Goodbye, Kiev!

Saturday 21 April

We find that the lovely cafe where we've had breakfast for the past 2 days doesn't doesn't serve breakfast on Saturdays.  We have breakfast in the fast food hall in the huge underground shopping centre, underneath Independence Square.  We have kilbasa and brown bread (which is stiff and dry) plus black tea.  We don't enjoy our meal.

There's some sort of "pre-Olympic" event going on for young people in Independence Square, sponsored by McDonalds, who are literally everywhere in Kiev.  I want to go to the market that we saw on our tour of Kiev on Thursday.  It starts to rain quite heavily (this continues on and off throughout the day).  As we pass by another open area in Kiev centre we see a demonstration.  People, young and not so young, are handing out leaflets, and a band is getting together on a podium to sing, (in protest?)  We manage to find a young man who speaks English.  He says they are protesting  against the destruction of the beauty of Kiev; bland new buildings are being constructed next to beautiful old churches, and, the young continues, they are ruining the look of the city.  The young man goes on to talk about the fact that often no one knows who these eyesore buildings belong to.  He says there is corruption and a lack of transparency in government.  We get the feeling that the underlying protest is really about this.

We find the market and Reg wanders off while I look at all the stalls - skillfully painted paper-mache boxes with little scenes depicting Ukrainian peasant life on the lids, more expensive Russian boxes and of course, Russian dolls, and lavishly embroidered blouses and tablecloths.  I can't resist buying a little box.  I haggle and pay half the asking price.  I tell myself it's very small and will only take up a tiny corner of my already very heavy suitcase.

We walk down a street where the pavements are lined with oil paintings.  We consider buying a painting of a tram, but decide we really haven't got room, and it would need specialist packaging to send it home.  Oil paintings are, in the words of the postmistress in the TV series Larkrise to Candleford, "our one weakness."

As we meander back towards our hostel to prepare to catch the night train, leaving at 18.15, for Moscow, we notice, in separate places, 2 newly-wedded couples having photos taken in the centre of Kiev.

We eat again in our "Eric Clapton" pub restaurant,  because the food is good, and the service is fast.

Our taxi arrives to take us to the railway station - we arrive there ant hour and a quarter early.  We always need to allow plenty of time as we have a lot of luggage and need to find the right platform.  Reg looks at the departures board and we realise we have even more time than we thought.  Our rail tickets state our departure time as 18.15 - whereas the actual time of leaving is 19.15 Ukrainian time.  We're glad it's an hour later not an hour earlier!  We can't get our heads around why the train ticket should record our departure time as an hour earlier than the actual time of leaving, as  Moscow is an hour ahead of the Ukraine, so we'd have thought it would be the other way around!

We find a waiting room - it costs us about 30p each to go in - but it's craftily the only place in the station to sit down, unless you're disabled.  The waiting room is huge and extremely ornate, with carved and painted ceilings and chandeliers, and an electronic timetable which flashes in English every so often.

Our train is in!  I rattle along with my heavy suitcase behind Reg.  The train is really high above the platform, and we have to hoist up our luggage, then I wheel my case along the corridor of the train to our compartment.  Its a 4 berth, and we are soon joined by 2 young Russian women, who turn out to be doctors.  We settle ourselves down and soon the train cranks and grinds into action.  Goodbye, Kiev!


























xxx