Kiev, Part 2

Church and monastery buildings of the Pechersk Lavra

The second day in Kiev, we visited the Cave Monastery (Pechersk Lavra), a site where about a dozen early Christian monks settled in the 11^th century with the intention of spreading Christianity throughout Kievan Rus. After viewing several of the monastery buildings, we descended through a long, narrow tunnel carrying candles. We passed by several caskets, presumably containing the mummified bodies of those thousand-year-old monks. The caskets had glass lids, and the bodies were wrapped in robes in such a way so that no part of the actual body was visible, so the “natural mummification” that occurred in the caves had to be taken on faith. We emerged (were disgorged) from the cave/tunnel into a shopping area where I purchased an egg painted with an icon (virgin & child).

Guide describing the Chernobyl atomic plant melt-down

During the afternoon, we visited a museum dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred some 30 – 60 miles north-east of Kiev, at a site near the borders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. I hadn't realized that it was so close to what is now Russia. A person involved in the early clean-up and remediation of the area spoke to the group through our guide, Evgeny.

That afternoon, we also visited Baba Yar, a pit where 100,000 Jews were “disposed of” by the Nazis early in WWII. The fact that the victims had been Jews was covered up after the war, and the area was memorialized by the Soviets as the site of the massacre of 100,000 Russian citizens. Later, we also visited a synagogue – not on the itinerary, but a couple on the bus asked if we could stop there. It was in our Guide to Kiev.

Grass covers the earth over those massacred
at Babi Yar

The following day, I didn't go on the tour of the folk museum, but rather stayed in the room and wrote postcards and read until early afternoon. Afterwards, I went to the post office and mailed the cards (and a couple of other cards to Lis’ family) which was something of an adventure, for which I used my spotty Russian. Then I walked on my own through a part of the city we had seen on the bus tour the day before – past the Great Gate, past Saint Sophia, across the square towards St. Michael’s, looking for the Ukrainian National Museum.

I finally found it--buying a T-shirt and a Ukranian blouse for Ella Diane along the way--but there was only about an hour left to visit the rooms before it closed. It was clearly a remnant of a Soviet-era museum, with the main entrance room, up a staircase, exhibiting a red flag with hammer and sickle and shining works depicted on either side of it. There were also a couple of paintings on either side depicting awful winter mud and chaos – perhaps illustrating the great patriotic war, which is what the Russians call WWII.

Soviet-era Ukrainian National Museum near Kiev's main square

The rest of the rooms exhibited pretty straight-forward, historical museum-type displays, with artifacts of the period ranging from pre-historic to recent times: paintings of nobility and Metropolitans (Eastern Orthodox bishops), swords, chairs, crockery, an ox-cart, etc. I hadn't realized how significant early (Aegean) civilization was in the area, but there were many early (5 – 3 centuries BC) Greek vessels and plates and amphorae.

When the museum closed, I took a quick trip to a small, wooden, rather make-shift building nearby that housed numerous gold-rimmed icons in the Eastern Orthodox style. Could they have been stored in the basement of the museum and brought out for exhibit after Ukrainian independence? No one could tell me the history of that small, wooden chapel-like structure near the museum, a huge church looming behind it on the main square of Kiev.

Small building full of icons next to the museum.

I walked so much that day that I developed a charley-horse in my left leg (calf), and it has been giving me trouble ever since. And the right leg (hip and knee) have been bothering me since the beginning of the trip (back in Berlin), so walking is becoming something of a problem, quite apart from the problems I've had breathing, especially after catching the cold in London. It seems to be improving now, though.

Kiev, Part 1

5/31/10

(Kiev, continued) The first afternoon and evening in Kiev were a blur. I know I didn’t go out to eat with my roommate, so I must eaten food from the food bag (chips and nuts and an orange, probably) in the room.

The next morning, we had a bit of an orientation to the trip as a whole and to Kiev in particular, and we were asked to choose our optional tours for the whole trip.

Then we left on the bus for a city tour of Kiev. I believe we started out with the “Great Gate of Kiev,” a painting of which was inspiration for one of Mussorgsky’s tone poems in “Pictures at an Exhibition." When we got out to explore, there was some question about where the actual gate entrance was. But I found an opening, barred by two gates with heavy, medieval, iron grill-work, and with pointed spikes at the base on either side of the stone-and-cement gate tunnel. So that was probably the gate entrance, back in medieval times, when Kiev was a fortress town. Someone suggested that this wasn't, in fact, the "real" gate of Kiev; that it had been destroyed during the war and this was a reconstruction.

The Gate of Kiev

Then we drove around the town, stopping first at St. Sophia, the most ancient church in Kiev (built during the 11^th century) and one of the few not destroyed during the Communist era. We were able to take photos around the grounds of the church, but not inside the church itself. The glittering contrasts of gold above green cupolas, and white towers rising into the blue and white sky is stunning. But going inside the church itself, with its feeling of height, the mosaic of Mary, the brilliant, gilded iconostasis with its recently constructed (Polish metalworkers) replica of the previous gate (melted by the Soviets or Germans during WWII), the gilded paintings in the cupola high above the main floor of the church, all lent the interior a truly otherworldly air. Mosaics on the wall are pale in comparison to the iconostasis, but they add a special softness to the otherwise overwhelming intensity of the alter area.

St Sophia

After we left the church, we saw a model of the city and also a statue of Vladimir the Great (“the Baptist” – or was it Yaraslov the Wise? Maybe both). We then wandered to an overlook from which we could view the city and the Dnieper River.  Leaving the church through the baroque-era bell tower, we came out onto the large main square from which we saw the reconstructed St. Michael’s church painted in heavenly blue.

St Michael's Church

Then the bus took us to another overlook from which we could see the city and the river, as well as the domes of the Cave Monastery, which we visited the following day.

Cave Monastery at a distance

That evening we heard a talk by a young Ukrainian man who seemed pretty savvy in the ways of modern Ukraine. The average monthly wage is quite low, but a lot of people apparently have cars and nice apartments. There seems to be a large shadow economy in the country, and he made it obvious that palm-greasing is standard operating procedure. He blames this modus operandi on the period of economic collapse of the USSR (in the ‘80s) when barter and bribery were the only ways to function, and these habits persisted after national freedom was achieved in 1991.

We had dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant with horseradish vodka in a tumbler to drink and smoked pig fat on bread as appetizers! A wonderful group of musicians played folk music that reminded me a lot of Klezmer music (with violin and accordion, etc.).

London to Kiev

The Great Gate of Kiev

5/30/2010

I’m staying back from activities again this evening – this time the Moscow Circus, which I saw the last time I was in Moscow in 1992, and for which my strongest emotion was pity for the bears. Hopefully I’ll have better luck this time catching up with the trip journal. I’ll begin with the Kiev pre-trip to the Russian River Cruise with Grand Circle Travel.

On the flight from Heathrow to Kiev I scanned the plane, looking for likely GCT travelers but didn’t see anyone who looked promising. I was near the back of the plane, and when I deplaned, the customs lines were very long. We had to fill out an entry form, which we hadn’t been told about on the plane prior to landing. I filled out a form while waiting in line, but when I got to the immigration counter, the man told me I had to fill out the exit side of the form as well; this had essentially identical information on it. He did, however, let me back up to the counter after I had filled it out without having to wait in line again. I had visions of losing my bag in this foreign airport, with no one here to pick me up, and not knowing what hotel I was supposed to go to. I was annoyed with my stupidity at not getting that information out of the bag at Heathrow. I didn’t remember the name of the hotel we were staying at and hoped I'd copied it in folder that I kept in an outside pocket of the large suitcase.

When I finally got to the baggage pick-up section, the only carousel rotating carried luggage of a plane from Paris. Fortunately, the airport was small, and I wandered to the last, empty carousel in the back of the room--which had already stopped--and I spied my bag near the wall beside it. I was relieved and delighted, opened the bag, got out the trip folder, tore out the page where I had written the name of the hotel, and proceeded out of the baggage area. Sure enough, no one was there to pick me up. So I asked about a taxi, for which I received two estimates: 300 and 400 grivnas (the Ukrainian unit of exchange). I got 1,000 grivnas out of a money machine, paid 400 of them to a taxi kiosk, got a receipt, and gave it to a driver who appeared from somewhere. He drove me the several (I would say at least 15 – 20) miles into downtown Kiev to the Radisson Blu.

The city of Kiev, across the Dnieper 

 

When the taxi stopped in front of the hotel, a bell hop scurried out the door and took my bags up the steps and into the hotel lobby. I felt so relieved, all I could think was, ‘No more lugging those bags through endless corridors of train and metro stations on my own. Hallelujah!’

Inside the hotel I saw a desk with a GCT sign over it and a large, pleasant-looking woman with very blond hair sitting behind it. I went up to her and introduced myself. Her name is Natasha.

“So, you have arrived already. You obviously made it here on your own,” she said, and I nodded. I got the key to my room and, when I went in, found my assigned roommate, Joan Brown, a very good-natured and pleasant woman from Texas--though originally from Missouri, I believe.