Kiev, THE Ukraine 1 May - 3 May

Ahhhhh, the old Soviet Bloc, how wonderful. As you can imagine, much of the trip ws spent dogging the Soviet Union. I've been to old Eastern Bloc countries before, but this is way way east, and still has many soviet overtures. But, don't get me wrong, they are definitely Westernizing, it is a very cool transition to see.

Kiev, is a HUGE town, big streets, big blocks, big buildings, BIG Monuments! We took a crazy taxi ride from the Airport that is about 30 minutes out of town, so it was neat to see some of the development in the suburbs. We had pre-booked an apartment, but they screwed us and messed up our reservation, so only 1 bed. Luckily, we arrived on May Day, so they had the streets blocked off and everyone was out and about. The main square, were the Orange revolution happened last year is very cool.

Here's where the Orange Revolution took place.

Russian folk dance.

We saw a fun Russian Folk Singing/Dancing concert that was fun. Monday night we managed to find "the place to go." Took a 40 minutes cab ride way out into the suburbs, cost us about $2. Amazing. But for some reason the bouncers made us wait for 20 minutes. I just don't get it, they know we are going to spend a ton of money comparatively, why hassle us. Its not like the place is too crowded. But we had fun, and managed to see the sun rise...

Tuesday was our tourism day. Luckily we did pretty good about the tourism thing the whole trip. We jumped on the subway, which is like 2 miles beneath the earth, can't remember why. But the escalator takes 5 minutes to descend, then, there's another one!!

We went to the park on the south side of town. The whole thing I dedicate to "The Great Patriotic War." So, eventhough the Soviet Union has fallen, everywhere we went, they are still proud, like us, to have defeated the Nazi's. The monument was awesome, but the Museum closed at 4pm and we missed it. Here are some photos, I actually really like how the communists do their monuments...

Here's Pappy and Ben infront of some Russian tank and the "statue of Liberty", HA! She was as big as a football field, though.

Just beyond the flowers you can see the cement monument, very well done, supposed to show the unity of the fight. Lots of women holding rifles, that sort of thing. It the background are some orthodox churches.

Tuesday night, we were unable to find "the place." So, basically we just walked around, lot of people out, but we were never sure where everyone was going, this was a common theme on the trip too. At one point we cut through a park and ended up scaling this large hill, a bit off the beaten track, still didn't find a bar. Oh well.

Before I forget, language here is strictly non-English. Nothing like western Europe. Very very few people could speak English her, Russian is their Lingua Franca. So we had to learn some Cyrillic and a few Russian words.

Wednesday morning we took an 11 hour train ride to Odessa. Wasn't so bad, we had our own compartment. But, about half was throughout the trip, the door swung open and 2 orthodox priests all decked out came in chanting. Then one took a brush and dipped it in a bucket of water and then whipped it at me, "blessing" me I guess. Then they wanted a tip!