Kiev Part 2 Sevastopol, Crimea July 20, 2004 Hi Folks, Here is my next installment on our trip to Kiev. Yesterday, my birthday went well. However, we did not dress ship as we had laundry flying all day. The yacht club just installed a new washing machine, and Judy was the first to use it. Nothing is ever simple. First the door was locked and when they came with the key, it couldn’t fit. Someone climbed over a wall to open another entrance to the machine. Fortunately the instruction booklet that came with the machine was in English and Russian. Judy figured out how to operate it, but the machine was not leveled; in fact it was still sitting on its Styrofoam base. Thus when the spin cycle started the machine danced all over the floor, until Judy sat on top of it for a good vibrating experience. She did two washes and left the third until today as they had some workers come to set it up properly. Anyways, it was good to get a month’s laundry done, and free of charge. In the evening we had Sergey the marina manager and his wife on board and they brought a couple of lovely bottles of wine, an excellent Crimean Madeira and a local white wine for my birthday. Thanks sergey! I was also happy as I was able to send and receive and download E-mail. All internet cafes are not equal, and all the operations mentioned cannot be done everywhere. Sometimes I cannot send. Others, I cannot cut and paste to save on the floppy disc. Other times I cannot download attachments. Of course all the warning screens and menus are in Russian or Ukrainian, and sometimes the keyboard will only type in those languages. I had another bit of good luck in that I found a DVD rental shop, and rented Helen of Troy. So now I can watch DVD movies in English, as the movie theatres here have all the original languages dubbed into Russian. There is far more Russian spoken here in Crimea than there is Ukrainian. We have watched a couple of Black Sea Fleet Review rehearsals in preparation for Sunday’s big show. More about it later All the best, Aubrey **************************************************************************** Log #32t Kiev Part 2 Thanks to our landlady we now knew our way around central Kiev by bus, trolley and subway, good and economical forms of transport. Their subway system is clean, and some of the stations quite elegant with chandeliers, mosaics and murals. The subways and buses cost only 0.50 Grivna (about 10 cents), whereas the smaller, faster but more crowded minibuses cost more, 1.00 Grivna. Transfers from one service or bus to another were not possible. A monthly pass, good for all buses, trolleys, streetcars and subways cost only 25.00 Grivnas, (about $5.00 US). The Ukrainian name for their currency is the Hryvnia (Hv), but the Russian is Grivna, and I have tended to use the Russian names as we are more familiar with them in the English speaking world, and the coastal areas of the Ukraine, especially Crimea are predominantly Russian. The current exchange rate is $1.00 US is worth 5.32 Hv, and $1.00 Canadian is about 3.80 Hv. (We use the estimate that 1.00Hv is worth a Canadian quarter ($ 0.25) We were impressed by the depth of their subways, as we timed the escalator descents at up to 3 minutes for one level down, on a fast escalator. There are also underground passages beneath the streets leading across major intersections and to subway stations, cluttered with small stores selling all kinds of goods, papers, and fast foods. These passages do not seem to link or go beneath buildings as they do in Toronto, nor was there much sophistication in these outlets as they were cluttered and crammed. Some of the escalators had advertising to a minimal extent. Some of their subway cars had simple letter size or legal size display ads taped above the train windows. Advertising is not a strong or sophisticated service yet for this newly emancipated capitalist, post-communist country. That’s nice! Our third day was spent at the Folk Architecture Museum, 12 km south of Kiev, an interesting large outdoor park with quaint homes, windmills, smithies, wooden churches, cottages and farmsteads from the 17th to 20th centuries. These buildings were saved and moved from towns from eastern and southern Ukraine, and other regions such as the Carpathian district. It was a lovely but cool windy day out in the rolling hills of the park, going through the various homes completed with their furnishings, including a few post war homes built in the 50’s and 60’s. It was pleasant, but not a nice as a similar outdoor museum we visited on the Iselmeer (?) in Holland a few years ago. Next day we visited Babyn Yar, the site of Nazi massacres in WW II. As our Lonely Planet guide describes the horror: “On Sept. 29 – 31, 1941, Nazi troops rounded up Kiev’s Jewish population and marched them to Babyn Yar’s ravines where an estimated 34,000 Jews were massacred in 48 hours. Between 1941 and 1943 the Nazis used Babyn Yar as a concentration camp…” where an estimated 100,000 Jews, Roma, and partisans were killed. Now it is a pleasant city park where children play in the remaining gullies. Amongst the trees and pathways are a few memorials to commemorate the Jews, children and others who suffered and died here. Large scale deaths were not unknown in Ukraine. The famine of 1932 to 1933 was engineered as a social experiment by Stalin, setting up large scale collective farms with unrealistic quotas which had to be met to ship out grain and produce. No grain could be distributed until these quotas were filled, which they seldom were. Any attempt to hoard or steal food was punishable by death. Internal passports were introduced to prevent peasants from going off to other areas in search of food. Again to quote from the Lonely Planet, “Peasants starved to death under the gaze of gun wielding Communist Party activists. Entire villages died of starvation. Cannibalism was commonly reported. Soviet authorities denied for years that a famine had ever occurred. Western governments played down the atrocities as they did not want to strain ties with the new Soviet state.” An estimated 5 to 7 million people died in this enforced famine in those two horrible years! That afternoon we went into central Kiev to the St. Sophia Cathedral, originally built between 1017 and 1031, and named after Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the greatest church in Byzantium. The extravagant gold helmet-domed cathedral is a museum, ornate in the Ukrainian baroque style of the 17th century. The tall Wedgwood porcelain blue and white bell tower is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Since we were in the area, we again walked down Andryivsky Street, the one we were on our first day in Kiev. This time we knew where we were going and how to get back by subway. We picked up a few souvenirs, a patterned tablecloth, a white peasant blouse with blue embroidery for Judy, a 10 piece babushka doll and a painted egg. We wandered through the pleasant, intimate riverside of the Podil area and took a riverboat excursion trip down the Dnieper for a couple of hours before catching the subway to the train station. We arrived 90 minutes early hoping our train would be in and we could relax in our compartment. In checking the train list, the time and track number were displayed, and so we waited out at track #1 as indicated. We waited and waited and waited until about 15 minutes before departure time. The track was clear, but no train. Then Judy went back into the station and came out in a rush, as she noted on the electric board that our train was in the station but on a different track to the one indicated on the train list. So we rushed up and over to the track #5, and along the length of the train to find our car. When we got to our compartment and opened the door, there were two young women seated there. Did we have the right car, the right date on the ticket? However the girls collected their bags and indicated they were probably in the wrong place. When we got settled the train pulled out right on time. I hate to think what we would have done had we waited too long at the wrong track. We suspect the girls in our compartment had found it unoccupied close to departure time and hoped no one had reserved it so they could have a free upgrade from second or third class. Back in Odessa we stocked up on groceries at the large local market near the train station, and next day took in our final museum, the Regional History Museum. Again I found the architecture of the building and its rooms as interesting as the displays. It had several parts to it, one of which was across its pleasant courtyard, housing WW II materials, pictures and maps showing the siege leading up to the German capture of Odessa, and its subsequent liberation by Russian forces. We seemed to be the only visitors and were carefully watched by the ladies guarding each room. We then strolled through the park and the pedestrian street as our last goodbye to this lovely city. Next day, June 21, we went to the marina office to pay and use their computer for E-mail. Again, nothing is simple, as the computer periodically gave a warning window, then shut down. The girl in the office knew nothing about E-mail and was unwilling to try to help me out. I was able to read my mail, but found I could not send. Oh well, after we paid (only about $7.00 Canadian per day) the marina arranged for the officials to come down at 1200 to check us out. There was not too much confusion over what forms needed to be completed, and we were on our way with clearance to Nikolaev (85 miles away up the River Bug) by 1245. However, the information we had been given in Istanbul by Southern Flight was that we would have to check in at Ocakov at the entrance to the Dnieper/Bug delta first. Great, an additional check in; just what we enjoy! Next log