Georgia - April 2008

Taking it Easy in Tbilisi

The Guinness

It was time for a Guinness.  I chose to the Hangar Bar, seemingly so named as it had lots of model aircraft hanging from the ceiling.  However there appeared a bit of a naming dilemma going on as the pub also had a sign up saying it was called O’Brien’s. 

Enjoying a Guinness at the Hangar Bar

The Formula 1 race was being aired inside and out but I distracted the owner to have a chat. She kindly picked the next destination out of the box – Vienna, Austria.  I had a second Guinness and watched Cardiff City in the FA Cup Semi-final at Wembley playing Barnsley and winning to get into the final for the first time since 1927.

Rebecca kindly picking out my next destination for a Guinness

Getting There and around

My first impression of Tbilisi was ‘what a dark place’. Then again it was the middle of the night.  Normally I would bound off the plane full of vigour and head for the bus into town but not in Tbilisi.  Apart from the fact that I was travelling whist under the weather, with the aid of Imodium shall we say, it was also the wee small hours of the morning.  Flights in Georgia tend to arrive and depart between 1am and 5am for some strange reason as if trying not to be found out.  My plan therefore was to try to grab a bit more sleep before the first train into the city was due to depart at 5.30am. 

It had been a long old journey to get to this point – by far the longest on my Guinness travels to date.  I’d chosen to use the trusty Lufthansa service from Birmingham with a stop off in Germany.

The stearn looking statue on the hillside overlooking Tbilisi

Arriving in Georgia is quite welcoming; there is no visa requirements, no payments due, just show your passport and you are in.  This is a sign of how westernised the country is – welcoming visitors with none of the normal restrictions you would expect from an ex-communist country.  The other obvious sign is the name of the main road into the city:  George Bush Freeway.  There’s nothing like nailing your colours to the mast and trying to upset your neighbours to the north. 

 Freedon Square - my first sight in Georgia

Team Makeup

I was on my own for this trip.  Nobody else quite fancied it for some reason.

Tbilisi in the springtime

Accommodation

My hotel was in the old part of town, and here the emphasis was on ‘old’.  It’s hard to differentiate when wandering the narrow streets of Tbilisi whether the damaged buildings and infrastructure result of civil war, revolution, the earthquake of 2002 or general neglect.  My hotel certainly had neglect all around it but inside was well looked after.  My room was cramped and overlooked a small courtyard where the neighbours stored their bread and other groceries on their windowsills.  The bed squeaked every time I breathed in and out and the toilet would only flush properly with the aid of a bucket of water.  Surprisingly I still rated it and didn’t care much about these foibles.

Parts of the city have very much a French feel to them.

Food

I often enjoyed the local snacks, a naan bread filled with melted cheese.

In Bojormi I ordered the soup and kebab and chips – when I say ordered I mean nodded when the waitress said something and that’s what arrived.  The soup was excellent, more like a stew – thick tomato with pieces of meat floating in it and cracked wheat at the bottom, topped off with the inevitable coriander. 

Sightseeing highlights

My first view of the city was one of the most spectacular.  Freedom Square, with its tall stone column topped with the gold Liberty Monument depicting St George slaying the dragon.  This was the venue of the Rose Revolution in 2003 and the place where the Georgian president and George Bush addressed 100,000 people in 2005 commemorating the end of WWII.  Here, as dawn was breaking, I had the place all to myself.

The tiny Sioni Cathedral with its dark ornate ceiling was full of lit candles and busy with worshipers.  The cathedral is famous for being the place where in the early 1800s the Georgian nobility were forced by the Russian military to sign and agree to being annexed by Russia.  Today’s Georgia is a deeply religious country, mainly Christian, where years on Communist oppression failed to quash their beliefs.

Tbilisi is very much a city where you can wander around at leisure.  I kept stumbling upon small parks filled with bird song , overlooked by houses painted in various colours.  The city planners appear to specialise in modern brass statues – they are everywhere, most pleasant but a bit incongruous given the poor state of the roads and pavements around. 

If you like brass sculptures then Tbilisi is the place for you.

I found my way up onto the hill and the brand spanking new Sameba Cathedral built with the donations from a mystery benefactor.  People were thronging around including VIPs in suits and black limousines and TV cameras.  It initially thought that may have opened that very day but has in fact been finished four years.  It had gleaming gold roofs and acres of marble and fountains in front.  It reminded me of what it must have appeared like in prior centuries with huge amounts of money being spent on churches whilst people around lived in poverty.

The brand new Sameba Cathedral - it looked like opening day today.

The highlight of my last afternoon in Tbilisi was having my own hot sulphur bath in the Abanotubani district.  20 Lari bought me an hour with my private bath measuring about 2m by 2m, changing room, shower towels and soap. I was asked if I wanted my personal ‘scrubber’- something I’m sure means different things depending on where you come from.  I declined.  That’s one good way of giving yourself a deep clean after over five hours on a train.   The individual bath had a conical domed stone roofs capped by a chimney to let the hot humid air escape.

  Out of the City

I also spent a few nights at Bojormi, a spa town in the Lesser Caucuses some 100 miles west of the capital. I arrived on a minibus with the newspapers and headed for the brand new tourist office.  I had the impression I was the first western tourist in town judging by the way I was so well treated. 

Bojormi has a brand spanking new train station.........

.......the trains however weren't quite so new!

I caught a narrow gauge railway up into the mountains and the ski resort of Bakuriani.  The train, a strange looking electric locomotive with two small carriages waited at the station and soon filled up. I’m glad I stocked up with food as the journey took well over 2 hours.  We went through forests, pastures, people’s back gardens, past grazing cattle and spring flowers in the sunshine.  Some of the bridges on the route were apparently designed by Eifel (of tower fame).  This was not a service that relied only on tourists, it was being used by all the locals and it stopped regularly in numerous stations and even in the middle of the woods.  People would get off and disappear into the woods with their shopping bags.  I doubt it made any money as the amount of energy needed to haul it up to above 5000 feet must have cost more than our 60p fares.

The lovely two carriage electric train up to Bakuriani

A consortium of oil companies has recently completed an oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan across Georgia and to the Turkish coast. I popped into an office that explained it all.  I guess a lot of PR was needed as the pipeline goes through some very picturesque and historical areas.  Indeed, there were a number of archaeological finds on display in the office.  A friendly guy talked me though the project in good English before giving me a cup of tea.  Just before leaving he asked me if I needed anything else such as Internet access on his computer.  I thought that was quite a risky offer to make – with a couple of clicks of the mouse I could probably have stopped millions of barrels of oil flowing from the east to the west. 

Quirky moments

In Bojormi I headed out of town hoping to get to the Romsnov Palace.  I wasn’t too optimistic about this goal either having read that it had recently been taken back into government ownership and used for official functions.  My hopes were dashed as I approached the park gates and the guards with machine guns indeed indicated that there was no way I would be allowed in for a peek at the house.  I continued wandering up the road, around a few bends and occasionally jumping up to see if I could glimpse the house over the wall.  I couldn’t.  I must have somehow attached someone’s attention because a police car drew up and the occupants started talking.  Now they could just have been asking me if I wanted a lift somewhere or knew what the time was but judging by their faces I think they were more interested in knowing why I was doing imitating a man on a pogo stick but without a pogo stick.  The fact that we didn’t seem to share a mutual language meant the conversation was going nowhere and they eventually drove off.

Walking the footpath up the hill out of Borjormi past the spa meant going over this rather dangerous footbridge over a river in torrent!

You thought that one was bad - how about this one!

Time to get cleaned up before heading home and where better than this hot spa

Turkey – Feb 2008

Isobars in Istanbul

The Capital of Turkey is.......

“So why Istanbul?” I hear you ask.  Yes, I concede it’s not the capital of Turkey but it is in Europe whereas Ankara, the actual Turkish capital, is geographically in Asia.  The choice I therefore faced when devising the original list of capitals some years back was whether to include Turkey at all, as all as only 3% of it sits in Europe.  Given the appeal of Istanbul, the history, the culture, the weather, it just had to go into the hat.  The weather....OK, maybe I was wrong on that one.

The Guinness

We had a prearranged plan, the only one of the holiday, to go to the James Joyce Bar and possibly meet the Guinness representative for Istanbul.  I had been in touch with him when I had read that there is no foreign brewed draught beers allowed to be sold in Turkey.  He confirmed my findings but said that there was canned Guinness in the James Joyce Bar.  A bit of map reading and there we were in the James Joyce Bar and yes, they did sell cans of Guinness.  We sat on stools at the bar but I almost fell off mine when I enquired about the price £6 a can!  My round I guess!  It was onto the Efes larger after that!  Bar owner Gulsum, who had lived in Ireland at one stage, kindly drew out Tbilisi, Georgia as my next destination.

Dave and Phil enjoy the Guinness

We all tried to go on the free Internet but it proved very tricky as the keys on the keyboard were slightly different, the letter ‘i’ in particular being in another place.  We gave up and instead watch a traditional Irish band that started up and dance a jig or two.  Dave spotted the breathalyser machine on the way out.  The barman showed him how to use it and it confirmed, in Turkish, that he was not allowed to drive home.  Luckily we didn’t have a car with us.

Gulsum picking out Tibilisi, Georgia as my next destination

Getting There and around

We flew from London Luton to Istanbul with EasyJet. We then took an internal flight to Izmir to visit Ephesus before getting a train to Denizli to visit  Pamukkale.  After that we used night express to return to Istanbul

The Istanbul skyline

Team Makeup

Dave, who’d been to the Faroe Islands with me, and first-timer Phil.

Accommodation

In Istanbul we stayed at the Terrace Guesthouse in the Sultanahmet area of the city with a very friendly owner, extremely steep stairs and lots of carpets.

View from the dining room in the Terrace Guesthouse

Food

On our first night in town we deliberately avoided the posh touristy looking restaurants and instead headed into a smaller one, full of Turkish people.  We ordered everything on the menu, literally, which was not difficult as they only had six things: kebab, salad, yogurt, rice, soup and pickled chilli.  Only five turned up – we never did see the chillies.  It was very good; the rice had a real nice flavour as did the salad, all swilled down by a coke.  Sweet was equally straightforward as only one of the two things on the menu was available, something that looked and indeed tasted a bit like the polyurethane foam you get inside a settee.   Now that’s how to run a restaurant – a simple short menu.  Gordon Ramsey would be pleased.

Freshly squeezed juice - delicious

Sightseeing highlights

The Archaeology Museum was pretty good, stuffed full of Roman statues, sarcophagi and mummies. There was a special exhibition of beads which made you wonder how people drilled holes through beads before electric drills.  

The Basilica Cistern is the underground water storage system built by the Romans.  You would never have thought it was there walking around on the street above, but below ground a vast open space full of pillars and walkways and a couple of feet of water.  A couple of the columns at the far corner have upside down faces of Greek Gods carved into stone.  It was a fascinating gem of a place and lay undiscovered for hundreds of years after the Romans left the city.  Did the city’s residents never for a moment wonder where their water was coming from?

Basilica Cistern

The Sultan Ahmet Mosque, or Blue Mosque as it is commonly known, won the vote given it was next door.  This unusually has six minarets surrounding it.  The designer got heavily criticised for building a six-minaret Mosque, mimicking Mecca, but resisted the pressure to take one down and instead paid for a seventh to be built at Mecca. 

Yes, it was raining and it could have done with being a bit warmer.  It even snowed on our last day and our flight was the last one out for a few days.

The covered Grand Bazaar was a great experience.  Thousands of stalls in covered streets.  We did get hassled in some parts of it to buy things but it was bearable and certainly not too crowded.  A Saturday in the summer things would be very different.  One thing that surprised me however was that although it was very colourful it was not full of the aromatic smells I was expecting.  Again in summer things may be different.  After walking around for quite a time we sat at one of the intersections and had a thick Turkish coffee.

Grand Bazaar

Quirky moments

The man holding up my name on a board as we stepped into the arrivals area at Istanbul’s new Sabiha Gökçen airport had a slightly odd appearance.  Odd from the point of view that he seemed only to have one eye.  Never mind we thought, as long as he doesn’t wink too much we should be OK.  To begin with he appeared to drive at a snail’s pace. Then after five minutes, when he seemed to slouch over on the seat, we really got worried.  It turned out he was just reaching into the glove compartment to give us all a carton of juice and a cake each – I’ve never had that in a taxi before.  From then on his driving got faster and....faster and....faster.

Out of the City

Dave and I would then flew off to Izmir to visit Ephesus. We stayed in Selçuk, a modern town just a mile from Ephesus. The place was certainly in ruins.  You are gradually struck by the size of the place, covering a massive area and could begin to picture yourself inside this ancient city that once housed tens of thousands of people. The spectacular facade of the Celeus ancient library is one of the best preserved sections and looked wonderful in the spring sunshine. 

The Celeus in Ephesus

The next day we got the train to the industrial and textile city of Denizli and then onto hot springs of Pamukkale and the neighbouring ruins of Hierapolis.  After taking your shoes and socks off you are allowed to go paddling in the warm water on the terraces of Pamukkale.  Quite and experience – especially having the hillside to ourselves.  In Hierapolis I took the option of going for a swim whist Dave went to the museum.  It was one of the more expensive options of the holiday, £7, but a highlight for me, paddling in amongst fallen stone columns and then swimming in the deeper sulphurous water.  The boards around the side gave a full chemical analysis and advertised its healing properties.

Dave enjoying the waters of Pamukkale

These theatres must have been quite a sight when full.

Portugal - August 2007

Leaping around Lisbon

The Guinness

Hennessy's was an Irish theme pub, set out on two floors and stuffed full of Irish paraphernalia. There we found our first person in Portugal who spoke English and ordered some drinks and sat down to celebrate finding a Guinness in Portugal, almost as easily as we had in Cardiff. The food smelt good and as we ordered some I explained my mission and asked the barman to perform his duty.

A cool Guinness in hot Lisboa

As we were eating our meal, young Patrick and his co-workers really came up trumps and bought us over some Guinness gifts; a massive Guinness hat and four pocket torches that cheekily projected a picture of a Guinness glass onto the wall. This was the first place that appeared to honestly grasp what I was up to and enter into the spirit of it all as opposed to whispering in the background that there's some nutter in the bar drinking Guinness.

Patrick pouring me a Guinness

Getting There and around

We flew from Luton to Lisbon before hiring a car and heading for the seaside village of San Pedro de Moel, a few hours drive north of Lisbon and comprising of just a few streets, handful of cafes, restaurants and shops. The sandy beach stretched for miles and the waves were crashing in. To get back to Lisbon for the day and have the Guinness we took a bus from the nearby town of Marinha Grande.

Team Makeup

A family holiday

The team - outside Hennesey's in Lisbon

Accommodation

A Keycamp chalet with a gas barbecue and plenty of board games.

Food

The first night of the holiday we ate the Portuguese speciality of Bacalhau pie made from dried cod. It was very palatable and the almond cake for pudding was even more delicious.

The following night we ventured out to a restaurant in our village of San Pedro de Moel. The waiter, a strange looking tall chap in an ill-fitting suite, made an impression on the boys in particular by his disdainful expression when we asked if the dishes came with vegetables. 'We don't serve French fries here if that's what you mean' was his retort in a pleasant style. The fish meals were very good. Margaret and I had the selection of local fish and the boys had something equally adventurous and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a real treat to see the boys being adventurous in their food and enjoying the whole experience.

Returning to Lisbon we stopped off in Peniche, a fishing port. For lunch I had sardines, a speciality of the area. It took a few minutes before I realised that they hadn't been gutted - something else for me to worry about.

The fishing town of Peniche

Sightseeing highlights

We had just half a day to explore Lisbon by the time we’d had the Guinness and our lunch. This enables us to wander through the main square and view the impressive buildings, statues and trolley buses that the city appears to claim is a tourist attraction, a bit like London buses I guess. Behind the main square a pedestrianised road leads up into the city and was lined with stalls.

The trams of Lisbon

Quirky moments

Our final day out was to Coimbra, an old University town. It was a day of ups and downs. We found the town itself no problem but then parking was a real nightmare. After driving around for a long time we ended up back on the outskirts. I stopped at a roundabout but the car behind me did differently and drove into the back of us. We pulled over and tried to sort things out. Fortunately no one was hurt but unfortunately the lady driving spoke no English. We managed to call the police somehow and when they arrived they also spoke little English. Everybody remained calm. The police said everything was ”no pronblemo”. The requisite forms were filled in and everyone shook hands and drove away - all very calm indeed.

The university town of Coimbra

Lasting Memories

The laid-back nature of the Portuguese. The fish. It was also nice to visit somewhere that English wasn’t always spoken.

A crazy looking building in Lisbon

Out of the City

One day we went to Obidos, a small medieval walled town on the road back towards Lisbon. Giant free car parks and far less crowds than the guidebooks had warned about made the whole experience very pleasant. The ramparts that surround Obidos are still intact and open to the public, the only thing being that the safety inspectors haven't yet visited. The one-meter wide path on top of the wall is fine if you have a head for heights and nobody comes towards you. On the outer side of the path is the wall but on the inside is a sheer drop down. The good thing I suppose in the olden days was that if you did fall off you fell inside the city and could be scrapped up and buried with your friends.

The walls of Obidos

The next day we went off to visit the gothic Batalha Monastery. Its looks very austere and is absolutely massive with lots of towers and buttresses. It is surrounded by a mass of granite paved area which the sun was bouncing off. The main entrance is surrounded with some 70 small statues of characters from the Old Testament. Inside we happened upon the tomb of Henry the Navigator.

The door at Batalha Monastery

Next we visited Grutas de Moeda, the Coin Caves which were discovered relatively recently in 1971 by two hunters chasing a fox. I reckon that their dog probably discovered the caves but they just didn't want to give it the credit. They then spent two months exploring and digging out the caves before presumably and hopefully flogging them off to be the tourist attraction they are today. Unfortunately there has been a bit too much interference from man for my liking with concerted floors and coloured lighting installed everywhere but there is no getting away from the fact that they are a remarkable passage of caves and equally remarkable remained undiscovered for so long. I wonder whatever happened to the fox?

Wales - July 2007

A Caper in Cardiff

The Guinness

Its not difficult finding a pub in Cardiff that serves Guinness. As with most pubs in the UK now it would be more of a challenge to find one that does not serve Guinness. Therefore, once again I targeted Irish themed pubs. Irish themed pubs hadn't been invented when I grew up in Cardiff and therefore I'd no prior knowledge so it was on to the computer to see if Google could help. It certainly could, there was a whole host of them. In the end I chose Demsey's more for its position, opposite Cardiff Castle, than anything else.

I had also dropped a line to Dempsey's before the day forewarning them of our arrival and it was nice when the landlady recognised us and gave us a warm welcome.

Iechyd da! - Cheers

 When ordering the second Guinness I invited John the landlord, dressed all in black, over to do the honours and draw out the next capital. It was a little easier explaining to a native English speaker, what and why I expected him to choose a straw out of a box and he did it very well. Next stop Lisbon, Portugal and thoughts of a summer holiday loomed.

John the barman unravelling my next destination

Getting There

This must be the easiest trip to plan for out of the fifty two destinations on the list.  I knew my way to Cardiff blindfolded and thought about making the journey more challenging by doing just that but that would no doubt have scared the other drivers on the motorway a bit.  Cardiff is my hometown, a city where I spent all my childhood years bar few. 

The old library building in the city centre

Team Makeup

Given the short notice I gave people I was impressed that people had made the effort to attend and join me for a Guinness. As well as my family there were friends from school, college and work. Thanks for coming along all.

Friends Pete, Olwen, Shaun, Helen, Carol, Susan and Ian joining in the challenge.

Accommodation

We stayed with my Mum and Dad who still live in Cardiff however they decided not to join us for a Guinness - it's not quite there sort of thing

Cardiff Docks and the Norwegian Church

Food

A traditional lunch at my parents – isn’t it strange how your Mum’s cooking always tastes so good.

Sightseeing highlights

Before going for a Guinness we went down by St John's church and the pedestrian area near the old library and then into the indoor market. The fish stall was doing grand business and I took the family upstairs to see Kelly's record stall, still under the same ownership as when I was a teenager and spending all my pocket money there. It had moved location and expanded over the years to accommodate CDs and DVDs.

Kelly's in Cardiff market - an old teenage haunt of mine

We went down to visit the redeveloped dock area called Cardiff Bay. The sun was out and so were the crowds including a group of lads on powerizer jumping stilts. The sport looked dangerous enough in itself but added to the danger ten fold by leaping up and down the razor sharp steps under the giant canopy in front of the Welsh Assembly building.

Wales Millennium Centre and Senedd

I left them watching the powerizers and ventured inside the Welsh assembly building called the Senedd and was surprised to find that I could go all the way in to the viewing gallery of the circular debating chamber itself, even on a Sunday.

The Pierhead building in Cardiff Docks

 Built of local materials such as slate and oak its has been open just over a year and claims to be environmentally friendly. Its apparently heated from the earth's natural heating, whatever that may be, and water collected on the roof is used to flush the toilets - let's hope there's not a drought. The building is topped by world's largest free rotating wind driven cowl designed to ventilate and light the chamber.

Powerizer jumping stilts outside the Senedd

Ukraine - July 2007

Keeling Over in Kiev

The Guinness

Having spent the day wandering the streets in 35°C heat I thought we deserved a Guinness. I had the address of two Irish bars, the closest being O’Brien’s. It took a little tracking down but there it was, smartly painted and looking very welcoming. After the first Guinness I explained my mission to the barman Vova. He cottoned on to his task and picked a straw out of the box unravelled the piece of paper and gave a little smile. It was Cardiff, my home town. There should be little trouble finding accommodation for that weekend as my parents live there. The O’Brien’s bar even had a Welsh flag hanging up as if it knew what was going to happen.

A Ukrainian Guinness

 Vova picking out the next destination - Cardiff next

Why does this picture make me look 12 foot tall?

Getting There and around

I had chosen to fly with Lufthansa once again, changing in Munich. There are direct flights from London but that would mean driving there and leaving the car. Kevin had never flown Lufthansa and was impressed with the leather seats, generous leg room and pristine Munich airport with its free coffee. Less impressive was the aborted take off we had at Munich. An impressively calm pilot came on a few minutes later to explain in technical language that if we hadn’t got out of the way we would have got flattened by an incoming aircraft. Those people sitting near the windows who had seen the incoming aircraft were not so calm.

Another Kiew church - this time a blue one.

Ukraine removed its visitor visa requirements a few years ago in an attempt to encourage more tourists. The immigration guards evidently hadn’t got the same message as the queue inched slowly forward. The first person to speak to me had an accent I could barely understand though he turned out to be Glaswegian and wanted to push ahead of me in the immigration queue. He’d already had three attempts at filling in the form correctly and repeatedly turned back. He was here to get married on Saturday, hopefully to a Ukrainian girl good at filling in forms.

On our first day we caught the metro a few stops into town and alighted at Arsenaina, the world’s deepest underground station. It takes two escalators and more than five minutes to reach ground level from the platform. People even sit down on the escalators as they take so long and I swear I saw one man proposing to his girlfriend.

The skyline in Independence Square

Team Makeup

Intrepid Kevin, (Kevski) joined me again on another trip. He was becoming a regular companion of mine on these trips having already joined me in Albania, Russia and Poland. He must like the East or be some sort of MI5 agent sent along to keep an eye on me.

Accommodation

Thirteen long hours after leaving Coventry we arrived weary at the front desk of the twenty-two storey Tourist Hotel in Kiev. Another twenty minutes later and we had at last arrived at last the front of the queue to check in. The receptionist looked rather surprised that we offered to pay for all four nights as if implying that people rarely stay more than a couple of nights. It was very difficult to refund monies once paid we were told and with that we paid for just two nights and headed up to our sixteenth floor oven.

Hot room with a view

Just as the temperatures in Warsaw dipped ten degrees as we arrived, here in Kiev they soared ten extra degrees to make us feel welcome. The outside temperature was 35°C but our room must have been more like 45°C when we opened the door. We flung open the window and then wondered how on earth it could be so noisy when we were sixteen floors up. The concertina-like architecture of the building and the metro station next door with trains just over a minute apart meant we were in for a noisy stay

Food

The hotel was a couple of kilometres outside the centre and given our rather thwart journey here it didn’t take much persuasion to convince me that heading back into town for dinner wasn’t necessarily a good idea. We walked around the local area to look for food but only found a McDonalds and a Ukrainian style cafeteria restaurant that was closing up for the evening.  In the end we resorted to buying a selection of snacks, high in salt, cholesterol and saturated fats, from the local supermarket and took them back to the room. It wouldn’t have been a pretty sight to anyone peering in the window (which was itself unlikely given we were on the 16th floor), two perspiring middle-aged pot-bellied men with an array of artery-clogging snacks and a cold beer laid out in front of us.  Cutting the cheese without a knife was the next challenge, ably solved by Kevin who used the metal top he’d just peeled off the tin of peanuts. As we tucked into our ‘meal’ looking at the flat city topography we had a momentary panic as a pyrotechnical display began in the night sky to the north, in the same direction as Chernobyl.  My first thought was ‘Drat, my last meal on earth was bread, cheese, peanuts, crisps and Heinz spicy tomato pickle’. We turned on the TV briefly. It was disappointing to see that the nasty habit of needing two people to read out the news had even reached as far East as the Ukraine.  Next thing they’ll be sitting on the desk rather than behind it.  Even worse, all their weather girls will be eight months pregnant as they always appear to be back home.

Kev enjoying a slap-up meal in Kiev

Sightseeing highlights

We walked the couple of kilometres south down to the Percherska Lavra monastery complex and spent much of the day there wandering around the complex of churches and caves. It was reminiscent of a smaller version of the Kremlin with its churches and fine architecture, although the Ukrainians may not like me making that comparison. The blue topped onion domes decorated in gold stars glistened in the strong sunshine. Despite what the books said, the place was far from crowded and it was most relaxing.

Another dome with old tintits in the background

Quirky moments

After leaving immigration there were some other people very keen to talk to us – the taxi touts. They were the most annoyingly persistent, difficult to shake off, not taking no for an answer touts I had ever encountered.  I told them I’d get my Dad onto them if they didn’t bog off.  Only afterwards did I read that it’s thought they are run by the Ukrainian mafia.

After getting some local currency out of the ATM we made a break for the outside still pursued by a line of touts. With no Ukrainian to our name, all signage in Cyrillic, searing heat and hassling touts, it wasn’t easy to work out which bus we should catch. A large bosomed bleached-haired lady shouted officiously and claimed to be the bus attendant and I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with her. The bus, which was scheduled to run every 20 minutes into town, eventually left after an hour, where the departure criteria seemingly being fullness of the bus rather than adherence to the timetable. The driver had plastered the inside with pictures of the Madonna and child, that is the Virgin Mary one rather than the one recently returned from an adoption spree in Africa. The pictures appeared to indicate we should all utter a small prayer for our 40km transfer into town.

A few new domes ready for installation

Lasting Memories

By late afternoon we got to have our first look at Independence Square , scene of the Orange Revolution in 2004. A gold-leafed statue on a giant pillar has since been erected at one end of the square to commemorate the push towards democracy. The turbulent nature of politics here means that the square is often still the scene of demonstrations. Dominating the square this weekend however was a giant stage still being constructed as we looked on. We initially imagined it would be a Ukrainian festival of some sort but it transpired it was being set up for Elton John. He was giving a free concert to raise awareness of the problem of AIDS.

Our view of Elton in Independence Square

A professional's view of the concert   (© Koshtu)

Out of the City

There was no going out of the capital this time. Kiev seemed such an enormous city we thought it best to concentrate on the capital itself.

There's still some austere sculpture on display