більше не горить, але вже не дихає 11/01/2012
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures.Tags: history, kiev, Kontraktova Ploscha, kyiv, podil, Poshtova Ploscha, tourism, travel, ukraine, urban, walks, wandering
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Fate had sunk us deep within the roots of Kyiv to end our trip. Primordial Slavs crawled forth from the mighty Dnieper to claim this narrow strip of riverfront as the center of their civilization. Janice and I wandered through Podil towards that azure gash, a natural fortification protecting the annals of history from encroaching concrete communist blocks laying siege to the far shore.
The merry magic of trade and commerce conjured dockyards, warehouses, tenements and offices. Cobblestones sprang forth from the fertile soil and horses hauled foreign delights to the burgeoning gentry of Uppertown. Roughnecks, stewards, butchers and their squalling families slapped together timber slums and worked anchoring ships. A city was being born and Podil was the heart, a densely packed and infested engine pumping life through the fetid gutters.
Cardiac arrest came in 1811 when fire ravaged the district for three days. Sailors and longshoremen couldn’t save two thousand homes. No god intervened on behalf of a dozen churches and a handful of monasteries. Businesses, administrative offices and piers splintered and cracked, carried to the heavens as crackling cinders and sparks. Government officials decreed modern, geometric blocks and insurance agencies demanded plaster and stone.
Fortified and civilized, Podil no longer burns but no longer breathes. Decaying apartments cough and wheeze, showering dust all over the empty streets. Balconies held together by chewing gum and mold sag overhead threatening collapse. Trees burst through concrete and brick, growing through broken windows and missing roofs. Factory yards lay so vacant that not even memories of hustle and bustle remain. We walked along under grim grey skies meeting no one.
There were the port gates. There were shallow trenches filled with muck and strangled by traffic barriers. A closed bridge stretched off over the water. All compelling excursions, all adrenaline and mischievous glee, but common sense and lost nerve finally convinced Janice to stick to the known. Instead we shuffled along the riverbank past wasted real estate. Where were the well-heeled fashionistas whiling away inheritances in riparian cafes and nightclubs. Where were the couples strolling past wretched street artists as they whispered dreams to one another? They were not here. A shop keeper lowered security shutters on the failure of a day.
They were not massing at the passenger port either. Beneath Poshtova Ploscha pleasure cruises drifting from Smolensk to Odessa drop anchor. One of the oldest squares in Kyiv, archeologists have reportedly unearthed artifacts from the 4th century. This could have been the very ground where Volodymyr baptized the confused and terrified masses, but the only historical marker is the 1865 post office which gave the square its name. Today Volodymyr has a cathedral, the post office is an art gallery and tourists spill off passing luxury cruises.
Vendors sell beer, beer and more beer along the stone promenade. Despite a couple tables lost in cigarette smoke and savage tongues a funereal air settled over us. Ships sat dead with no hyperactive children to wave at, drunken sailors failed to stumble from the shadows, no pickpockets, no scam artists or drug dealers.
Just a monument to dead soldiers standing tall and proud and ignored. Some devotionals had consecrated a compact waterside church and decorated the walls with mosaics to embolden departing mariners. A lone fisherman stood barefoot in the rain as he tried to eek out a dinner from the sluggish river. Gravel and discarded utility poles ate away at the promenade and gave way to a parking lot which disappeared into idle construction work, leaving room only for a collection of BMWs, Mercedes and Porches parked outside someone’s opium hallucination of a floating pagoda.
Chinese food! Sushi! Karaoke! Poker! Booze! Naked women grinding against the hyrvnia in your pocket. We had run out of pavement and we had run out of faith in humanity. Backtracking towards what remained of civilization, an escaping $60,000 car gunned it through a puddle and soaked Janice.
Wandering led us back to the tourist trap where we’d last eaten. The Business Class Lounge and its Jewish money-lender statue was lit up ready for crowds but we continued down the main drag hoping for better sustenance. Street lights and traffic resumed in the heart of Podil, where every major restaurant chain (under Western-influenced management) was represented: Shynok traditional Ukrainian with folk flair, Tequila House Mexican, Marrakesh belly-dancing and couscous, L’Amour fine dining, and a fine assortment of 24-hour tantric massage parlors jostled for our dollar. We hemmed and hawed, we debated and argued, we found ourselves squared off against Kontraktova Ploscha. Eye witnesses report that I got “grumpy”. In reality I evaluated our limitations, the hour of day and the logical steps necessary to confront our situation. We ended up at another Japanese restaurant with pictures on the menu we could point at.
Our seats on the astroturf terrace had no protective tarp walls to keep stray cars from running us over. Once again the cuisine was astonishingly authentic and fresh, from flagons of local beer through miso soup and onto sushi and prawn noodles. A raving alcoholic kept a lamppost from keeling over while he screamed into the night and a fleet of Ukrainian Air stewardesses drifted past on their cloud of glamour.
Safely through throngs of acoustic guitars and panting kidney thieves holding court in the square, then Podil succumbs to darkness. Cars disappear and streetlights are few and far between. Ample prowling for knife-wielding street urchins and soothing calm for men passed out in their own vomit. Charming enough as we carefully picked our way over broken concrete, sunken trolley tracks and ancient potholes, but we were grizzled veterans of Kyiv. Had we been starry-eyed fresh fish from Poland we never would have left the hostel.
Janice snapped the picture of me peeking through a hole in the wall and shot the video moments before being soaked by a passing car.
розпливчасті уявлення про час і місце 27/11/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Bienvenue à la Semaine de Fonctionnement.Tags: bechtel, chernobyl, chornobyl, european union, exclusion zone, hostel yaroslav, journalism, kiev, kyiv, nuclear power, podil, pripyat, radiation, shelter implementation plan, slavutych, travel, ukraine
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Tourist trap but I don’t care. Stella Artois on umbrellas and English on menus are comforting when you’re far from home, battered by logistics and suffering humiliating defeats. The waitress running this high-rent cafe smiled through our mangled ordering and let us stew on the terrace in peace.
In celebration of our nation’s birth the American ambassador was hosting a backyard weenie roast somewhere in the surrounding blocks. I suppose that banal banter and sacrificial animal innards in the name of freedom isn’t much worse than our foiled dancing through the poisoned landscape of Chornobyl. No ethical dilemma, dietary or political, was faced. As quickly as I learned of this BBQ I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to attend.
Not that Our Man in Kyiv had issued a direct decree. A project manager with Bechtel, in-country to oversee work on the multimillion dollar effort to contain, conceal and dismantle the crumbling remains of Chornobyl, had. Using sketchy and possibly illegal information we had positioned ourselves near the official diplomatic residence to receive a post-soiree phone call. (more…)
Багатство і престиж 15/11/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Leçons Culturelles.Tags: Andriyivskyy Descent, Czarina Elizabeth, history, kiev, kyiv, Mikhail Bulgakov, montmartre, paris, Place du Tertre, podil, St. Andrew's, tourism, travel, ukraine, ussr, walks, wandering
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Come see The Montmartre of Kyiv! Whichever enterprising copywriter conceived that golden gem must have a monument raised in their honor. What else but brilliant advertising could convince the touring masses of the world to slip and stumble along cracked cobblestones down a street of dust and unsavory characters?
Politicians responded with a funicular to spare the overfed any exercise climbing Andriyivskyy Descent. Public works of yesterday which civilized this sharp slope with a winding road cannot keep up with the growing monied masses, and Kyiv would like more monied masses please. Buildings which have been sagging since the neighborhood began in the 17th century are swaddled in scaffolding. Plans have been made to install glistening concrete sidewalks. Soon the small cafes will expand and add neon to their windows, the boutiques will hire English-speaking students and death squads will cart dog carcasses to the incinerators. (more…)
проникли самозванці 16/10/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Leçons Culturelles.Tags: history, kiev, kyiv, Mihaylivskiy Zolotoverhiy, religion, russia, Saint Michael's Cathedral, St. Barbara, Svyatopolk II Iziaslavyc, tourism, travel, ukraine, urban, walks, wandering
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Rag pickers held the gates, their eyes prowling a majestic expanse of flagstones. Hardened professionals with no affectations of serving the unprepared or groveling for sympathy. City-wide, lurking near the entrances of hallowed ground, scarf hawking women demurely proffered their ways in silent desperation that heedless tourists would find themselves blasphemously naked under the gaze of God. Banshees had spawned these sentinels clustered at every gateway, eager for confrontation.
Reconnaissance made contact while we watched hidden within the anonymity of a milling crowd. Savage jabbering assailed the ears and arms flailed with violent spasms. The skirmish was on the verge of the physical when suddenly the din subsided. Tourists slipped through and enraged beggars regrouped, digging in for the next assault.
No one outside the third world can ignore a man drowning in his own shit on the sidewalk like a born and bred San Franciscan. Our home has been corrupted by outsiders, our ranks infiltrated by impostors, our lives a ceaseless torrent of imposed bullshit. Yet this firestorm tempers the soul, wrapping our hearts in chainmail in which we walk impervious to the parade of lunatics, wannabes, con artists and yuppie scum.
No one except Ukrainians. (more…)
кульгава в протилежні напрямки 09/10/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Bienvenue à la Semaine de Fonctionnement.Tags: journalism, kiev, kyiv, metro, Radiation Protection Institute, travel, ukraine
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A press liaison from the IAEA in Vienna forwarded contact information for a St. Petersburg radiologist. The radiologist in St. Petersburg put me in touch the Radiation Protection Institute in Kyiv. An expert in dosimetry and radiation protection spoke English and agreed to a mid-morning meeting.
Massachusetts native Janice and San Francisco-born me languished in purgatory between the green and blue lines.
Hallways led to exits. Elevators led to exits. Transliterated Cyrillic led nowhere. Clocks recorded the time which had elapsed since the previous train had left. We watched a steady stream of humanity spill into the platform from a stairwell before hastening towards escape. Angry red slashes forbid our entry, but when your soul is threatened with eternal damnation you don’t follow rules. So we learned watching two deviants throw themselves into the fray and begin swimming upstream. (more…)
багажу і беззмістовність 02/10/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures.Tags: hostel yaroslav, kiev, Kontraktova Ploscha, kyiv, metro, podil, tourism, travel, ukraine, urban
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Hopelessness and despair had shattered my mind, leaving me unfit to lead our band onward. Janice, grizzled road warrior and freshly settled Eastern European that she is, saw our rattling wagon’s destiny with a chasm and ripped the reins from my lifeless hands. Hostel Yaroslav witnessed our plight and offered salvation, in English and with online booking. Elbows sent morning commuters scattering and saddlebags were heaped onto the blue line heading towards Podil.
Sunk beneath the tangled convergence of streets which comprise Kontraktova Ploscha is a subterranean warren of twisting corridors, fluorescent tubing and grim storefronts. Frequent excursions through the underground passages of Khreschatyk had not prepared us for the intensely claustrophobic rat-maze in which we had been deposited. A lower-class of street vendor populated this den already narrowed by walls. Directions to the hostel had been provided, but the piece of paper on which they had been copied proved useless. Exits to the land of sunshine and air lay in all directions, but which direction did they lead?
Métro stations in Paris can sprawl. They twist and turn. There are multiple points of entry. Conscious of the displacement caused by traveling beneath streets the RATP as chosen to number and identify each stairwell as well as to provide the essential Plan de Quartier.
Metro stations in Kyiv force you to crawl from the depths of hell into a frightening and unknowable realm of shysters, cops, cheap consumer crap and impatient masses. (more…)
в пошуках сильного сигналу 28/09/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures.Tags: hotel khreschatyk, kiev, kyiv, tourism, travel, ukraine
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Contempt had risen in the throat, thick and acrid as bile. Receptionists lurked behind their granite counter, murdering us with their eyes. Thick-necked security goons had grown tired of watching momentum drag our corpses through the front door. The reservation with Hotel Khreschatyk had expired and with it the thin veneer of civility which had been plastered across the face of each poorly-paid servant.
After pacifying the peptic catastrophe which had left the previous evening floating face down in the fountains of Maidan Nezalezhnosti I issued an international appeal. Plans had changed and we would have to secure one last night’s lodging or face vagrancy. The overseas number of our virtual budget travel agency confounded the hotel’s phone; a connection was finally established by using Skype to ring the American 800 helpline. Ghosts fought through the static of Soviet satellites while I screamed into my computer’s pathetic microphone, storming around the room offering my laptop to the gods for a stronger signal. I lost the internet twice before being able to explain circumstances, only to be told I would have to negotiate an extension of our discounted rate directly with the hotel. The line went dead one last time and even today there are a women in some midwestern call-center convinced I’ve disappeared into the wilds of Eastern Europe.
Interchangeable blonde receptionist suggested that I could stay one last night if I paid full price. In cash. Now. (more…)
стук радіатора гастрономічних пригод 14/09/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures.Tags: cuisine, kiev, kyiv, puzata hata, tourism, travel, ukraine
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Put on a dress– we’re going dancing! No, that’s not true at all, but we are going to step out into the bright lights of Kyiv’s night and succeed where we’d once failed.There will be no blunt knife scraping at a tired brick of cheese. No glasses of vodka, bottles of beer, a plastic jug of water and Russian TV tonight. The four walls of Hotel Khreschatyk shall quake and crumble into dust, leaving us free to waltz the streets and dine like royalty.
Earlier fits of desperation had driven us to the depths of dissonance. Although the fare provided by our friendly neighborhood sushi emporium had been surprisingly exquisite, by enjoying delights of The Orient we had succumbed to the despised tactics of tourists. Yes, pictures on the menu afforded us the simple pleasure of ordering food. Yes, expensive sports cars crashing through shantytown walls next to a poker club had lent an authentic air to the meal. Yes, we drank domestic beers instead of Japanese imports. But we are in Kyiv and we must dine as the locals do. (more…)
з усіх сил, питання 11/09/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Leçons Culturelles.Tags: Bohdan Khmelnytsky, cossacks, history, kiev, kyiv, ottoman empire, Patriarch Volodymyr, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, politics, russia, St. Sophia's Cathedral, tartars, tourism, travel, Treaty of Pereyaslav, ukraine, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, urban, Vasily Romaniuk, walks, wandering, Yaroslav the Wise
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Floodgates burst when the Soviet Union dissolved and freedom spread through the east. Freedom is a heady wine, one which quickly went to the head of many Ukrainian factions long bent under a cultural yoke. Ardent Christians freed from state-imposed atheism it must have felt as like the second coming.
Riots erupted in 1995 outside of St. Sophia’s Cathedral. At issue was the final resting place of Vasily Romaniuk, or Patriarch Volodymyr, a gulag survivor cum exile who led the newly founded Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Due to multiple claims (drunkest of the bunch are the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches) of ownership the government retains possession of St. Sophia’s and allots different faiths different periods of liturgical access. The state refused the burial of Patriarch Volodymyr and barricaded the monument. (more…)
відволікатися особи були введені 29/08/2011
Posted by brendan in Avions, Trains et Voitures, Bienvenue à la Semaine de Fonctionnement, Leçons Culturelles.Tags: Bohdan Khmelnytsky, chernobyl, Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund, chornobyl, development, economics, journalism, kiev, kyiv, St. Sophia's Square, travel, ukraine, urban, walks, wandering
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Number 28 Khreschatyk sits recessed from the main drag, cresting steps from where you can watch proselytizing acolytes and aging sleaze drip hair gel on teenage girls. Innumerable entries open into foyers where suspicious citizens watch silently, ignorant to western rules of eye-contact.
These troubles failed to impress Alexa, who no doubt finds the doorway of Children of Chornobyl Relief and Development Fund as unique and distinguished as the people making a difference inside their one-room office. Distracted faces were introduced and I wondered which of these women had been victimized repeatedly by my increasingly frantic phone calls. No one had the energy to stand and slap me across the face. (more…)
