Kyiv...maybe

I dunno..I'm not really feeling the blog right now...or anything at all really...just trying to get back into the swing of things I guess...overslept today...gotta go on a run later.

Kyiv was a fun trip; I enjoyed getting out into the sun again, dropping the computer and internets, and just wandering about. It was relaxing. I bought my tickets the day before I left so I didn't get optimal seats or times - I got into Kyiv at 6am on monday - just as the metro opened and sun was rising. I cluelessly searched about the terminal for the exit to the metro station and picked up a poppy roll for breakfast. Having found the metro, I hopped on and headed straight for the river, figuring I could catch the remainder of the sunrise, which I did and I took silly pictures in the park for a few hours.

The Park near the WWII museum is cool - they had some over-the-top monuments and lots of old material lying around...also at this early hour many young hooligans were playing on the material...which entertained me greatly. The big silver woman statue is pretty in that rough soviet sort of way. I wandered back down to the rear entrance of the Lavra - a complex that is part catacombs/caves, seminary, monastery and who knows what else. It had lots of beautiful churches, but on the whole was run down...I was also moderately uncomfortable because I was pretty much the only tourist there at that early hour...which exacerbated my normal aversion to touring churches and other holy monuments. The pictures are many. At this point, I continued my stroll around the riverbank parks while protesters in blue constantly impeded me...it would have been kinda fun to join with them and meet some folk...but i was preoccupied with my touring. So my wandering continued through parks, punctuated by awful politically charged music, a unkrainian version of we will rock you, many other awful covers, and populist political speeches. I finally wound up at the main drag...Kershchatik...where everything you might expect to be on a mainstreet would be found, but there were many a pretty building. I didn't exactly concern myself with anything here immediately and headed to the opera house to pick up tickets for Friday and Saturday night - Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet and Lisyenko's Taras Bulba...I got some pretty amazing seats for both shows at about $12 a ticket...approximately the cost of a night at my hostel. I decided that it was hot and I wanted to drop my bag off at the hostel (by now it was open) so I hunted it down and planned out the rest of my day. I ate a really nasty fast food lunch of cold borscht and meat covered in potatoes with a really foul ukrainian beer and saw all the central church's - Michael, Sofia, Andre and Vladimir as well as some architectural monuments - Rytsarski Dom, Sorotkin's(?) house, and several other things...many were pretty.

Eventually I tired of this madness and sought sustenance in the form of a coke and sat in the park with a beer and read a few chapters in Moscow - Petushki. Time came for the performance and I naturally checked my coat at the garderobe and took my seat...although poorly dressed I was not the scruffiest of the audience...yay! I'm still getting used to ballet...it's not exactly my thing but I like it better and better each time I see it, but sometimes the formalism and abstraction gets to me...at the ballet in P-burg there was a more contemporary and...flashier? style of dance while this was more graceful and muted. The music was good, but I certain audience practices really bother me...like clapping after a solo or part of a scene while the orchestra is still playing...it just seems...eh. The cellphone problem was big there too. Anyway, after the performance I went home to the hostel and at this point I was feeling the onset of a cold or summat so I bough 3 candy bars, a liter of water, and a liter of pinapple juice...mmmm. The next day I felt better. The guys in my room at the hostel were alright...one was an austrian girl who was in town for a chekhov conference...I couldn't tell what she was studying...she didn't seem enthused about chekhov. The other guy was some sort of Jordanian student-expat-hostel-rat who works only enough so that he can travel; he was a nice guy and trying to learn russian...but he was a bit of a wimp, afraid to go out alone in kiev (so much less threatening than moscow or irkutsk). I dunno, not much else remarkable. I slept.

Woke up, showered, bought some more poppy rolls, and began my touring/wandering again. I don't really know what I did...I wandered all about and saw many things that are all in my pictures and at this bizarre hotdog thing covered in dough and deepfried...mmmm...it's not like a corndog...but like a hotdog in a doughnut...without the sugary goodness. The line was really long which got my attention...so that was cool. I wandered in and out of a monastery...and decided i was sick of churches. Taras Bulba was entertaining, but I thought the story was weak (then again I don't understand ukrainian) and the ballet was sloppy...afterwards I was starving and got a double shoarma on my way home :-D Soooooo tasty...I went to sleep.

Next day I woke up, wandered around more, hit the art museum, the other bank of the river and a few buildings that I had early passed. I slept a while in the Botanical gardens and had a big lunch. Sundown on the beach was nice. On my way out there was a silly band playing decent music (they covered zombie, then the ya svoboden song...it was strange) they had a three piece line up no drums and two people in the background singing along without mikes...it was really silly. And the female backup who WAS miked was completely inaudible. Then I went to the vokzal...bought some pirozhki and rolls for breakfast and headed home. I have lots of silly stories to tell...but I'm not up to it right now.