16 October: Kyiv

16 October 2013: Kyiv

Today, I got up, got dressed, had breakfast, and walked down to meet my cluster at 830, as we went into Kyiv. We had some Russian before we took the Marshrutka into Kyiv. A marshrutka is a cross between a van and a bus. It seats about 20. The Russian before Kyiv was mainly being assigned home task before going over the brand new vocab that we would have to use in Kyiv. Which was as helpful as giving me a German phrasebook and setting me on my way. Actually, the German phrasebook would have been more useful than handing me a sheet with random, brand new words, no map, and no bloody clue where we were going or how to get there! In case the idea of the game wasn’t apparent, we were to ask total strangers how to get places, what the monuments were, and further information. Our LCF pretended that she’d never been to Kyiv for most of the trip.

In Kyiv, we arrived at a metro station, which, luckily, was our starting point. We had to buy a token, and figure out how to get to the station that connected to our destination, as we had to switch metro lines. Switching was easy – we followed the crowd who was also changing lines. I ended up vary far ahead of my cluster at one such change, as I just went with the crowd, and got gently pushed on ahead. The first one to meet up with me (about 2 minutes later) said that she was glad that I had worn my blue hat, as it stood out on the metro. The Kyiv metro itself would be hard to get lost in, but you do have to pay attention. There are signs with the destinations in both Ukrainian and English at basically every entrance to the various platforms, as well as a colour map with the location station (in yellow), the line (in its colour) with its stations, and the link-up stations circled in their colour above the far side of the tracks. After we got to one of the main stations, we had to ask questions to find the correct station – the Kyiv metro is set up like Paris, with stations that service different directions. We arrived at the Metro station, and had to ask strangers how to find the train station, so we would know where to go if we wanted to take the Metro around Ukraine, or internationally.

After that debacle – the person I asked got very confused when I didn’t take a seat in the international waiting area and that I didn’t have luggage – we then had to go outside the station and ask if any one knew how to get to the street where the PC office is located. Most of the directions were either incomprehensible, or just plain wrong. If I had been doing this for myself, I would have had a map, not a list of questions to ask complete strangers. Once our LCF started walking in the correct direction, looking highly annoyed that no one was able to lead us, we had to keep asking random strangers how to get where we were going. Our LCF also made us conjugate Russian verbs while walking down the street. Talk about standing out in a crowd. Finally, we got the right approximant area, and had to find the correct building. Again, with someone who’d been there standing next to us, smiling evilly and telling us she had no idea where the office was. We eventually made it into the office (we had to go through security), where we trooped up to the Admin offices and were taken on a tour of the whole building. Which was very cool. The medical offices are on the 4th floor, Admin on the 3rd, support on the 2nd, and the rest on the first. We were able to hang out in the PCV room, which is where PCVs can stay if they’re in Kyiv.

After chatting with a few current PCVs – who told us to hang on through PST, as it get easier once you get a site – we trooped back up to 3rd floor, where we had to interview a staff member. I got to interview Vl, who is in charge of the language part of PST.

After that, we had to find our way back to the metro, buy a token, and get out at the correct stop. From there, we had to ask more people how to get the café we were stopping at for lunch. Most of the people we tried to ask thought we were selling things, and ignored us. Finally, we got to the café, which had a bit of everything, was very good, and not that expensive.

After lunch, we had to asked directions to Independence square. Again, our LCF had to lead the way, as no one was willing to talk to us. Once we got to the Square, we had to ask people who was on the monument and when it was built. As there were a lot of people offering to let you hold their pigeon (not a euphemism) for a photo, the people we tried to ask thought we were selling things. Three separate people asked the same French tourist the same questions. I got so frustrated that I almost went to him to ask him the questions – at least I would be able to communicate with him, and he wouldn’t think that a fellow French-speaker in Kyiv was trying to sell him something. Eventually, though, we were able to get the questions answered – one of the young men with pigeons was willing to answer our questions. We didn’t think about it until later, but we should have offered him a few Grivnya, as we did take time that he could have used to make his living. After that, we took some pictures of the group at the monument. Which was erected at the 10th anniversary of independence, and is the symbol of Ukraine.

 

We then had to ask how to get to what I thought was a metro station. Again, I almost intentionally asked the Frenchman, as we were having no luck. After one of the cluster got what our LCF thought were good directions, we started walking, I noticed a city map, complete with marked metro stations (and their coloured line; awesome). Our LCF looked at the map, and decided that we were headed in the correct directions. We kept walking, and eventually made it to “Golden Arches” which is the last remnants of the fortified city, from well over a thousand years ago. The is a statue of the last great king of the Kyivian Rus, who’s children pulled a King Lear and destroyed what was once a great kingdom. We also saw the cat statue, at which you are supposed to leave small change and rub its head for luck. We then crossed the street to go to the bank, to get our stipend. It hadn’t been put into our accounts yet so we walked back to the Metro station, bought our token, and took the metro back to where we started, before getting a Marshrutka back to Obukhiv.

A note on Kyiv. The city is beautiful. It is also a mixed city, much like the history of Ukraine. Kyiv is an ancient city. Ukraine in a newly independent country. The Ukraine was a member of the USSR. The combination of possibly a thousand years older than Viking Dublin, almost 80 years under Soviet rule, and 22-23 years of independence, make for an interesting city, as there is evidence of the history everywhere. There are buildings that look exactly like buildings in old Western European cities, like Paris, Dublin, Angers. Then there are Soviet buildings. The ones that look exactly like buildings in movies set in the former USSR. There are monuments everywhere. Monuments to many people and many different time frames. The metro platforms are architectural wonders, designed to be stunningly beautiful and fully functional. A metro platform that rivals architectural found in Paris, complete with the most informative metro map I’ve ever seen. The metro is crowded, and it has the same problems found in Metros in major cities. We had to stand for all of various rides, but that wasn’t anything. For the first segway of our trip, only one of us had a handhold (except for our LCF, who got on the train about 30 seconds ahead of us, and therefore had a very good handhold), so we were clinging to each other and trying not to play human dominoes in the metro. At one stop, I was able to get a great foothold, and clustermate was able to hang on me, lessening our chances of playing dominoes.

The metro stations themselves are very interesting. The platforms are much further below ground then Paris, DC, or even New York. If I remember correctly, a platform holds the world record for deepest metro platform. You take escalators down to them. Very long, very steep escalators, the railings of which move just slightly faster than the stairs. Going down was almost vertigo inducing, as there are adverts between the up and down escalators, which stick up at a 45º angle from the escalator. Very functional. Almost too functional, if you feel like you’re going to fall the entire way down to the platform. And, with that, I just came up with a great Bond movie idea. Bond falling in slow motion down to a Kyiv metro platform, only to land properly, get up, dust himself off, and take the just arriving train to main square Kyiv. Where action happens, and then the title sequence starts.

The marshrutka back to Obukhiv felt much longer than it was, as we were all very tired. I almost fell asleep, but that was within minutes of our stop. One of my clustermates made sure everyone was awake before we got to our stop. After Kyiv, I had an hour tutoring with V, who spent most of the hour asking me questions in Russian, and then getting fussy when I was unable to answer them, as I hadn’t learned how to say that yet. What did you do in Paris? Well…  J’ai visitée des musées de Louvre, de l’Orangerie, d’Orsay. Aussi, j’ai visitée les Tours de Notre Dame de Paris, le cathédral Notre Dame de Paris, le Gendarmerie, le Basilique de Sacre Cœur… Which meant that I guessed at half of the words. I barely remember what unemployed is (lit: “no job”), and I wasn’t sure how to say that I volunteered as an ESL teacher, and at the library. There is a specific case difference that I will never get, but V seems to think I got it, as I answered a few questions correctly. It’s the difference between Where? and Where to? I’m just parroting what she said, as it doesn’t make any sense. After that, I had lesson plan tutoring with S, as I had my second class the next day. I was going over a complicated text, so had to figure out how to explain some of the more difficult to understand words. After that, I was able to walk back, almost 12 hours after I’d left. I spent some time online, completely forgetting about my homework after a stressful 12 hour day.