Kyiv days 1 and 2 (Sam)

26^th of June

We got off our night train from Odessa at 8am in Kiev. Our hostels directions were fairly easy to follow and we were there in no time. We spent a few hours chatting with the owner while we waited out the rain but at 11am we gave up and donned our rain coats. It was a 5 minute walk to the hub of the city: Maydan Nezaleznhosti. There, we looked around in the underground mall for an English bookstore we had read about. The mall is a maze and after about 1 hour we decided the bookstore was non existent so we headed towards the Museum of the Great Patriotic War on the Metro. From the Metro station the museum was quite a long walk which was made longer by a man who would not let us through a fence due to some music festival. We did a bit of bush crashing up a steep forested hill and popped out in a large square in front of a giant (62M high) statue of a woman holding a sword and a shield with the hammer and sickle emblem. There was a tank, a large soviet realist style statue of soldiers advancing, and victory music playing in the background. We concluded that this must be the War Museum. We entered through a door in the grassy mound that serves as the base of Rodina Mat (the large statue), bought tickets and started to look around. The museum was all in Russian but you didn't need to read to understand the exhibits. In one room there was a very long table set with glasses, lining the table were telegrams sent to notify parents that their son had been killed. There were also things like a bicycle powered radio, lots of propaganda posters mostly of the “101 Ways To Kill A Nazi” variety and many Nazi and Soviet war medals. The museum was a really interesting look into how much the Ukrainian people suffered during WWII.

27^th of June

Well, unfortunately we woke up today to buckets and buckets of rain. We stayed in all morning getting things like schoolwork and laundry done before our hostel owner drove us to the supermarket to buy food for the next few days. After we had dropped off the groceries we walked to St Sophia's cathedral, only to find out it was closing early, in 15 minutes, because it was a holiday. It started to rain a little harder so we gave up and went home. We had stir fry for supper and are hoping to get something done tomorrow.

Photos: The hub of Kyiv; Rodina Mat; A prime example of Soviet realist design; A grey day in Kyiv