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!
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