Ukraine VII: Odessa

After a few days in Kiev I was ready to set off south to Odessa. The reason I was going there at all was partially because I thought it would be cool to say that I'd actually driven to the Black Sea by car, and partially because my friend Nata was going there for her summer holiday along with a girl named Alla (a colleague and friend of hers). Apparently, Odessa is the place to be in the summer for most Ukrainians with the means to travel. It had beeen suggested that we take the sleeper train from Kiev, but the thought of spending a night in such a crowded, smelly, noisy place made me sick to the stomach.

The road between Kiev and Odessa is one of the better in Ukraine, but it still had its potholes, people selling stuff and cattle grazing along the way. There were also a fair amount of police cars waiting around the bends to hook in unsuspecting drivers, but this time I managed to stay clear (I only drove like a madman when the coast was clear or when I was tailing another car, figuring they'd take him first and then not have the capacity to deal with me (this actually worked once!).

The landscape for most of the trip was pretty dull, although as we started to approach Odessa it became slightly more varied. My Ukrainian friends were pointing and talking about the lovely "hills". I just gave a cool shrug and said "in Norway, this would be considered a plain". We drove around a bit before finally finding a place to park, and went into a local restaurant to get lunch. The place was called "Kompot", and that, indeed, was their specialty - as food and as drinks (with and without alcohol). It wasn't bad, though a bit rich if you had too much.



Alla and Natasha:



As usual the food was slow, but good and cheap. After lunch I drove the girls out to a small town just outside Odessa, where they would be spending their holidays. Then I went back to try and find my hotel, the Komsomolskaya. I had booked the room online, at what I thought was a fair price for the room described, which was of course not at all what I was getting. It was ugly, mouldy, stuffy and horrible and the bathroom... a friggin nightmare. The toilet wasn't working properly (I'll spare you the details), and the old guy they sent up to fix it didn't really repair it as much as gave it a slight life extension. The shower was simply a rubber hose attached to a regular tap and the drain was partly blocked. The whole place was just filthy and yucky.









Naturally, there was no sympathy and no help to be found down at the reception desk. I was told that I could get an upgrade the next morning, but that absolutely every room was taken for now, so I just had to deal with it. I resigned to the fact that nothing would move the stonehearted, stonefaced employee behind the desk, and arranged for the upgrade - for which I had to pay an additional $60. I should mention here that the hotel has one thing going for it - all the girls I saw working in the reception area during my two days there were all stunningly pretty. But mark my words; they are heartless. Heartless, I tell you!

Ukraine VI: Yet more Kiev

Some other stuff from Kiev:

My apartment was on the street leading to Andrew's Descent, a steep decline lined with purveyors of the finest Chinese made crap, but also some decent eateries. I can't remember the name of the place my friend Natasha took me to lunch, but it had one of the best chicken dishes I've ever had. In general, food in Ukraine is very good - and cheap compared to western prices. It should be added that most places prepare the food from scratch, so it usually takes longer to get it, and service as such is often poor. But the food is yummy! I had this delicious dessert in a more fancy cafe by the entrance to Mariyinsky park:




This is Maidan Nezalezhnosti - Independence Square - where the Orange revolution took place. It's on Khreschatyk. Some find it a bit touristy, but I thought it was ok:








On the sidewalk just outside my apartment there were art students selling their paintings, some of them not too tacky:




The funicular from Mykhailvs’ka Ploscha down to the Podil area, which also has some nice streets and stores. The ride costs 50 kopek (10 US cents) and puts you very close to the river. I believe there are several companies there that offer boat tours:




Some other advice/comments on Kiev: It's still a great advantage to speak Ukrainian or Russian (which I don't) or to be in the company of someone who does (check!). I can pretty much spell my way through the cyrillic alphabet (tongue sticking ever so slightly out of the corner of my mouth, finger following the lines and taking my sweet time), and this came in handy on many occasions. In most parts of Ukraine you can get by on Russian, and Kiev is a bilingual city. The languages are generally mutually comprehensible anyway. The only place I was warned not to speak Russian was the western parts, especially the city of Lviv, which seemed to me to have something of a rivalry going with Kiev and reputedly has a general hatred of everything Russian.

People seemed to be proud of their city and proud to be living in Kiev. It has a significantly higher living standard than the rest of the country (though still poor by Norwegian standards) and I kept hearing that "everything is twice as good in Kiev". Anyway, it was more than good enough for me. Kiev is definitely worth a visit and it's definitely a city I'm going back to someday, though I suspect I'll be arriving by plane, not car the next time.

Ukraine V: More Kiev

Kiev is a very green city - I was told it's the city in the world with the highest percentage of area devoted to parks, forests, etc. It' s also a BIG place, officially some 3 million people - unofficially maybe double that. It is large in size as well, lots of places that would be considered "suburbs" in the west are within the city limit. I especially liked Mariyinsky park, which contains the famous "Lover's Bridge" and is flanked by the Lobanovsky Dinamo Kiev stadium on one side and the Presidential Palace (an 18th century baroque construction) and the Parliament on the other. Nice place for a walk, with views of the city and many of the suburbs - it gives you a feeling of the size of the place.

The suburbs and the river:






Along the Dniepr River there are sandy beaches and the Hidropark is reputedly a great place for picnics, family fun, etc (I didn't go, since I'm still afraid of being harpooned).




An outdoors amfitheatre in the park:




The presidential palace (Baroque) and the Parliament building (Neo-Stalinist):






The main street is called Khreschatyk, and it's got nice buildings, plenty of fairly modern stores and several nice cafes and restaurants. Ideal for people watching and getting a sense of the atmosphere of the city. It is still a place of great contrasts - most of the cars are surprisingly new, which my friend Natasha explained was due to the fact that only a couple of years ago Ukrainians discovered the concept of personal consumer loans. This led to an explosion in the number of cars, especially new & shiny ones on the streets of Kiev. There are, however still plenty of rusty, dirty old Ladas and the likes polluting the air.

There's also a decidedly generational gap in clothing and such. Most young people dress and behave like westerners (not always a good thing...) and cell phones are absolutely everywhere. On the other hand, you still see old ladies with their traditional headscarves, some of them begging on street corners. I don't usually encourage begging by giving, especially since there is absofuckinlutely no need for it in a country like Norway, or indeed any other place in western Europe but I feel somewhat more liberal towards it in a place like Ukraine. I was and remain all in favor of stomping out communism wherever it rears its ugly head, and the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the great victories of civilization (alongside victory in WW2 and the invention of soft toilet paper). Still, many ordinary people pretty much got their existence turned upside down in a very short time, and some saw a significant worsening of their living standards. Through no fault of their own they had been formed by an evil empire and had no way of coping with the new ways. The old women on the streets of Kiev are not the professional beggars or gypsy thieves who have turned begging into an industry in the West, they are people who have likely worked very hard all their lives but have now fallen on hard times. Spare them a thought, and if possible some change, mmmkay?


From Khreschatyk:








Some random Ukrainian babes along the street (in some of the touristy places there were actually people handing out brochures for "marriage companies"):

Ukraine IV: Kiev

Ok, I've already bored you with my tales of woe about the crappy apartment I rented, so let me now wax lyrical about the city of Kiev. Well, maybe not lyrical. It's a nice place to visit and I'm sure it will be even nicer once everybody older than 30 has been replaced, so that one might reasonably expect to find a fair number of English speakers.

I was lucky enough to know someone in the city - the formidable polyglot Nata, with whom I'd been trading insults online for several years. She's fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and also speaks English, German and Spanish (and probably more). A very convenient person to know!

Most of Kiev was bombed/shelled pretty heavily during WW2, but fortunately it was not rebuilt in the typical neo-stalinist style of ex-commie cities (Warszaw and St Petersburg come to mind). The streets are as clean as anything you'll find in the west, and there are some really nice buildings to be seen. One ever present fixture is the Orthodox cathedrals, there are several of them and they're all very colorful and grand looking:






Needless to say, I couldn't be bothered to set foot in them, though I did visit the former cave monastery of Pechersk Lavra, which has been turned into a museum area (some run by the church, some by the government). I didn't go down into the caves, but did enjoy the incredible museum of miniatures and the historical museum (which was somewhat less than incredible). One of the churches on the site:




I also went to the outdoors part of the War Museum (we came too late to go inside), which mainly contains old Russkie tanks and guns and such, plus a bunch of stone reliefs in the typical heroic worker style:






The indoors part of the museum is housed inside this HUGE "Motherland Statue" - quite impressive:






Yours truly surrendering to a T-55:

Ukraine III: Coming to Kiev

I arrived in Kiev way later than planned, and for some reason I had not been able to use my cell phone to get in touch with the company I was renting an apartment from (I had booked a place in a very central location, with a phone, spacious living room/bedroom, a small kitchen etc). I'll spare you the details of driving alone into a city of 3 million where all the street signs are in the Cyrillic alphabet, suffice it to say I was very proud of myself for finding the right street after stopping just twice to ask for directions.

I should take the time here to note that although most Ukrainians speak no English (and most of the ones who do speak very little and poorly), they make up for this by being very friendly and helpful. After parking I stopped a young couple to ask for directions to my apartement, and when they understood my predicament they used their own cell phone to call the rental company and insisted on waiting with me until they arrived. They absolutely refused any payment for the use of the cell phone.

I should also take the time to point out something I believe I've mentioned before on this blog - Eastern Europeans are usually very friendly and helpful when you meet them in a social context. But they are inflexible, incompetent and downright fraudulent when they're acting in an official capacity, be it as a civil servant or as a private company employee.

Since I had not been able to call ahead about my delay, the apartment I had booked had already been let out. Fortunately they had another place just a few minutes away. At the new place I was given keys and instructions by the American husband of the woman who owned the rental company - he was the one who told me what to do about traffic tickets - and all seemed fine at the time. I was just happy to have made it to Kiev in one piece, and on the surface the apartment seemed nice and the people renting it competent and helpful. Sadly, it was not to last.

Again, I'll spare you the details of my attempts to correspond with them and get the various flaws of the apartment fixed. The phone I had been promised was nowhere to be seen, which meant I had to use my Norwegian cell phone to contact them (expensive!) and the faucet in the shower was so leaky, most of the water just fell to the floor. This meant I had about 2 minutes of lukewarm drizzle to shower in before the water got ice cold. They kept stalling all week with lies and promises of plumbers, bringing a phone, etc, etc, and when I finally left the place they didn't even have the guts to show up and get the keys from me - they were left on the kitchen table with the door open. I had paid cash in advance, and the company didn't have my credit card number so I hope someone cleaned out the place before the bastards arrived.


The leaky faucet:

Ukraine II: On the road again

Ok, I'm FINALLY writing the rest of my travel story from my insane drive to Ukraine last year. I've already blogged about the Oslo - Berlin - Poland stretch for Saturday-Monday here.

Tuesday I drove to the Ukrainian border, alongside miles of parked trucks waiting to get in. I was very happy they had separate lanes for cars. Upon arrival a soldier wrote down my registration number and the number of passengers in the car (1) on a small scrap of paper. Despite his instructions that I absolutely, positively HAD to keep this little piece paper, I managed to lose it in the ten minutes it took to travel the 50 feet to the border checkpoint. I never even left the car, and to this day I have no clue as to how I did it. Clearly I have a talent for these things.

The guy at the immigration control gave a weary sigh when I explained that I had in fact lost the paper, and he then had to get out of his booth, track down some more paper and then painstakingly write the same useless information on a new, tiny scrap which he then stamped in red ink. I was then waived through with no further information. Imagine then my surprise when I came to the last checkpoint and was told I had to go back and get a BLUE stamp on it - for CUSTOMS, you see.

So I backed up the 50 or so yards to the main buildings and tried to get me a blue stamp. This was easier said than done. None of the many soldiers hanging around spoke English, but fortunately I was not alone in my quest, lots of Poles and Ukrainians were also stuck waiting for it. After five minutes a grumpy woman finally emerged from one of the side buildings, still wiping the crumbs of her lunch from her ugly mug. Needless to say, none of the cars got even a perfunctory check, she just stamped a dozen pieces of paper and went back inside again. Also needless to say, the guys at the final checkpoint just glanced at my red & blue stamps and waved me through. There was no point to the whole procedure, it just had to be done according to proper rules and regulations.

I'll save you the tales of woe connected with driving into Ukraine without enough hard currency on hand, suffice it to say I was very happy and very hungry when I finally reached a city big enough to have an international ATM. Having filled up on food and gas I stopped and asked for directions to get back on the main road, and probably provided entertainment for the rest of the month to a couple of young people walking their babies in strollers. They spoke maybe twenty words of English between them, and the directions were given (and received) using a combination of hand signals and sounds that to an uninitiated bystander probably looked more like we were all having brain seizures at the same time.

Ukraine is generally flat and boring to drive through. Giant forests and huge plains pretty much make up the landscape, and the many tiny towns and villages are quite dull, grey and worn down. As in Poland I could see (mostly old) people walking their cattle to graze from the grass along the roadside, and some places they were selling their local produce out of buckets or carts. I'm willing to bet their style of clothing hasn't changed much for a couple of centuries.

I'd been told that the speed limit on the motorways was up to 120kmh (75mph), so as I was on a four-lane highway I felt safe in doing 110. Road signs are few and far between in Ukraine, but I honestly thought I was on a motorway until I came around a bend and was promptly waved in by a couple of police officers. It turned out I was in a "town zone" - marked exclusively by a Ukrainian sign, not a number - and had been measured doing 108 kmh in a 60 zone. In Norway this would probably have meant jail time, or at the very least I'd have lost my license. Here they wrote "150" on a piece of paper - meaning I had to pay 150 Hryvna (=$30). My lowest denomination was a 200 Hr bill, which the policeman promptly put in his breast pocket (aka his pension fund). I was then given a firm handshake and sent off without any change or receipt.

I later found out that even this small amount was way too much. Apparently, since they know the odds of getting a foreigner to appear in court, local cops never push the issue of traffic tickets to the point of actually issuing them - they will only harass you for a while. Therefore, one should always keep a 20 Hr note ready to give them after arguing for a couple of minutes. That way both you and the Ukrainian government save face and money.


From the border area - No trumpet playing allowed!

Brief update from Kiev

Yes! I made it here alive! Brief summary of the trip so far:

Saturday: Norway-Berlin. Found a cheap motel without any hot water, but since there was a huge gas station with showers just 200 meters up the road, that was no problem. However, the house party they were having in the basement until 1AM was.

Sunday: Completely missed the intended exit into Berlin, which would have taken me to my hotel. Instead, through sheer dumb luck I ended up outside the Altes Museum, where I intended to go anyway. I spent several hours browsing through their wonderful Egyptian collection, and finally fulfilled my old dream of seeing the famous Nefertiti bust. It is every bit as stunning and lifelike as pictures make it out to be.

In the evening I hooked up with a couple of Dutch hitchhikers, who I'd agreed to take with me to Lublin, Poland (see hitchhikers). They were very nice people, and we had a pleasant dinner and conversation, much of it centering on the numerous similarities between Netherlands and Norway.

Monday: We navigated our way out of the road hell that is Berlin, and set off for Poland. T'was a long drive through mainly flat and boring landscape (there were shouts of joy every time we saw a hillside...) and a lot of jokes regarding the general standard of the Polish countryside. One of the Dutch suggested they could have been the set for Borat's hometown.

I dropped them off at their campsite and almost immediately picked up a couple of Polish hitchhikers. This turned out to be a fortunate move, since they were able to spot my hotel, whose sign was written in such a ridiculously embroidered writing, I wouldn't have found it in a million years.

I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The food was quite tasty, but the waiter looked like it hadn't quite dawned on him yet that he would no longer be sent to Siberia for talking to westerners.

Off again

My travel foot is twitching, so I'm off again... driving to Ukraine Saturday morning! Stopping over in Berlin Sunday, on to Poland Monday, then off again to Kiev on Tuesday... then Saturday next week I'm driving to Odessa together with an Ukrainian friend and her colleague, then I'll start driving home Monday... going through Moldova, where I'll probably spend a night. I'll probably be back Thursday two weeks from now (if I make it back alive at all).

Travelblog: Northumbria

Wednesday I drove on to Lindisfarne aka Holy Island, which holds the dubious (in my view) title of "Cradle of Christianity" in northern England. The monastery here was one of the most important in all of England until the vikings raided their asses in 793, an attack commonly considered to be the first proper viking attack on the British Isles. The old Anglo-Saxon church was later rebuilt in Norman style, but that too is now in ruins (the proper state for any religious building if you ask me, which you probably won't).




One of the most important of these early morons/monks was St Cuthbert, who for large parts of his time here lived in isolation on this tiny island just off the coast of Lindisfarne. Mentally, I immediately renamed him St Nutbert.




Nice, pastoral image, eh?




The road between Lindisfarne and the mainland is often flooded. There are tables posted on either side to show when it's safe to drive out. The view at low tide:

Travelblog: England... and Scotland again

I drove on south alongside Loch Lomond, then across to Edinburgh before turning south again to Cornhill, a small place about 30 minutes west of Berwick upon Tweed (England). The hotel I had booked was an old manor house, very stylish and all, but the experience was somewhat ruined by a huge stain on the bed, which ran all the way from the top sheet down through several layers of blankets into the matress itself. Yuck.

Rather than pay the exorbitant £35 the hotel charged for a dinner, I ventured out to find some cheap pub grub. Within five minutes I found myself in the tiny Scottish border town of Coldstream which advertised itself as the "first real border toon" if I remember correctly. Here I had one of the best, positive surprises of my traveling life. I went to a cozy little pub called the Besom and ordered something called Moroccan chicken. This turned out to be possibly the best meal I've had on the British Isles. The sauce was honeybased and the taste was simply divine. I had just enough shame in me not to order a second full dinner, and settled for stuffing my face with their delicious cheesecake instead. If you're ever in the north of England or the south of Scotland, try this place!

Travelblog: Drive

The rest of Tuesday was one long drive... I decided to take the long route south, and drove all the way to the west coast, through places like Fort William and Glencoe. The Highlands are nice, and the landscape reminded me a lot of the Norwegian Highlands and the coastal areas of the north.

This is a memorial to British Commando soldiers, many of whom received their WWII training in the Scottish Highlands.




Them hills be STEEP.




You're mine, all mine. All the digestible parts of you anyway...




Is nice.

Travelblog:Loch Ness

Tuesday I bid farewell to Inverness and set off towards Loch Ness. After 40-45 mins I arrived at Castle Urquhart, which is a famous tourist destination. The old castle ruins overlook the Loch, and it's a pretty scenic place.




As proper castles do, it had a crummy little prison cell in the wall.




In one of the rooms, a pair of swallows had built a nest above one of the spotlights. The birds were precision flying in and out of the doorway, narrowly missing the tourists. The little ones where chirping and squealing their greedy little hearts out for the grub the parents were bringing in. I managed to get a pic of them in full hysteria mode, beaks wide open just as one of the adults come flying in. They look more like aliens than birds...




I spent a good 90 minutes out there before realizing that I'd forgotten to hand in the hotel keys. So back to Inverness to drop off the keys before setting off alongside Loch Ness once again...

Travelblog: More Inverness

After Culloden and the Clava Cairns, I drove up to a tiny village called Strathpeffer to have a look at the Highland Museum of Childhood. Spent about 45 minutes up there, a small but informative museum that shows you children did indeed have a life before Nintendo. The museum is situated in an old railway station which also houses some crafts shops, a wood carver and a small cafe. The surroundings are nice, and there are some walks to be had in the area. On my way back I stopped at a tourist information center along the highway and again showed that I can't be trusted with money. I bought no less than 21 calendars as gifts for friends and colleagues back home (in my defense they were discounted and really, really nice...)

In the afternoon I drove out to Black Isle (which is not an island, but a peninsula). My main goal was the clootie well just outside Munlochy: "The Clootie well, on the A832 just behind the village, is of much more ancient origin. It was originally the home of a fairy to whom a gift of cloth was given before drinking the health giving and luck bestowing water. The well was later incorporated into the Christian religion, and became known as St. Boniface's Well. The trees and bushes for some distance around are festooned with rags, and a visit into the trees beyond the well is a somewhat eerie experience."




Eerie indeed. It is of course incredible that presumably educated, modern people continue with this idiocy, but then people still vote Socialist, so one shouldn't be surprised I guess. When the reward is a percieved peace of mind, the human species has always demonstrated a frightening capacity, even desire, to be fooled.

After the clootie well I drove out to the cozy little village of Fortrose, where I had a decidedly overpriced and mediocre dinner at a local restaurant called The Anderson. Nice people, but their steak was partially burnt and the vegetables had a bitter aftertaste to them. Still, Monday was an eventful and busy day; a good start to my trip!

Travelblog: Inverness

Touched down at Edinburgh airport Sunday and had a very tense drive up north to Inverness. It takes some time getting used to driving on the WRONG side of the road, and the wind and rain didn't make the task easier.

The guest house was a nice little place, a privately owned house run by an elderly couple. Very nice people, and Inverness was a surprisingly nice town, not too big, with a genteel atmosphere. It is one of Europe's fastest growing cities due to its reputation for good schools, low crime and good job market.

One surprising factor was the local accent. I'd expected the usual unintelligible mumbling and throat clearing sounds, something like Glaswegian on steroids, but it's quite the opposite. The Inverness accent is actually the Scottish accent closest to southern English, and I had no problems at all understanding the natives.

Monday I drove out to Culloden battlefield, where the Scots had their hairy, blue asses handed to them by the Redcoats in 1746. The military campaign of 1745-6 was an attempt to bring back on the British throne the papist branch of the Stuarts, personified this time in "Bonnie Prince Charles", one of the most incompetent, self-important idiots ever to contend for the job, and that's saying something. His idiocy was a great part of the reason why the Scots were crushed, and good riddance to him... although when you think about it, the Kraut (Hanoverian) branch weren't much of an improvement on things. In 1760 George the 3rd became king and managed to lose the American colonies and even his mental health in a few years. But that's another story.

Some pics:

The battlefield as it looks today.



Our guide, Mike who was funny, knowledgeable and clever. I highly recommend paying the money for a guided tour.



Less than five minutes from Culloden is the bronze age burial site of Clava Cairns. These burial mounds are 3-4000 years old.

Ay up!

So, it's off to Britain I go... once again. The summer holiday is just around the corner, and yours truly will spend almost two weeks traversing Scotland and England, hopefully on the right (meaning the left) side of the road.

I'm flying in to Edinburgh Sunday afternoon, then I'll drive straight up to Inverness for a couple of days. Then down along Loch Ness, before going southeast to Berwick-upon-Tweed (kinda sounds like some sort of Gentlemen's wear, doesn't it? Gotta love them English placenames!).

After Berwick it's steady on down the coast to Whitby, Robin Hood's Bay and Scarborough before turning inland to a couple of days in York, where I'll leave the rental car. Then I'm taking an overnight bus to London, staying there for three days and flying out of Stansted Thursday, July 5.

Not sure what my internet status will be, but I'll try and keep you posted, dear fans!

Brief whining about movies

I didn't think it was possible, but they've actually managed to make Pirates III boring. Even more boring than Spiderman 3, which in turn was more boring than Hot Fuzz, which was kinda ok but a huge disappointement compared to the highly misleading previews I'd seen. This year's hypes have all been sadly disappointing, and I'm biting my fingernails down to the bone in fear of what they've done to Die Hard 4, a franchise I've always loved. Yippee-ki-yay!

One down...

Moral Majority founder, Christian fundamentalist and all-round Neanderthal numbskull Jerry Falwell has died.

In other news, a spit roast is being held in Hell tonight.