Kyiv, Ukraine

Our flight arrived very late. The directions given by the hostel gave the wrong bus number, then neglected to tell us that they were located behind a big apartment building. Right off the bat we found out how willing Ukrainians are to come to the rescue and the first person Adam used his Russian on answered him in English. It must have been midnight before we were settled in and the showers were barely lukewarm. Not a good start.

Ukraine and Poland are the hosts of the Europe Cup soccer tournaments. Sweden played and the Kyiv was expecting 100,000 Swedes to invade. There probably haven't been that many here since Sweden occupied Russia centuries ago. It was an exciting time, especially when Ukraine won. I didn't hear fireworks but heard horns till the wee small hours.

We went to the St Michael and Ste Sofia churches with all the onionlike spires. I was most impressed with Ste Sophia's because of the restoration process. This church is the first Russian Orthodox church and dates back to roughly 1000AD. It has undergone many changes since then,  surviving a lot of abuse and neglect over the centuries. Graffiti was even found dating back to the 1100s. At some point, a well intentioned restorer decided to repaint the frescoes in oil and it was poorly done. Then, in the 1960s, it was decided that these frescoes were not 'real art' and they were whitewashed over. That was easy enough to remove but not so the oil. The walls are divided in a haphazard way between the original fresco and the oil 'repairs'. That in itself is interesting. Then there are the cut outs, areas where the old was exposed and enclosed in glass so people could see the earliest construction. The old flooring was rough stone but the new is pressed iron tile. Sections of wall are exposed to show what is underneath it all, inside and out. Then there are the usual burials of church officials and the royal quarters upstairs. Some of these old churches have false walls that open into a stairwell where they took the church treasures into hiding when attack was expected. We were not allowed to take photos, as is the case in a lot of these churches, and people were positioned all over the place to make damn sure this rule is not broken.

Our first day out we were caught in the strangest storm I've ever taken shelter from.The sky grew really dark, it rained sheets that came in waves, the thunder was loud and a continuous roll that went on for the duration of the storm. We took shelter with an old couple under an eave. When it started seeming like it might last forever, them man took off his shoes and socks as his wife gave me embarrassed smiles, then they ran for it. We followed them into what I thought was a metro but turned out to be a huge, sleek, modern underground shopping mall.

Ste Sophia Bell Tower

Ste Sophia from the bell tower

A monastery I can't remember the name of.

St Michael's