Raving Amicks

From Munich, we flew in to the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, where Vlad’s uncle kindly picked us up. The next day, we wandered out to see Kiev’s Golden Gate, which was a lot of fun to climb inside. Nearby was the kitty statue pictured here with me.

To get to the Golden Gate and just about everywhere else that we visited in Kiev, we went by subway. Subways in Ukraine tend to be highly stylized, with mosaics and marble and granite used to beautiful effect. This seems to be fairly common in eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the trip. A few subways were also very deep, presumably for protection against nuclear warfare, with high-speed escalators just to get people in and out in a reasonable amount of time.

We also visited the Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra, which is a collection of temples and cathedrals that includes a massive underground system of caves. We went with Vlad’s aunt Tanya (pictured with Mindy, Vlad and I) and cousin Oleg (who held the camera). Unfortunately, though we were able to explore the temples and cathedrals, we just missed the caves (they close a bit early). We’ll make sure to see them next time!

Next we went with Tanya and Oleg to their dacha, west of Kiev. That’s where we are in the picture. Everywhere we went with them they would have us try some of their favorite Ukrainian food. Oleg taught us a new card game, with which we’ve subsequently had success entertaining our friends. There was also an extremely awesome, rickety, old bridge that was originally built for tanks to cross the river. Now, it’s amazing just to see someone take a bicycle over it. Mindy and I braved it about half-way across.

Vlad’s grandma also invited us to visit, so we took a train even further west of Kiev. The name of the town escapes me, but it was a smallish rural town. There, we endured meal after grueling meal of overflowing dishes made with the freshest ingredients in existence. Mindy took as many notes as she possibly could. When we weren’t occupied with stuffing ourselves, we explored the local ruins.

Pictured is an old cathedral that was bombed maybe during WWII. How do we know? There’s a big unexploded shell sticking out of the outside wall. It’s very cool to walk around in, though. I’ve never seen anything like it. About a hundred meters away, is an old (older?) castle that was just as amazing. We could wander around in old rooms that seemed to appear from out of the earth. We encountered some cows tied up in what must have been the castle courtyard.

Occasionally, between our adventures, we hung out with Vlad’s grandpa. He also did his best to stuff us with obscene quantities of food. He lived on the floor above us (the building included both apartments and hotel rooms). Vlad had to do a lot of translating, but it mostly involved us eating more and finding Vlad a wife.

We spent time with Vlad’s other aunt Luba and cousin Bogdan. Bogdan tolerated us while we hunted for fur hats. Later, Luba invited us to ride on their sailboat, while Bogdan was busy studying. Apparently, Luba’s husband is a world-class sailboat racer, so we really got going! I didn’t feel so good afterwards, so I’ve included a picture of me still feeling good beforehand. As usual, they fed us all kinds of food on the sailboat. Shortly after, we departed for Copenhagen, Denmark.

I’m not going to say much about Copenhagen, since we were only there for a day, but we were very impressed with their parks and playgrounds, especially Mindy. It was also the one place in Europe that we remembered to purchase beer and wander around in public drinking it. Mindy stuck a flower in my hair for some reason.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Adventure, Food, Friends, Holidays, Means of Transit, Pictures, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.