Kiev was a blur. I started working a day after my arrival, switching off shifts with Vika, the other hostel worker, who lives in the city and would play host to Pete while he studied in Kiev. Our shifts, 12 hours long, from either 9-9 or 9-9. Since it was Euro we were doing night shifts too. I was allowed to sleep on night shift but had to get up to let people in who arrived late or rang the doorbell because they forgot the code. And I had to keep drunk people from being too rowdy. That being said, I was allowed to drink during my shift, so that wasn’t all bad.
On day shift, my duties included checking people in, collecting the money for their bills, giving them sheets and towels, checking them out, helping people with maps and orientation in Kiev, suggesting places to eat and see, doing laundry (endless laundry. So endless that I never had dirty clothes, because after a day of wearing something I just threw it in the laundry with the dirty sheets and they were dry by the next afternoon), setting up breakfast in the morning, and generally helping around the hostel. I was basically the concierge, front desk-man, bodyguard, and handyman, rolled into one. And for all this, I was paid 150UAH per 12-hour shift. That’s 15€, or about $19.
The weird thing was, this wasn’t an unreasonable amount. Sure, it meant I couldn’t join the Swedes at the strip club that charged 220UAH for entry, nor could I drink more than 10 beers in a night if I wanted to eat, too. But I took it as a challenge to live on a Ukrainian wage, because the 150UAH is not an uncommon salary in Ukraine, and millions of Ukrainians live on that every day.
I succeeded in this goal, with a few caveats. I disregarded the lack of spending rule on four occasions. The first occasion was when I had visitors from out of town. My first visitors were Alik, Lisa and Judson, who were on a quick Eurotrip and made a stopover in Kiev to see me. The second visitor was Brian, who came to see his brother and Kiev simultaneously. The second occasion was a three-day trip to the Crimea I made with an American I met here named Pete (different, of course, from the Hostel Peter). The third occasion was any date I went on, when I was expected to pay for everything. The fourth and final occasion was a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, home of the largest and most destructive nuclear meltdown in history. More on all of these things to follow.
But generally I was pretty good about keeping to my budget, which wasn’t always easy.
Anyway, brevity is the soul of wit, and I am going to try to sum up the last month, day by day, as briefly as possible, while still being detailed, with separate posts for the more in-depth stuff, like my trip to Crimea and Chernobyl.
June 14: Peter tries to dress up as an African princess, he looks ridiculous. Lidka celebrates her birthday, and we all go to Gorkiy Pub for a party. Lidka spends most of the rest of the evening sprawled out in various places of the hostel, way too drunk. I’m on night-shift and have to babysit.
June 15: Game day for Sweden v. England. Sweden loses, but the hostel is packed with Swedes (literally, every bed was filled with Swedes for 8 days; we even added 7 new beds and sold all our extra floor space) and the party is never ending. Everyone gets painted up, goes crazy for the games. Lidka keeps the party going for her birthday and continues to be a sloppy level of drunk for the remainder of the day and night. The Swedes party into the wee hours of the morning.
June 16: Alik, Judson, and Lisa have arrived. They are staying at some apartment they rented for a few days nearby-ish. We drink in the hostel a bunch, go out to the fanzone to watch the game with the hostel gang, dressed in Polish colors this time to root for Polska. Chants of “Polska! Biało czerwoni!” ring all night. I started one of the chants, was very proud.
June 17: I take the day off of work to show Alik, Judson, and Lisa around and do a little bit of the sightseeing I hadn’t yet done. Alik’s ability to speak Russian fluently comes in handy, but doesn’t get them the train ticket that Lisa and Judson want to Budapest, because they didn’t book far enough in advance. Our sightseeing this day goes as far as the Opera House, because we decided on a whim to go see Aida. Judson was opposed to the idea, so he returned to the apartment they were living in, but the rest of us went. It was fortunate they have no dress code, but I felt terrible going to see the show in flip flops, cargo shorts, and a t-shirt. The show itself was pretty good, with a simplistic set design and fairly strong leads. We got great 3rd balcony seats for an exorbitant $5 each. We also were sat near four Swedes whom I had given directions to the Opera house earlier. They didn’t last past the first act, and left. We Americans took their slightly better seats and got through all four of them, despite the fact that Alik was that guy during the show who kept coughing.
That night we went to see some of the churches, St. Sofia and St. Michael’s, to be precise, two of the most famous in Kiev. We then wandered back to their apartment, past the end of the Fanzone at Independence Square where Portugal was playing the Netherlands.
June 18: Lidka has a barber come to the hostel to give her a haircut on the balcony. The haircut to me seemed questionable, but apparently the style is fashionable in this part of the world right now, and Lidka was happy with it. Judson, Alik, and Lisa leave Kiev.
June 19: Another game day. Sweden vs. France. I got 30€ tickets to the game from one of the Swedes. We all went to the game, gussied up in Swedish colors, with paint all over our faces and plenty of liquor in our systems. I had my face painted and ‘praktsvin’ written on my leg, which is some sort of Swedish slur. In the stadium, I get separated from most of the group I came with, but stick with Rick and Laurence, two Dutchies who we had been hanging out with. We got front-row seats and watched the game. When Sweden won, Jonas Olssen, one of the Swedish players who plays for West Bromwich in the English Premier League usually, gave me one of his shoes from the game. I guess he thought I was Swedish? Rick and Laurence treat me to pizza across the street that night to celebrate my new shoe.
June 23: Brian had arrived. We did some serious sightseeing. Went into St. Sofia, and up the tower next to it to get a view of the city. The tower, 70m tall, was built in the 18th century, circa 1705. We also saw the outside of St. Michaels. We found our way to Andrivsky’s Descent, a hill with craftsmen selling wares, and the location of a great church, the church of St. Andrews. Next we explore Podil, the old town of Kiev, which was unimpressive but still interesting. Then to the Dnipro, Kiev’s river, which we walked along until we reached the pedestrian bridge before heading back up the hill. We found our way to Arsenal’na, the world’s deepest metro station, and took the 5 minute (literally, I timed it) trip to the bottom before heading on one of the trains back to the hostel. Dinner at Жёлтое Море, the sushi place I went to on the first night.
Later in the evening we were at the fanzone, watching the games. We were joined by two Englishmen and Kevin, someone I met at the hostel but who is in the same fraternity as and is friends with Eric, one of my friends from home, at Northwestern University.
June 24: Amelia, Pete, Kevin, some young Polish guys we affectionately nicknamed “the Polish babies,” and myself make it to the quarterfinal match in Kiev, England v. Italy. Kevin blacks out and gets lost in the crowd at halftime, Pete leaves the game early, guilty about the front row seats we got by one of the corners, and I’m left alone with some Norwegian guy I met there. Fun game, except for the game itself, which was a boring 0-0 match for 120 minutes before Italy won on penalties. The night continued until the early morning at the pizza place across the street from the hostel, with some Кальян (shisha/hookah/nargile) and food.
June 25: I say goodbye to the Dutchies, and Pete and I head off to Crimea. More on Crimea in a different post. One of the Dutchies, Rick, would magically reappear in Kiev several days later for a few more days of fun.
June 30: Arriving back in Kiev at 4am or so, I discover that Queen and Elton John will be playing a free concert that night in the Fanzone for AIDS awareness in Ukraine (The AIDS rate here is far higher than anywhere in Europe, and the second highest rate outside of sub-saharan Africa, after Haiti). I switch shifts with Vika for the day, and got her to come a little early so I could get to the concert. A new friend, Chris, from Vale, Colorado, came with me to the concert, instead of meeting up with Kevin, Peter, Amelia and Nina at Palata #6 beforehand. It’s a good thing, too, because they missed Elton John play. Chris and I did not.
Elton John played a 2-hour set. He was incredible. Chris and I had pushed our way up to the closest we could be in the free section of the concert (you could get near the stage itself for an exorbitant fee - it is a fundraiser, after-all), and we had a great time with all the crazy fans who had pushed up with us. Queen came on and, with Adam Lambert as a wholly inadequate replacement for the departed Freddie Mercury, played for over 2 hours as well. They even kicked Adam Lambert off the stage on occasion to just have the original members play for a while. All my favorite songs were sung by both bands, and the night was, overall, incredible.
July 1: Kevin and I go to the Stadium to try to haggle for tickets to the final. Post-soviet mentality gets in the way, as no one is willing to negotiate lower than 150€ per ticket, even halfway through the game when Spain was clearly destroying Italy 2-0. I gave a couple of Russian scalpers a lesson in basic economics about the shelf-life of their goods and how moving the product for some money was far better than letting its value expire, but they weren’t having any of it.
July 2: Chris, Katie (an Australian girl staying in the hostel) and I go to Lavra, a thousand year-old monastery in Kiev that’s still operational. Also known as the monastery of the caves, Lavra is home to cave tunnels as well, which served some purpose a long time ago, but now are more of a tourist attraction and a place to keep the dead monks of years past. Chris, a chef by trade, makes dinner that night, ground meat subs. At night we go with Vova, Lidka, Amelia, some Australian guys, etc, to Shevchenko Park for some beer garden fun.
July 4: Chris and I plan and execute a July 4th bonanza, which consists of a 7am singing of the National Anthem, at New York’s midnight, lots of Budweiser, pancakes, bacon and eggs for breakfast (and strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream), burgers and dogs for lunch, grilled outside, a showing of Independence Day in the movie room, lots of American music, more grilling at night (with the Poles and Ukrainians in attendance continuously repeating the famous line, “Real American ____,” be it hamburgers, hot dogs, pasta salad, etc. As long as Chris or I made it, it was real, and American.), lots more beer, and a showing of Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest later that night, when it was put on YouTube. Twelve or more people in attendance, they loved the “real American experience.” I just missed home. We also say goodbye to Nina on this day. She goes home to Austria.
July 5: Chernobyl. More to follow.
July 6: Chris and I go to Бабий Яр (Babi Yar), site of the single most deadly killing operation outside of Auschwitz in WWII. Over 30,000 Jews were slaughtered in two days in this little tiny ravine, which is now a beautiful park in the middle of Kiev. It was chilling, and no less so now that it’s a peaceful, serene place. That only brings it more sharply into focus. That, and the massive monumental memorial that juts into the center of the pit. I spend the evening with Оля, seeing her for the last time before leaving. Dinner of Sushi, then wandering around the city at night, to some places I had yet to see, like the Golden Gate, a back-alley artist/hipster sculpture garden, and some bars in Podil.
July 7: I get a new gigantic suitcase at a market in Kiev. It’s not cheap, but this one will actually last. Chris and I decide to make some dominoes. But we have no dominoes, so we use poker сhips, which are incredibly prone to falling over. We manage to make a gigantic “WHY NOT?” on the common room table, and knock it over proudly. At night we meant to go out for my last night, but instead just drank until 7am in the hostel common room in a massive dance party that wouldn’t end.
July 8: I leave Kiev. Spend the day packing and hanging out with Chris (who, by the way, was supposed to go to Istanbul a few days prior, but couldn’t board his flight because he apparently hadn’t paid for it yet - damn Russian websites!) and three Portuguese guys, Antonio, Miguel and João, whom I had gotten to know pretty well over the last few days. Last meal in Kiev at Капо Ді Монте, of sushi (classic Ukrainian food). Caught a cab at 8:30 to the airport, because I had to fly to Budapest, having made the same mistake that Judson and Lisa made about not booking in advance for the train. And the 30-day stamp in my passport was going to expire July 9. I arrived 11:15pm in Budapest. Brian, who is living in Budapest for the summer, picked me up and brought me back to his apartment. We passed out pretty soon after that.
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