UKRAINE - Blue Skies and a Bit of Sun

The thick cloud has left Kyiv today, replaced  by some blue sky and a bit of sun, prompting and increase in temperature to above zero and a rapid thaw.

Independence Square and the Dneiper river look so much better in a bit of sun.

This is St Volodymyr's Cathedral - just up the road from my hotel - another beautiful church.

This afternoon I left Kyiv and flew to Vilnius in Lithuania and I was a bit sad to be saying good-bye. To be perfectly honest, I did have some reservations about coming to Kyiv. I had it down as being one of those destinations that when the flights are booked in the comfort of your own home, looked fine on paper, but in the cold light of day would turn out to be hard work. In reality I have had a fantastic time, could easily have stayed a couple of more days and will definitely come again - when it's a bit warmer!

It has been a long time since I have been to a major capital city (London included) and have felt so safe and welcomed.  Well done Kyiv, I look forward to returning and I had now better put some other Ukrainian cities like Lviv and Odessa on my "list"

The flight to Vilnius was a short 1 hour 20 minutes. Many of you will be asking "on that short distance why didn't he go by train?" The answer is I would have loved to but unfortunately there was something in the way - Belarus!

Belarus is not a normal country, in fact I have heard it described as the North Korea of Europe which is a bit extreme, they do after all enter Eurovision! But they do have strict entry and exit rules, there is a need for a visa etc etc. City breaks to Minsk are becoming easier now, but even the Czech guys I met at Chernobyl who were going to Minsk said they had investigated the train and it just was not practical. So a short flight over Belarus to Vilnius it was.

See you all tomorrow in 2020

UKRAINE - Keeping Warm With Mulled Wine

The temperature at midday today was a "balmy" minus 4 degrees and with me not drinking coffee I was very glad of the mulled wine stalls dotted around the city for the festive period. They kept my insides nice and warm throughout the day!

I started today by walking from my hotel to the St Sophia Cathedral. This is no longer a functioning church but is run as a state museum, consequently it commands a rather hefty (for Ukraine) £6.50 admission fee. The cathedral is also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

If you were expecting me to wax lyrical about the icons, frescoes and mosaics then readers you are going to be disappointed as the thing that caught my eye was the floor. The floor did not have flagstones or something similar, instead the floor was tiled with 19th century tiles made of cast iron! The first time I had every seen anything like that in a cathedral.

The other thing that stood out was this painting of Volodymyr the Great - I like the arist's style - Volodymyr was Prince of Kyiv and responsible for bringing Christianity to the Kievan Rus.

For a working cathedral you need to walk across to the stunning St Michael's with the Golden Domes.  

Behind St Michael's there is a large park which runs along the edge of the hill that central Kyiv is built on and gives good views of the Dnieper river. There is a cleft in the hill that a very busy main road uses to work its way down to the river. This has recently been spanned by a new footbridge that acts as a further viewing platform - it even has glass floored sections.

I hope this is looking sufficiently cold for you!

Independence Square is the main square of Kyiv and is where the protests or Revolution of Dignity took place in 2014, ultimately overthrowing the government.

Everything here is very much in Christmas mode, preparing for Christmas 2020 on January 7. This two Christmases thing is all very well but I have noticed one major problem with it. It is December 30 and I have not yet seen an Easter Egg! By now I would normally have consumed several packets of Cadbury's Mini Eggs!

Kyiv looks impresseive lit up after dark.

UKRAINE - 0.1 is Normal

It snowed overnight here last night and when I left the hotel before dawn at 6:45 this morning the snowploughs and gritters were finishing their duties and the council staff were starting work on the pavements - ON A SUNDAY - Look and learn Britain!

I was up early to meet my guide and join the tour to Chernobyl. There were 9 of us on today's tour with Gamma Travel (I'll give them a plug because they were very good).

The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident happened on 26 April 1986 and the plant is a two hour drive north from Kyiv near the border with Belarus. There is a 30km excusion zone and a 10km one both of which have been depopulated. The purpose of the 30km zone is to act as a buffer area of restricted open space between the contaminated sector and the outside world. There are still people working on the Chernobyl complex and they stay in hostels in the 30km zone while they are working.  10km is where most of the danger lies.

At the 30km zone check point, our passports are checked and matched with the details on file (Gamma Travel had to apply for permits in advance) and we are given personal monitors on lanyards. These would be worn throughout the day and be handed in at the end so the authorities can log the amount of radiation we were picking up. If it suddenly increased for a large number of people, I'm guessing the tours would be stopped. At this point you can also rent hand held Geiger Counters to use for your own information during the day.

This is what the Chernobyl No 4 nuclear reactor looks like these days. Encased in this stainless steal and concrete sarcophagus to contain the radiation. The reason that Chernobyl was chosen as the site for the nuclear power station is that it was planned as the biggest nuclear power station in the world, producing electricity to export to the west. 12 reactors were planned but only 4 were actually built and switched on, number 5 was under construction and almost finished when the accident happened.

The normal reading for everyday background radiation is 0.1 All the way through the 30km zone the reading on my Geiger Counter stayed at 0.1 or there abouts, however, almost as soon as we passed the check point into the 10km exclusion zone it started to increase and once we were near the nuclear reactor it had reached 0.84 - still safe for us on a short visit but over 8 times normal. 

From the reactor we went to Pripyat a few kiometres away. Pripyat was a model Soviet city, purpose built to house workers at the nuclear plant. Those workers were considered to be high up the scale so the housing and facilities afforded them were of a much better quality than was usually available in the Soviet Union.  When Pripyat was evacuated the residents were given just 2.5 hours to leave.

The apartment blocks now lie empty and most of the trees in my pictures have grown since the accident.

This is the amusement park in the centre of the city, the dodgems and ferris wheel lie abandoned.

 

Here my Gieger Counter got up to 1.21 (12 x normal). 

Pripyat's Main Square

There are hot spots of radiation which the guides point out to those people who have hired Gieger Counters. At one hot spot my unit reached 48.3 (yes the decimal point is in the right place, 483 x normal). No photo I'm afraid because the guide told me to move!

Then it was lunch time. We were taken to a workers canteen where for the tourist groups they serve a traditional Soviet workers meal. Borsch (beetroot soup), a piece of meat (didn't want to ask what) with some mashed potatoes or polenta, a mixed salad (more beetroot - can't stand the stuff), and a piece of dry cake similar to what we would soak in a trifle - Yipee! I sat with three Czech guys who after Kyiv were heading to Minsk in Belarus - impressive!

Final stop on the tour was the Duga Over-the-Horizon Radar. These massive structures were part of the Soviet Cold War early warning system. Elsewhere they have been dismantled but here it is contaminated and therefore is still standing. They caused so much interference with tv and radio signals, causing a tapping noise, they were nicknamed in the west as Russian Woodpeckers

On leaving the 10km exclusion zone we all had to get off the minibus and stand in machines that measured our radiation levels, the bus was also checked. The same thing happened again at the 30km check point.

The whole trip was interesting, thought provoking and fun in equal measure. The most sobering thought was that the danger is completely invisible, you are relying on the Geiger counter to warn you - without that technology you have no way of knowing what is unsafe.

And to round off the day nicely - I am now the proud owner of a fridge magnet that glows in the dark.

UKRAINE - Metro, Monastery and Mother Russia

Let me start by saying that it has snowed here today and consequently at times visibility has been a bit poor - so apologies if some of the pics look at bit grey. 

First thing to do today was to ride the metro. The metro in Kyiv is very easy to use, signage is in Cyrillic and Latin script and the announcements on the trains are in Ukrainian and English. The trains are very obviously in a Soviet style - a style I call "Soviet Solid." As for paying, most people will pay using a token or smart card but when you go in look for the entry gates that are yellow, they also have the Mastercard/Visa logo on them and you can just tap a contactless bank card against the reader. My Mastercard worked fine but I bet I get a panic text from the bank when the charges go through!

I was heading for Arsenalna metro station, which fortunately was where I needed to go anyway otherwise I would have had to make a special trip. Why? Well at 105.5 metres  below ground Arsenalna is the world's deepest metro station. For a comparison the deepest tube station in London is Hampstead at a mere 58.5 metres! To access the train you take two very long escalators, a trip that takes up to 5 minutes from surface to platform. Take a look at the pic and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

Let me now dispel the myth that underground stations were built this deep so they could double as bomb shelters. Deep metro systems are all to do with the geology and topography of the area they are serving. Here in Kyiv, the city centre is built on a hill on one side of the Dnieper river. The trains cross the river at surface level on a bridge and then immediately bore into the side of the hill. For the next station there either has to be a steep gradient up from the river (never a good idea with trains) or the station platforms have to be a long way down.

After the excitement of Arsenalna metro station it is a short walk up to the monastery complex of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Starting at the Upper Lavra, you can visit the Dormition (Assumption) Cathedral - which is stunning. This was totally destroyed by the Germans in WW2 and was only fully rebuilt and re consecrated in 2000. The inside is quite dark but full of gold and icons which is typical of an Orthodox church.

Next to the cathedral is the Great Bell Tower and the church of St Anthony and St Theodosius which was the former refectory for the monastery. There was a christening taking place when I went in so I stayed and watched!

The Great Bell Tower

From here you then walk down the hill to the Lower Lavra where it all gets a bit weird. First you go into a church building, buy and light a candle. Then you go down into caves beneath the church where - lit only by the light of the candle - there are glass cases containing the mummified remains of various ancient Rus Saints. It is a major pilgrimage site in the Eastern Orthodox Church, lots of people were praying next to the glass cases - a bit difficult though for the casual Western tourist because it was quite crowded and I didn't really understand the significance of what I was looking at.

After that a little light relief is required. What better than the Motherland Monument a short walk up the road. 

Given as a gift to the people of Ukraine by Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev (remember him - big bushy eyebrows) it depicts the "Nation's Mother" or Mother Russia and of course faces towards Moscow. The reason she has stood the test of time is that the building she stands on is the National Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WW2) and as such she is a war memorial.

In the grounds around the statue are a large number of very large exhibits of ex Soviet firepower - tanks, guns, missiles, a helicopter etc. As part of the propaganda effort relating to the ongoing war in the east of Ukraine there are also some items that have been captured during that conflict such as this rocket launcher from 2014.

UKRAINE - Kiev or Kyiv?

Hello blog readers and welcome back. You now find me in the Ukrainian capital Kiev - or is that Kyiv?

To clear up the name thing - the word Kiev is the transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet of the Russian name for the city. Kyiv however, comes from the Ukrainian. Consequently these days, Kyiv is the preferred name for the city and if you are wondering how to pronounce it - then it is Keeve to rhyme with Steve.

Judging though by the English translation on menus I have seen so far, the chicken dish that is named after the city is still called Chicken Kiev - yes they do serve it here unlike Spaghetti Bolognese which is most definitely not served in Bologna!

The next thing to cover is Christmas - The country is predominately Orthodox and they celebrate Christmas on the 7th January which is a public holiday. Having said that, because there is a sizeable Catholic population, the 25th December is also a public holiday - so in theory if you want to be flexible with your religion you can do the whole Christmas thing twice with a nice splash of New Year in between.

Sightseeing will begin in earnest tomorrow, so I will leave you with a picture of my first Ukrainian train. 

The airport train from Boryspil International Airport (Did they name it after Boris?) is a fairly new thing having only been opened in November 2018. The journey takes about 40 minutes and is operated by single car diesel units manufactured in Poland. Yes folks one carriage trains. I think the service is more popular than they anticipated because the trains are very busy - standing room only. They are going to have to get some bigger ones!