The Wild East

"She suddenly decided to conduct an impromptu tour herself, pocketing the proceeds"

We had an enjoyable time in Kiev. We visited the Chernobyl and Afghan War museums (which was my personal favourite – fantastic photographs and military vehicles on display and told more from the Soviet side), took a tour round the St Sophia Cathedral complex. I think we both managed to go in for the student price, though it was a struggle for Taylor. No photographs were allowed and there were guards everywhere enforcing this rule. Breaking these rules resulted in immediate deportation from the premises.

We ventured over towards the underground cave complex, which needed a further ticket to get a tour. The tours were in Russian only. We were not allowed to join one ($0.5 each) with the excuse that “we would understand nothing”. Real reason = foreigners have to pay more. The ticket clerk, who spoke quite good English, said we would have to pay $10 each for an English-speaking tour, which we refused. Then she asked us how much we were prepared to pay. We offered $4 and she suddenly decided to conduct an impromptu tour herself, pocketing the proceeds.

On the way back we headed on a trolleybus and waited for the conductor to appear so we could buy a ticket. No conductor appeared. The three men in leather jackets to the left of us started grinning, which became broader when they heard English. I sensed we were in for trouble. Then they flashed passes at us and announced they were ticket police. They said “sorry, sorry law of Ukraine, you pay fine” They asked us for the price of 40journeys. MT demanded a receipt, and then pointed out that the fine was actually 10journeys...nice one Taylor.
A neat trick: remove all the conductors from the tourist buses and put traffic police on them instead. The tourists (mainly Ukrainians and Russians) then have to buy a ticket from the driver (who has probably conveniently run out or refuses to sell them one). The tourists then get fined for travelling without tickets...a healthy profit for everyone, except the poor tourist.

Museum of Ukrainian economic achievements – maybe a contradiction, but the museum was near our hotel in the outer suburbs and was staffed by a nice woman. She spoke no English but gave us a long tour in Russian. I understood barely 10%, MT probably almost nothing, but she would continually praise us for our level of russian. She was impressed that I would be teaching English in Lithuania in a few months time.

Jack Frost, a film about a psychopathic snowman, deserves a special mention. We watched this film one night after coming back from a bar early. MT was much more of a fan than me, but I’m intending to watch it properly sometime. We really should have been out in a bar/club, but were put off by being so far out of the centre.

Trying to get out of Kiev was a problem. All the buses to Odessa were fully booked up. The dragons at the ticket counter were beyond anything me and Mark had ever experienced before. There is normal Eastern European rudeness and surlyness but this was an encounter with the professionally rude. when you finally made it to the window there was usually someone behind prodding you in the back and telling you to get the f**k out of the way in Ukrainian. I did wonder whether we’d ever get out of Kiev. We managed to get a bus on a Monday afternoon, which would get us into Odessa at midnight, not ideal but better than nothing.

On the bus to Odessa our travelling companians were Ukrainians going on holiday to the Black Sea. There were two girls both quite good-looking and aged about 19-20ish sitting behind us. One wore a red dress and the other one a green dress. Taylor noted that Green dress had ‘funny looking eyes’. She had blond hair and looked very slavic, but her eyes were slightly slanted, which I presumed to be a characteristic of the tatars – a minority people living in Central Russia and parts of Ukraine, distant ancestors of Ghengis Khan I think. The bus was fairly battered and cramped and the seats in front of us were pushed back into our faces, which always seemed to happen wherever we went.

After a few hours a Mr Bean film started. Red dress, the better looking of the pair, sitting directly behind Mark started to laugh very loudly. The laughter continued and soon began to sound more like the exhaust of a motorbike. Taylor rolled his eyes and began to mutter under his breath. I turned my headphones up (listening to a cheesy Ukrainian pop tape I had purchased the previous day). The film continued and Red Dress started to laugh more and more. Soon these cackles of laughter were lasting a good 20-30seconds and that started Green Dress off into hysterics. The spirits of the passengers lifted as people started to laugh at the girls' laughter, which made them laugh even more. Even me and Taylor began to laugh a bit and the journey didn’t feel so uncomfortable.

We got to Odessa in the pitch dark, and paid 8HR (a pound)for a taxi to the centre. It was nearly 1am and we’d been turned back from 4 hotels before we found somewhere. Pricey at $30/night, but quite good quality

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