Kiev - Day One

I took the train to Kiev on Friday night, arriving there early Saturday morning. My knowledge of Kiev and its history is quite extensive. Ask me anything about Yaroslav the wise, or the Rurikite dynasties of early Kievan Rus’. Anything at all. But what I realized was that my knowledge was a bit thin in certain places; like most of the period from the 13th century to the present. So I went to Kiev to address that problem.

The train pulled in at 8am sharp, and after changing a few bucks into hryvnia (the local currency) I noticed a tour bus company near the station. That seemed an excellent way to kill a couple of hours – getting an escorted tour around the city. The bus filled up and took us to most of the highlights of the oldest parts of the city. I left the tour on the main street in downtown and looked for a hotel.

The Dnipro is a decent place, well situated just off the central square – Independence Square. I asked for a room and after a brief wait got the keys to my “standard” room – an unrenovated Soviet nostalgia period piece of hospitality. Actually, the towels were better than a real soviet place, but still, the room was a bit old fashioned. Clean, safe, well lit; fine for just one evening.

The hotel’s location isn’t the only thing going for it. Since half the hotel is renovated to western standards, a lot of the amenities are quite nice. The lobby was nicely done up, and the staff were all friendly and attentive. The Dnipro also has the world’s largest doorman. He’s over 6 feet tall and probably in excess of 500 pounds. Half his double-breasted uniform coat would yield enough material to clothe a small family.

The shoeshine man in the lobby practically salivated over the prospect of polishing my mud spattered boots, and when I came back down from the room I indulged in a little tidiness. He was an African gentleman, and when he took a cell phone call in mid-job, I joked with him that I didn’t understand any Ukrainian at all. He laughed, and told me he was actually speaking in Afrikaans. We compared notes about Kiev and Moscow – he had lived there as a student some years ago. Anyway, my boots were such a mess that he had to use half a lemon to break through some of the grime before he even got to the standard polishing.

From there I took the metro to the WWII memorial park, a huge area right in town. It’s a wonderland of soviet military equipment and epic monuments commemorating the 2 battles for Kiev during the war. Like all good parks, this one also had speakers everywhere playing heroic songs of the period.

The Monastery of the Caves, a massive religious complex on the banks of the Dnepr River, is adjacent to the park. It’s a riot of gold domes and cathedrals and beautiful courtyards under the shade of soaring belltowers. It’s a very serene spot, and officially a state museum. The Lower Monastery next door is a working monastery that is controlled by the Church.

Each monastery has a network of caves running under it that has been a sight of Christian ascetism since the 10th century – as old as Christianity itself in these parts. The caves are dark, eerie, whitewashed passageways lined with glass coffins, each of which contains the body of a monk/priest covered in richly brocaded cloth. They are the object of devout veneration by the believers who come here, who cross themselves at each niche and then pause to kiss the relics.

There are small pains of glass, no larger than a 3x5 card in the walls as well. In front of each is a small hanging lamp and a name or icon. These are where monks had themselves walled into the caves so that they could spend the rest of their lives in prayer and devotion. The holes were big enough to pass food and water in small amounts to keep them alive. But when they died, they simply glassed over the little pass through and lit a candle in their memory.

The lower monastery has much more extensive, and deeper, caves. These are tourist attractions, but deep down in the recesses of these chambers there is a passage way that is labeled “for prayer only.” Past this point, the passage becomes narrower, darker, and the ceiling slopes lower and lower. The halls open into small chapels and at least one full blown church where a robed priest hears confession.

Suddenly, though, you’re back up in the sunlight squinting and wondering what to do with the remainder of the candle that lit the way through the cavern. I couldn’t help wondering, also, about that little other-worldly experience. It almost seemed a dream as soon as it was over.

I couldn’t find the metro and ended up walking back toward the center of town. It was just as well, since I ended up passing through some wonderful parks and seeing sights like the tsar’s palace and the Parliament. It started raining as I walked past my hotel, and that seemed as good a signal as any that my sightseeing for the day was over.

The center of Kiev probably isn’t a good proxy for all of Ukraine. But still, I couldn’t resist taking one picture that struck some sort of note. On a particularly befouled staircase leading from the river shore up to the Mariinsky palace, one could see all the typical urban detritus. Broken bottles, trash, dog waste. But there was one thing I had never seen before in such a tableau: a bottle of expensive French champagne.


Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

So say what you will about the economy in Ukraine, but at least one person is well off enough to hang out on a stairwell in a park and drink Veuve Clicquot.