First impressions

View from our flat's back balcony at sunrise

We had no idea, really, what we would find in Kiev. But our first day here we walked the length of the main drag, the unpronounceable Khreschatyk Street, and beyond as is our way. This city is incredibly beautiful! Full of energy, combination of history and cosmopolitan.

Gleaming gold domes pop up on the rooftops of the churches, one piling on top of the other. There are so many that at one point we counted 11 domes on one church!

And then right next door, so to speak, there are huge walls of projected videos on the modern buildings. Our first night in our flat I was startled by the outline of a giant crow on our window - then I saw it was one of these projections from a nearby building. Apparently, Halloween is all the rage here - crows, grimacing pumpkins, flying witches are all hugely present on the high-rise screens.

Eat your heart out Fremont: Here's the real Lenin!

It seemed to us that dancing is a big deal here, though people look puzzled when we say that. But that first day we ran into a jitter-bug contest on the street, which is closed on weekends. (Seattle people take note: Can you even imagine closing, say, all of Broadway, Pike Street, Queen Anne Ave. - take your pick - every weekend so people can just walk and wander?)

The dancers were amazing. And then that night we were walking through an underpass to get across an intersection and we saw a huge crowd of people gathering. We wondered what the heck they were doing so stopped to watch as a band started playing and the crowd started dancing some sort of old-style Ukraine dance. ( It seems this event is famous, featured on NPR the same night we saw it. Thanks, Laura, for sending.)


And monuments: They like their monuments. Huge buildings and over-sized statues. Furs too. Though it's been extremely mild here, stylish young women are sporting fur vests, always worn with 5" high heels of course. The furs are beautiful, and we can't help but stare. But they are just a bit too close to the animal they came from; our American sensibility is alive and well.

Bill said he'd buy me one .

We've had the obligatory dumplings and cranberry vodka (so-so), but been too busy for the borscht yet. Our flat is very nice (air b&b) and we are gradually settling in; we've had many conversations about the difference between living someplace for a stretch and traveling through. You don't have to figure out the plumbing to travel through!

And we are in awe of the journalists we are meeting. Young people who have such intensity of purpose, who are so single-minded about doing away with the "wrong-doing" of those in power.
"Can you smell the corruption?" one asked us. And we can, oddly. I have never seen a Bentley before that I remember. And we visited a church (Orthodox of course) where two young buff men in leather jackets, thug-like, pushed their way to the front to press their heads against the glassed-in picture of a saint to pray. They may have been on their way to a family gathering, but we've seen too many Sopranos episodes to believe that - or maybe we hang with the wrong crowd these days.

So all is interesting, all new - and we blindly stumble along because of the language. It's a two-step process: figure out a Cyrillic letter's sound, then put it together with its companion letters, then discover that all that effort leads to a word we've never heard. Then head for the dictionary. Or we slowly sound out letters painstakingly only to discover the word is "Kiev," which has many different spellings.

We are reminded of our old friend Spiros from Greece, who said we sounded like kindergartners sounding out letters. Too true!

Off to Kyiv!

We have had a lot of suggestions for the title of this blog, such as "Under the Ukrainian Ice" (thanks Eric) and "Freezikraine" (thanks, Sarah) . And mostly, "Doesn't everyone want to go to Ukraine in November?" But we'll be optimistic and stick to our theme (though "sky" not "sun"!)

Yes, we are off again, this time to Ukraine for a short trip, relatively speaking. We'll be gone 4-6 weeks, depending on the work. We're working again for the organization we were with in Sarajevo, doing what we call "sustainability assessments." That sounds very bureaucratic, but it's mainly seeing what non-profit investigative media groups in Ukraine need to continue their super important work. We'll interview and report - as well as explore a place we admit to knowing almost nothing about.

The weather looks, at least from afar, to be similar to Seattle for the beginning of the trip. After that, well, we expect that Bill will be getting one of those Cossack hats. I promise to resist the mink coats (maybe!).

We have had little sticky notes all over our kitchen with words spelled out in the Cyrillic alphabet in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to learn a little. And we have flash cards too; what was that backwards R again? And the H that is really an N? We'll see how it goes ... we joke that it will take us so long to read a sign that by the time we figure out it says "Danger" the thing will have fallen on us.

It has been said that we are addicted to these trips, that the longer we are home the more our eyes wander, so to speak. There is something to be said for that, we admit. But we like home too, so it's bittersweet, as usual. Still, those golden domes beckon ... and think of the stories we'll have!

Read along if you'd like - this is our version of a journal and we'll try to keep it updated. The camera is packed!