My little room at Hotel Bonitak faces a small playground, my view is of green trees, a little staircase and some hills. It is peaceful, even when the playground is full of children. The hotel offers five different types of breakfast: "Ukrainian (pancakes with sour cream and jam), "American" (eggs and sausage), "European" (omelette), "English" (porridge), or "Fitness" (yogurt and fruit).
As we wandered down the hill, we passed one particular building with lots of young men milling about outside and flags flying. The windows were boarded up and there were dark cars pulling up and depositing more men. It was obviously some kind of pro Ukrainian movement organization. The Ukrainians have a reason to worry. The Russians are coming. They had already taken Crimea, and it is obvious that they want more and think of Ukraine and a little piece of Russia.
‘If
Moscow is Russia’s heart,’ runs a Russian proverb, ‘and St. Petersburg its
head, Kiev is its mother.’ Ukrainians, of course, say Kiev has nothing
whatsoever to do with Russia – if she mothered anybody, it was the Ukrainians
themselves.
- Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid
Needless to say, I didn't try to take any pictures of that particular building. But there was this gigantic coffee grinder on a corner that was intriguing.
We started our own walking tour of Kiev with the House of Chimeras. This Art Nouveau house was built in 1903 for the president. If you look closely, you an see all the concrete creatures crawling and perched on the building. These are supposed to represent the president's hunting trophies. We couldn't get very close due to the current security situation.
Our tour continued past the Weeping Widow House and into an interesting part of town, with more art nouveau and neo-Gothic building and gates.
Ukraine has had massive political upheaval in the recent past. In February 2014, there was another revolution that resulted in the ousting of their president, Viktor Yanukovych. There were violent protests, and people died. All around Kiev, we saw memorials for various causalities of one conflict or another. I'd never been to a country where monumental and historic events were so fresh. It was a strange juxtaposition. I'd seen the news, seen the violence, the fires and the reports of police snipers on the tops of buildings...but we'd just had coffee in a nice little place near our hotel. Life goes on, even after a revolution.
I thought this sign was funny - just in case you missed the obvious deterioration.
We continued through St. Michael's Monastery, and came out the other side to see a peace gathering.
The nun on the right approached me as I was taking pictures and asked me to take her camera and go around the circle and take pictures of the people who were there. I obliged, of course. The little girls wearing the angel wings were especially poignant.
Then it was on to one of Kiev's sights, St. Sophia's Cathedral. I read about how Orthodoxy was chosen for the Ukrainian people:
…Volodymyr must at some point have decided that to keep pace
with its neighbours his empire needed an advanced religion. All that remained
was to choose which one. The first people he consulted, according to the Chronicle, were the Muslim Bulgars:
‘Volodymyr listened to them, for he was fond of women and indulgence, regarding
which he had heard with pleasure. But circumcision and abstinence from pork and
wine were disagreeable to him: “Drinking,” said he, “is the joy of the Russes,
and we cannot exist without the pleasure.” Following this disappointment, he
dispatched fact-finding missions to research the remaining options. The Jews
and Catholic Germans failed to impress. ‘We saw them performing many ceremonies
in their temples,’ the emissaries reported back, ‘but we beheld no glory
there.’ But Hagia Sofia bowled the Kievans over: ‘ the Greeks led us to the
edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether were in heaven
or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or beauty, and we are at a
loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among the men, and
their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations…’
from Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid
The gold domes and the bell tower are 18th-century additions, but the interior of the church is the most amazing part (and there were no pictures allowed inside), with original frescos that date back to 1017-31.
JC climbed to the top of the bell tower.
Inside the church, there was a modern art installation. It was a fresco made of colored eggs. I sat and looked at it for some time. The vibrancy of the colors and the details were stunning.
For lunch we went to Spotykach. The guidebook describes it as "a tribute to the 1960s - a happier (and funnier) period of Soviet history - this discreetly stylish retro-Soviet place will make even a hardened dissident shed a tear."
We were greeted with a shot of vodka, and then I ordered the sampler plate. I wasn't sure about the "discreetly stylish" descriptive. It was pretty over the top.
When we went to leave the restaurant, we decided we should take advantage of the facilities. The girl who had offered us our vodka when we arrived, showed us the doors to the women's and men's room. JC and I made plans to meet out front when we were through and went into our respective doors....only to turn and look at each other. We had entered the same room through two different doors. I peeked outside the "women's room" door and the hostess was giggling. I laughed, too. JC and I explored our mutual bathroom and found that half of the room was more feminine (a framed mirror and a tampon dispenser) and the other more masculine (wood framed mirror and a condom dispenser). There were individual stalls, again with more feminine and masculine themes. It was pretty amusing.
At one of the parks we paused in, there were these eyeballs painted on all the trees. I was taking pictures of the tree eyes, and I kind of noticed the guy who was staring at me, but it wasn't until I looked more closely at the pictures that I saw exactly how much he was staring. He kind of matched the eyes.
We continued our walk up Andriyivsky Uzviz or Andrew's Descent. It is a very steep hill with odd shaped houses and shops and alleyways lining it.
At the top of the hill stands St. Andrew's Church. Built in 1754 by an Italian architect, it is an example of traditional Ukrainian five-domed, cross-shaped church.
We took the metro back, and passed some more memorials....
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