and everyone ignored it anyway, but no barriers or temporary lights as you would find anywhere else. The traffic flow, including us, basically weaved around the various bits of machinery as they continued to work, and cut each other up as cars made for road entrances that were haphazard to say the least and lacked any intelligible signs – and those that were visible were of course in Cyrillic script and meaningless (to me at any rate). It reminded me very much of Beirut.
But Radek happily carved his way through and we were soon at one of the main shopping areas, close to a big square and parkland. The street was pedestrianized, and we parked in a side road (half on the footpath) and strolled along the broad avenue. It was the day before the big May Day celebration (still big in Eastern Europe, and a public holiday) so there were plenty of entertainments along the street. There were many people singing and playing guitars, individually and in groups, balloon and toy sellers, a guy renting those Segway two-wheeler vehicles you see at a lot airports these days, jugglers – the lot. At the top of a flight of steps on the other side of the street were many ice-cream and burger bars and a lovely old carousel that Ally fell in love with. It was hot and sunny – the weather was great all week, up in the high 20s Celsius – and we enjoyed the walk and the ice creams (though not as good as the ones you get at the seaside in Poland).
We went to a park along the end of that street, on the side of a hill overlooking the Dniepr – the views up and down stream and across to the other bank were spectacular. There were the usual Stalinist monuments to the Glorious Soviet Workers, straddled by a big arch that after dark was floodlit in many colours like a rainbow, several burgers stalls – and a small funfair (well, one highly dangerous looking ride – a kind of rotating pirate ship - , a kid’s trampoline, bumper cars and a guy renting out pedal cars for kids to ride in circles around the trampoline. Our kids had a go on them and did very well, and got a good long ride for the money. But I couldn’t help wondering how Uncle Joe would react if he were resurrected and found all this materialist entertainment at the Worker’s Monument….probably kick off another pogrom, I suppose.
We went back the following evening, as it was getting dark, and it was super. There was a carnival atmosphere still, and we spent a good couple of hours wandering around eating McFlurry’s from the inevitable McDonald’s outlet, riding the carousel and enjoying the street entertainment. At the end of the street there is a big square that will be one of the viewing areas for Euro 2012 – the big screens were being assembled and there was some kind of bar or UEFA exhibition centre under construction, designed to look like half a football. I would guess there will be a great atmosphere there. Then sharp at 10, alarms went off, and a couple of police cars cruised from one end of the street to other and back again – and the street was no longer pedestrianized but open to traffic. Efficiently done.
* * *
Close by was another park overlooking the river. At the top is the Museum to the Great Patriotic War (that’s World War 2 to you and me). Surrounding the building is a good array of tanks and armoured vehicles, field guns, jeeps, helicopters and in one separate section some aircraft and Soviet era missiles. The aircraft ranged from WW2 fighters, through Korean War MiG fighters, 1970s and 1980s Sukhoi supersonic fighters (one of them, for a fee, you could sit in) and, a bit incongruously I thought, a US manufactured Dakota freight plane. We had a stroll around and paid the extra for Kuba to sit in a MiG 21 fighter – got some decent photos – but I have to say the exhibits were not in the best condition. Probably standing outside in all weathers (and Ukrainian winters are vicious) doesn’t help them much.
The museum itself forms the plinth for a massive statue to the Mother of the Nation. It’s a huge statue, not unlike the Statue of Liberty, but carrying a bloody great sword and shield rather than the torch of peace, and instead of white marble it’s made of stainless steel and towers 62m above the Museum roof (overall the height goes to over 100m – 330 odd feet). It’s an impressive monument, especially when floodlit at night. You can see it for miles.
The Museum itself is circular and on three floors so you kind of spiral your way up from the lowest to highest, and of its kind is pretty good. It’s well laid out and has some great exhibits, but at the end you’re left with the impression that the only combatants between 1939 and 1945 were the USSR and Nazi Germany – no-one else gets a look in. Now I know there were more Russian casualties than any other nation during the war, and that their switching sides after Hitler ordered the Barbarossa attack in 1941 essentially ensured that the Nazis would lose in the end but still….it’s an incredibly inaccurate and slanted view of history that Uncle Joe would be proud of. Whatever else it may have done, the USSR did not save the world. I wonder if Ukrainian educationalists are doing anything to change that, and owning up to some of the more blatant untruths and inaccuracies…… Do they admit the famines that decimated the local population in the 20s and 30s were Stalin’s fault? Do they admit that behind every patriotic regiment advancing fearlessly on the Nazi lines there marched a regiment of NKVD killers who were to shoot dead any soldier retreating?
Probably not.
* * *
There are still, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that precipitated the demise of Communism, many monuments to the Old Guard scattered around the city. My favourite was one to Lenin, in typical pose, head thrust forward in mid oration, that stands perhaps twenty feet tall and is in a little park area at one end of the main shopping drag. The thing I liked about it was not the statue itself (that is no better or worse than any other of its kind) but that on the little paved area at the foot of the plinth there is a small tent topped by the old Red Flag, and in the tent were a group of guys in military fatigues who were keeping watch on everyone who paused there for photo opportunities or whatever. Whether they are genuinely members of the Ukrainian army or merely a bunch of unreconstructed Communist sympathizers who are enjoying playing soldier I have no idea, and the banners and placards draped over the tent, as they were of course in Russian, were meaningless to me. They left us alone while we took our pictures, as did the police on duty (the adjoining road junction is quite busy at all times) – even when we pulled off the road and parked on the footpath next to the monument and, later, reversed back into the traffic flow.
* * *
Another trip into town gave us the opportunity to ride a funicular railway up the side of the hill from the main road alongside the Dniepr to the top of the hill and visit the beautiful Cathedral and Monastery of St. Michael. The building is exquisite, painted a pastel blue with white pillars and stunning gold domed roofs. Inside, every flat space on the walls, the floor and the ceilings is covered with beautiful frescoes. There are a number of places to light prayer candles (that can be purchased from a small shop just inside the main door), but no seating – everyone stands. When we visited, a monk or priest was leading a small ceremony of some kind: there was no congregation, but he was chanting his prayers in a deep and sonorous voice, with responses coming from the choir of monks in a balcony facing him. Although I understood not a word, it was very moving somehow, and beautiful. Like most such places, no photography is allowed inside, which was a shame – I would love to have been able to shoot off a bunch of pictures because this paragraph just doesn’t do the building justice.
Before visiting the Cathedral, we spent an hour two strolling in the Botanical Gardens in the sunshine. They’re pleasant without being spectacular, but at the bottom of the hill there is a rather tatty looking building that is home to a collection of tropical butterflies and other exhibits likes snakes, chameleon, tortoises, lizards and parrots, all in cases and cages – except the butterflies that are restricted to a central atrium and fly to and fro above your head. There were also several display cases with dead and pinned collections of insects and spiders that were impressive or scary depending on your point of view. I don’t like spiders at the best of times, and some of the exhibits – in particular one bloody great hairy tarantula as big as my spread hand (that’s a good 9 or 10 inches across) - made me shudder, as did a pinned grey cockroach about 6inches long with even longer spread feelers. Disgusting things……but the kids, predictably, loved ‘em.
* * *
One evening we went swimming. There are many lakes and pools scattered throughout the city that provide popular outdoor swimming and sunbathing areas: most of them are man-made, like flooded quarries or refuse pits with a few tons of sand dumped around to make a beach. The weather all week was hot and sunny, so we saw that a lot of people were making use of them, even in midweek and the first week of May, despite them being generally alongside busy roads to and from the city centre and surrounded by apartment blocks. Apparently topless bathing is de rigeur in summer…..
However, we went to a pool complex. It was an hour’s drive, into the city, then across a bridge onto one of the biggest islands in the river, and along its length through the most affluent area we saw all week. The pool was on the top floor of a massive and modern shopping mall, and was without a doubt the best I’ve ever been to, anywhere in the world. Once you’ve negotiated the communal changing room (all the lockers together in one big open space, with small cubicles dotted around to change in – no concept of separate Male and Female rooms here) you go through a shower area into the recreation space – and it’s huge. There were four or five pools, including a water polo area, two kids pools that had a wide range of slides and stuff to play on (a bit like a Total Wipeout course), one that had a wave machine, and a selection of slides and flumes into their own individual splash pools. There was also one ride where you sit in an inflated tyre and get washed around a little course under bridges and through little white-water rapids areas – great fun and very relaxing that one. Some of the flumes are pitch black inside, so you barrel down in darkness, lit on a couple of bends with strips of multi coloured light that you pass in an instant, mildly surprised to find that your tyre is on the wall not the floor……Kuba loved that one.
Every pool is surrounded by sun loungers to relax on while you watch the kids play, and there are pool and table tennis tables, dart boards and fussball tables everywhere, plus a couple of snack bars and a real bar. As there is no limit to admission times, once you’re in you can spend hours there trying all the stuff in your own good time. We spent a couple of hours there, and had an absolute blast.
* * *
The next day we headed home.
Once we had cleared Kiev (that took the best part of an hour, including a ten minute Drive-Through McDonalds stop) we made excellent time. We followed the same route as before, and again the traffic, once we had cleared the fifty kilometres or so of road works just outside Kiev, was light so Ania was able to put her foot down – which she loves. The 600-odd kilometres to the border took a little under six hours – very good, with only one comfort stop by the side of the road and one pit stop to fill up with cheap Ukrainian petrol. We left the apartment around 1:30 and were at Dorohusk before it was fully dark. The Ukrainian guys this time accepted my passport without question, and waved us through.
Then the fun started. There is a significant amount of smuggling between the two countries, the vast majority of it being in a westerly direction, so the Polish border controls are much stricter than those in Ukraine. Part of it is due to the price differentials – many Poles living close to the border happily cross into Ukraine to buy certain goods – notably cigarettes and booze – because in Ukraine it’s massively cheaper. The temptation to exceed the legal allowance as obviously there, and many people I’m sure do just that, so the customs guys do their best to catch them. There are also high levels of organized crime in Ukraine, so narcotics smuggling into the EU from Ukraine and beyond funnels through the Polish frontier – more reasons to be vigilant. People smuggling is not unheard of.
The upshot of all this is that, once we had cleared Ukraine, we joined an ever-lengthening queue of vehicles filtering through the half-dozen or so open Polish customs booths. There were cars, Transit vans, HGV trucks, coaches – you name it, all in lines with their engines switched off waiting to be called forward. Most of them carried Ukrainian and Polish number plates, but there were German and Dutch too, and the Toyota in front of us was from Estonia (clearly taking the scenic route). Now and again, a line would move forward a car or two’s length before stopping again, and at times tempers were a bit frayed. Some people, exclusively Ukrainian, were desperately reversing out and trying to jump from line to line to speed up the process and get into the EU quicker – that little stunt went down like a pork chop in a synagogue with other driver patiently awaiting their turn.
If the crossing from Poland to Ukraine the previous week had been bad at an hour and half, the homeward one was tortuous. We inched forward, and finally got to the booth – it took three hours. The officer was apologetic when he saw two tired kids (who were wonderfully patient and well behaved throughout) sitting in the car, and told us we should have asked earlier to be expressed through, it wouldn’t have been a problem…. Great, now he tells us, I thought. Anyway, the guys did a fairly cursory search of the car (we opened the bonnet and boot, all the doors and he shone a torch underneath) and told us to get the passports stamped. Ania joined a small queue, and we were soon on our way again. The total crossing time came out at just under three and a half hours. I’m glad I fly everywhere usually….
From there, we had another couple of hundred kilometres (and one fuel stop at Lublin) to go. Ania drove again, insisting she wasn’t tired, and we made pretty good time still. The traffic, after clearing the roadworks at Lublin, was pretty light again and we were home indoors in Warsaw by 1:00. Despite the interminable border crossing, we had made door to door in a little under 12 hours – over 800km that Google Maps reckoned would take around 11 ½ hours.
My wife is brilliant.
* * *
So. Final thoughts.
Apart from it being a great trip, and so good to see the brothers after many weeks, Ukraine is a country that from its sheer size offers massive potential. We saw relatively little of it, but it’s beautiful and I’d like to see more – the coastal resorts on the Black Sea on the Crimean Peninsula are lovely, I’m told. Kiev is an interesting city, huge and sprawling and diverse, with plenty to offer the tourist. By western standards it’s cheap, but because of the country’s recent past it’s still very poor (unless of course you’re a successful businessman or, like many, merely corrupt). The contrasts in Kiev were at times stark – on one of our trips into the city, in Radek’s Infiniti four-wheel drive (a luxury car, very popular in Kiev) driving from one of the more affluent neighbourhoods, we passed a big and sprawling rubbish tip. Whole families were there – parents, kids, even grandparents – scavenging amongst the crap, trying to find something that could be salvaged to sell and make a few hryvnia to live on. Street beggars were common – although to be fair you see them everywhere these days.
So for anyone heading East for the Euros next month – I’m sure you’ll have a blast. Ukrainian beer is good, the food ok, there are plenty of restaurants and clubs to spend your evenings, at least in Kiev. Just make sure you base yourselves in Kiev or for that matter Donetsk, the other city where England is playing – remember, that place is another 500 or so kilometers further east. What the trains are like, or the roads, east of Kiev I have no idea – I’m told the roads are ok (and based on those between Poland and Kiev I can believe that) but the railways less so. If anyone is thinking of basing themselves in Krakow with the England team, and travelling by road to the matches – forget it. The roadworks in both countries will slow you down, and I dread to think what the border crossing will be like when the traffic volumes inevitably increase during the tournament. I only hope the FA have had the common sense to charter a plane to fly from Krakow to Ukraine and back for each game – they’ll never make it by road.
posted by Travellin' Bob @ May 16, 2012
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