Cruising Kyiv

Tim started his NATO meeting Monday, so Katya and I started exploring Kyiv together. Here’s a picture of Katya at the Bessarabsky Market in front of only a fraction of the flowers—the day after International Women’s Day they’re probably at a discount!
First thing on the agenda, was hair cuts. Katya looks adorable in her new “bob”. We met Papa for lunch in this very authentic and reasonably priced Ukrainian restaurant across from TGIF Fridays where the wait staff wore traditional Ukrainian dress and the cherry verenyky was delicious. Monday evening we went out to dinner with some of Tim’s committee friends from Sweden, Canada, and the US.

On the right, a large group of adults dancing in Ukrainian folk dance underground between two streets on Pushkinskaya Monday night. It was amazing to witness this frivolity in downtown Kyiv on a Monday night!

Tuesday Katya and I walked from the hotel to the monument to “Mother Russia”. Katya is the photographer and she wanted to make sure that her brother, Will, saw the “feminine” tanks parked out in front of the statue.

Perhaps they had to hide in the Netherlands during tulip season. (Don’t worry Will, she also captured lots of cool, masculine tanks and an old soviet helicopter.) We decided to leave the tour of the WWII museum for a time when Tim could come, since he’d enjoy it way more than we would.

We headed up the hill to the Pecharsky Lavra, which was much bigger than I expected. It’s actually like an enclosed community of churches, museums, a seminary, galleries, built, torn-down by invasions, and rebuilt over and around caves that monks used to live as hermits for almost 1,000 years. This iconoclastic wall is just inside the front gate, appropriately called “the Gate church”. We toured the cave with our little candles, but the priest talked so fast it was hard for Katya to translate for me. I’d have to agree with you, Jean, that you can only see so many coffins of dead monks. What was really interesting was the people kissing everything (some even crying!): they kissed the pictures hanging near the glass-enclosed coffins, the glass coffins themselves with no cloth to wipe afterwards like they have in the cathedrals. Oh, the germs! Thankfully, most of the monks’ remains were completely covered in ornate material. There were several small churches hidden in the passages of the caves too, with monks buried on the sides of them. Sorry, pictures inside the caves were strictly forbidden.

Everywhere you look on this site is reminiscent of an old, village—distinguishable from pictures I’ve seen of rural Italy, by the onion-domed churches. It was exotic, but we didn’t get to see even close to everything so we’ll have to come back another time. Thank you again for your comments. It’s comforting to know that people want to stay connected. This last picture is a symbol of the long road to bring our daughter home. Thanks for helping to make the long journey more memorable.

SDG

charlene and tim