Харкiв

I woke up at 5:44 when Jonas thought we were in Kharkiv, but weren't. I fell back to sleep.

Woke up at 6:20 when we actually had arrived in Kharkiv, end of the line. We packed up our stuff and left.

We wandered the gorgeous soviet-era train station in search of luggage storage. Our plane didn't leave for 9 hours. 

Thank god for my space bags! I packed an exorbitant amount of luggage into vacuum space bags for this trip, which meant my backpack is absurdly bulky and heavy. As such, it wouldn't fit into the lockers at the airport storage facility. Until, that is, we took the space bags out. Then both of our bags fit into the two tiny lockers and, for 13грн, we locked our stuff. We were made to make and remember a code for the locker combination locks. One letter and 3 numbers. I picked A-0-0-7, Jonas picked A-6-6-6.

The sun was coming up, we found a nearby cafe and got some caffeine in our systems. By 7:30, we were wandering the city.

We had no idea what the city had to offer, so we got on the metro and took it to a central crossroads between lines. The stop we chose was the University, and it couldn't have been more stereotypically dead at 8am on a Sunday if it were a university anywhere else.

We found a little Бистро by the station and enjoyed an odd-tasting schwarma.

We wandered a bit, stumbling by chance on the one place I wanted to see in this city, Svobody Square, the large communist main square that's a prerequisite for any soviet city, complete with a gigantic statue of Lenin. Ukrainians brag that it's also the largest square in Europe, though in reality it is the 6th largest (or 2nd, depending how you count Russia). The largest is Parade Square adjacent to the Palace of Culture in the center of Warsaw, which I walked through unwittingly with Judson weeks ago. The four between the squares Parade and Svobody are in Russia, which some people don't count, putting Russia in the Eurasia category, not the European one.

We found a coffee shop in a modern mall called F-Club. Another drink apiece brought us to 9:15.

From here we walked east on Ivanova to Pushkinska, then south. The goal was to find a synagogue I discovered on trip advisor - I was curious and Jonas had never been in a synagogue. 

We tried mapping it, and thought it was close, but it wasn't. We got to Pushkinska at number 62, and needed 12. So we walked and walked in the -10°C (15°F) windy weather for about a kilometer.

We found the synagogue, a beautiful old building with a gate and large menorah outside. A guard stopped us after we passed the gate, and we had to show out passports to get into the building. Since anti-semetism is not uncommon in this part of the world, guards can be necessary in synagogues.

Like I mentioned above, Jonas had never been to a synagogue before (I'm the only Jew he knows). So he got a rare treat. We walked into shul to find about 15 orthodox men praying in full garb - yarmulke, tefilin and tallit. It was a beautiful sight -- for Jonas because he felt like he was seeing something real instead of the museum-like feel of most European churches; for me because I am amazed there are still enough Jews for a minyan in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in such a beautiful and apparently in damaged synagogue. The only explanation I can think of is perhaps Germany didn't get quite this far into Ukraine, but I don't know.

We walked a bit farther to the metro and went back to the station. We were pushing 11am, and were more than exhausted. Stopped again at the coffee place, where they were now filming some sort of Ukrainian movie. We're probably in the background of the scene.

We got our bags from the
train station and, following the directions Peter had found for us on ever-trustworthy Wikipedia, took the metro to Проспект Гагарiна, then boarded the number 115 bus bound for the Аэропорт for 2.5Грн each.

We slept a bit on the bus, so when we got off at the last stop, we weren't quite at the airport. We had passed it.

Fortunately, we weren't far from it, and walked back the way we had come, around the corner, and across the street. Airport.

It was about 12:30, and our flight was at 4:25. A bit early for my tastes, but Jonas needed to nap (didn't get much sleep last night on the train) and wanted to be extra sure we'd make it on time.

We sat down at a cafe inside the main (well, only) terminal. Jonas slept for an hour while I nursed a freshly squeezed orange juice and watched the bags.

About 1:45 they started letting us check in, and we did. When I weighed my bag, I was told it was 23.6kg, 3.6kg overweight. But, I quickly pointed out, I had prepaid for extra weight on the website so as to avoid extraordinary fees in the airport. Planning win!

We got through security and customs and found ourselves by the gates. All 4 of them. The departure board proudly displayed every departure that day: Istanbul 16:25.

We sat around doing nothing for a while. I got a liter bottle of Żubrowka vodka in duty free for 8€, half of what it would cost for 750ml in the US. I would have bought two, but they only had one in stock.

The website for Pegasus says that 95.68% (+/- .3%) of their flights take off on time. We clearly were in the unlucky 4.32%, as we took off 5 minutes late.

But only landed a minute late, at 18:36. I slept the whole way.

The airport was crowded. We had to wait a bit to get through customs. I got my student visa stamped in my passport, marking the beginning of the 150 days I'm allowed to be in the country before I need to leave. Jonas, because he's strange and Danish, is from one of the few places on earth that doesn't need a visa to enter Turkey, so didn't have to pay 20€ for said visa at the border.

We walked outside to the delightful feeling of warm air (above freezing temperatures!) and only a spattering of snow falling and not sticking. 34°F is a nice change from the -4°F happening in Kiev today.

We kind of improvised how we got to the hostel. The directions on Hostelworld were from Ataturk airport, and we landed at the other one, Sabiha Gökçen, in Asia.

So we took a Havas shuttle from the airport to Taksim, a busy square on the European side, nearby the old town that we had booked at. It was my first crossing of the Bosphorus.

At Taksim we picked up some food at a fast food Turkish place. It was amazingly delicious. I got a döner sandwich and Jonas got some cheesy bread thing. First meal in Turkey - impressed, and it was probably the shittiest meal this city has to offer.

We got on the metro and headed towards Zeytinburnu, via the F1 sloping train (literally, its built on a slant and goes straight down, with the cars in the train boasting several levels of seating that are slanted as well to provide the experience of standing or sitting upright). From there, we got the T1 tramvay.

We were originally going to get off 22 stops later, at Zeytinburnu, but I realized a few stops in that we were coming from the opposite direction of the hostel's directions, and would have to only go 8 stops total, instead of 22 to reach the starting point of their directions and then 14 back to find the hostel. We disembarked at Çhemberlitaş, next to the burnt column.

The hostel is 40m down a small hill around the corner from here, a fact we discovered from two random storekeepers who individually wanted to help us, unsolicited.

Cordial House hostel is a little cold, but clean and efficient. The dorm we got is cheap as can be, less than $7 per night, and while they have no lockers in the room and only a communal plug for electronics, they do have a safe deposit box downstairs for our passports and valuables.

We dropped our stuff off and went out for more food. We got some delicious and cheap food down the street a ways.

Back at the hostel around 10:30, we did some catching up with home, then bed before midnight.