Looks kind of serene doesn’t it? I can assure you however that the conditions that produced this idyllic sight were not. Yesterday afternoon I found myself on playground duty for an hour, in the snow, below zero temperatures. It was actually pretty fun however; football, snowballs and a hot cuppa. I guess you just have to learn how to live with a chilly face when you’re having fun after school.
It seems every time a level piece of bitumen appears some giant soviet robot crawls out of the darkness to tear it up. I know all this construction must seem like the hallmarks of progress yet I see none. I wonder if they offer joy rides in these kinds of machines somewhere in Kiev?
Ever had one of those days when you feel like you can’t please everyone and it’s just all too hard? It could be worse; you could be sitting in a windy park covered in paint. I guess there are some parts of history Ukrainians would rather be without, perhaps.
This 10 litre bottle is something you should never be without in Kiev.
This week the water stopped working, as usual. First a couple of days without cold water. Out comes the trusty 10 litre for flushing the loo; water for drinking needs to be cooled then filtered; bathing requires a hot bath to be run and cooled. In a brilliant stroke of irony, the thought occurred to me as I was reading comments on my last post about cooling one’s bath that in fact my bath had been filling for sometime and was probably about the flood the bathroom. Crisis narrowly averted. Today, in a sly maneuver, the hot water stops and cold water resumes. Now the toilet is flushing as normal but I need to boil a kettle for washing dishes and bathing is off the menu. All the while our central heating system temporarily activates, and then stops again, on the first day above 10 degrees in a week.
Today I photographed cola. I did other meaningful things too, but photographing cola bottles is far more interesting than ordering McDonalds in Russian, avoiding a smelly homeless person on the Metro or explaining to yet another person that I can’t understand them. Being a good big brother I spent 30 minutes or so looking unusually odd, photographing for William’s uni project.
Puritans, skip to the next article. Ignoramuses, keep chewing on your mouse mats.
These fantastic espresso vending machines grace the hallways of most supermarkets and shopping malls here in Kiev. For $0.50 you get an espresso that, while being pretty ordinary, is actually great value when compared with the $3.50 disgrace you’d expect to receive at Coffee Club or Starbucks. And, aside from operating only in Russian, it offers better service than many of it’s brick-and-mortar competitors.
Just think, how many “coffee” franchise stores could be replaced by $0.50 vending machine? We can only live in hope.
Apparently there has been a revolution in Ukraine. Well, not so much a revolution but more like a lot people getting really passionate about Ukrainian nationalism. The poisoned Presidential candidate triumphed over the KGB’s best efforts and won the people’s backing. However, they subsequently voted a Russian-backed candidate for Prime Minister into office; the President’s nemesis became a strange bedfellow. Perhaps then it was more like a lot of people embracing democratic process; process and really colourful banners. Next the Prime Minister bought-off half of Parliament so the President called a snap election; the Prime Minister got the boot. Maybe it was all really just an excuse to skip work and camp-out on some prime Kiev real-estate. Not exactly the stuff that inspires confidence in national leadership. Perhaps this explains why of the 178 countries recently profiled in the Doing Business 2008 report (World Bank) Ukraine arrived 177th worst tax paying country; no tip jar for the President this year.
As far a cuisine goes, Ukraine missed the boat. There are however a few redeeming factors, bread being one of them. Fortunately, it would seem that they haven’t figured out how to screw up great tasting bread with the aide of modern technology such as preservatives and emulsifiers. The bread we usually get here is the Baton (a white loaf) and Ukrainian Style (the round, dark rye loaf). It is the kind of bread you can eat on it’s own, or with butter, day after day. This is due largely, I assume, to the use of sour dough technique which yields a far tastier bread then any found wrapped in plastic in Australia. It costs no more than 25-50 cents per loaf.
As you make your way under the road you can’t help but wish there were a more dignified way of crossing the busy intersection. The remaining, occasionally flickering, fluorescent lights struggle to illuminate the soviet-era tiled walls causing you to strain your eyes while looking to avoid broken glass or anything else on the ground in front of you; the smell of urine unavoidable. Then, out of seemingly no where, you hear the music of a piano accordion, skilfully played, and an accompaniment of singing echoing toward you. He’s a brave and pleasant old chap; making the bowels of a soulless traffic intersection seem almost alive.
