For some places, rain is the suitable weather.
And nightfall the suitable time.
At that moment, the eternal flame for the unknown soldiers of World War II, the memorial for the Holodomor and some church, which I can never tell apart from the other churches, all aligned.
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It may be cheesy, but I actually found it cute. And the house already feels much warmer.
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Should I be worried if there are suddenly tanks in front of the house?
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There is so much to say about this place, but before I do so, I need to spend more time there, read more about it and think more. As you see from the photos, it got dark too early for me to even find all the monuments.
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Already when I got on the Ukrainian train in Poland, I noticed its patriotic coloring.
Once in Kyiv, the metro has the same branding.
And then I spotted it everywhere:
I don’t think those patriotic plastic bags are coincidence.
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I really enjoyed the Botanical Garden in Kyiv, but that little dude freaked me out.
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With the warm and sunny weather we are having in Kyiv, I thought I would go to the beach. “Hold on,” I hear the geographically gifted object, “Kyiv is not by the sea.”
Well, actually it kind of is because the Dnieper river connects the city with the Black Sea and is wide enough to allow large ships to come all the way up here.
If you want to catch a boat, this is the port, although it didn’t seem to be very active.
And indeed, there are beaches.
There used to be ice on the river in winter, as shown in this painting by Ivan Aivazovsky from 1872. But nowadays, both the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the nuclear waste dump of Prydniprovsky chemical plant are keeping the water warmer than usual.
But even ice wouldn’t have stopped the old lady I saw on Trukhaniv Island. I was sitting there, reading a book and smoking a cigar, thinking I am the only person enjoying the beach. An old lady with a woolen cap and a thick purple jacket walked down to the river, probably oblivious to my presence, took off her clothes (there was a really chilly wind which made me shiver despite wearing all my clothes), and went swimming. The exercise lasted only about ten seconds, but still, I was impressed. She got dressed again and continued with her daily routine, probably going to the post office or shopping.
The water temperate of the river in December is 3 degrees Celsius, and that’s already with radioactivity.
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“Please throw unwanted children in the trash,” this sign at Sovky Park says. Or so I thought, before reading the small print.
Pictographs can be so misleading. There is just no substitute for real language.
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“I would never go to Eastern Europe in winter.”
“You are going to freeze your butt off.”
“How stupid of you!”
These were some of the comments I received when I announced my plan to spend the winter in Ukraine.
And here I am, today, on 19 December, enjoying the sun at the Botanical Garden in Kyiv (outside, not in one of the greenhouses).
I am reading a wonderful road novel of young Polish guys exploring Ukraine, written by Ziemowit Szczerek. Thanks to Thomas Kuban for sending me this book! It’s so suitable for this trip, although I definitely won’t be drinking as much as the protagonists. Unfortunately, it’s not yet available in English, but if you read German or Polish, I highly recommend “Mordor kommt und frisst uns auf” or “Przyjdzie Mordor i nas zje, czyli tajna historia Słowian”.
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The Happy Hermit 