Life in Kyiv, Ukraine

Honeweek: Day 6-7 Venice, The City of canals, bridges, masks

The one thing nobody doubts about Venice, Italy – it is absolutely unique place, the diamond on world’s heritage. The question is rather “ how many days should I (we) spend in Venice” instead of “visit or not to visit”.

I would create just two categories based on length of visit:

From 1,5 days to infinity: creative person looking for inspiration, all kinds of artists, rich people who want to spend extra money.

1-1,5 day: all the rest of humankind, including our young family.

It’s really nothing to do there after 1,5 days unless you want to spend extra money on expensive food&transport or visit some artistic sites.

Mine tip to tourists: you can’t really feel the atmosphere of the Venice at overcrowded San-Marko or the major tourist route from Ferrovia to San-Marko or even at Grand Canale. What we did is long walk all around small streets and corners of Venice, including Dorsoduro, Cannaregio, Santa-Croce and San-Polo, visiting small restaurants and looking at residential houses. By the way, a number of good seafood restaurants operate near Zatterie.

Gondola trip is seriously overpriced (80 EUR for 40 minutes), but vaporetto (water tram) is a nice and romantic way to move around

Dish of week: Spaghetti al nero, the traditional local Venecian cuisine.

We did not go to any of islands, as we wanted  to spend half a day in our Little Italy representative – Quatro D’Altino.  This cute small village is just 23 minutes by train from Venice.  Despite having a neat modern hotel  Hotel Airport Venic (LINK)  it represents the best houses of modern family living in Italy.

Check pictures from our Venice trip at Facebook.

 

Honeyweek: Day 1-5 in Rome, non-typical observations of the city

Except from making love on the honeymoon trip there are plenty of other things to do in Rome, Italy. 4 wonderful hot sunny days we spent in the “eternal city” let me feel relaxed and joyful atmosphere of living in Rome. 

Not being a particular fan of history and architecture and getting bored by all of the world’s churches I look more into Food and Lifestyle in Roma (as Italians call the city).  You may find all the general information in travel guides, here are just a few untypical and unique observations of mine:

In semifinals Small cars (SMART and Fiat) won their match against SUV’s and regular sedans  with 10:1, while in final they were defeated  by motorcycles  with tight 2:4 score.  (what a contrast to Kyiv Lexuses and Jeeps !!!). No matter of age, profession, sex lots and lots of people use motorbikes, wearing anything from dress to suite. Here is the typical transport picture of Roma

motorcycles

smart cars

Not only the modern and ancient architecture live in harmony in Roma, but they are accompanied by neat green plants and trees everywhere.  We particularly liked trees with blossoming flowers, to see something like that in the mid-September was like a miracle for us !

blossoming tree

The Cult of Delicious Food God is very strong, no doubts about that. Even I did not like dry and tasteless bread in the restaurants, but Caprese and Casta were always marvelous , without a correlation to restaurant price category.  Important to mention, however, that in search for food we were trying to step aside the tourist highways and walk into small streets.

no frozen food

eating at the streets

What is different from other cities – all restaurant and cafees operate as a small family business, we haven’t noticed any big chains of restaurants (not taking into account fast food of course).

Italians are known as big smokers, but what really strikes me – after finishing the cigarette the smoker immediately throws cigarette on the street. Everyday I saw a couple of such wrongdoing, as a result of this behavior there are quite a few butts everywhere. I guess the Italian government may consult to Singapore in tackling this problem.

Since a bottle of water costs  1-2 EUR (10 times  more than in Ukraine !) we were really pleased to discover many waterpipes with normal drinking water on the streets. Those are also used by me as a refreshing  mini-shower, considering the temperature as high as 35 Celsius sometimes.

free water in Rome

Rome is a world's capital of wonderful  fountains . No additional comments required, it was a pleasure to see them on those sunny days.

piazza Navona

Trevi

 

 

A few nice pictures from the really neat place

The main center of Vilnius under three types weather moods (gray, black and white):

a modern fairy tale

To see more pictures from Vilnius go to Flickr

Trip to home town (photoreport)

Koziatyn - 30,000 thousand town in Vinnytsia region,  2.5 hours from Kyiv by train.
Interesting fact about Koziatyn - it has 3 monuments to Lenin (1 per 10 000 popualtion).
here are 2 of them

So I came home

with the purpose to but my Mom a new laundry machine.
I think my parents have psychological problems with buying new things for themselves, so found a few reasons why the family should not do it. 3 basic reasons:
1 "we don't have money"
2 we already have a laundry machine
3 to buy a laundry machine we need to go to Vinnytsia, we don't have time for that.

which were reasonably stroke back by me
1 "you don't, but I do"
2 here I explained that soviet-era laundry machine which requires a lot of manual work is a little bit outdated

3 here I had to compromise and agreed to buy it in Koziatyn.

So the family  went to bazar, which have not changed much from my school years

There we found local electronic mega stores

Unfortunately they do not accept Visa, so I had to found the only Aval cash mashine in the cetral shopping mall
   

While looking for it I noticed a lot of positive changes in the town. A lot of banks opened there branches, and what especially pleased me: the park, which was a dirty place for drinkers and drug-takers now looks very clean and has three children's playgrounds

also the town has Gothic style "kostiol"
   

Anyway, I got money and finally bought the thing

And the simple fact made me the happiest man in the world.

I know my loved mother would not have to do all hard manual laundry anymore.
Enough.

Short clip from Goverla

I really loved the view of the several small houses from Goverla, so here they are. Short video at YouTube

Toastmasters go to Dnipropetrovsk'

Target of visit:
To help in opening first Toastmaster club in Dnipropetrovs’k. We wanted to demonstrate the usual Toastmasters meeting
Additional personal target: If feels good to be a volunteer. And I do like meeting new interesting people.

Impressions about city:
Dnipropetrovs’k is becoming my favorite destination. Two trips as elections observer, 4 audit trips and now volunteer. Since my audit trips more modern buildings arose. The American – style architecture neighbors 10 kop soda machine, rich and poor, like it always felt in this city.

                                    

            

This trip I discovered the Dnipro river is really beautiful here, perhaps even better than Kyiv.

Impressions about Toastmasters club opening: we met dedicated to self-development members of large software company. We had  marvelous speakers who demonstrated direction to grow. We all were enthusiastic about starting something new.
However, in my opinion, club our opening crew lacked “client tailored approach”. In my consulting job it would be disaster to take formal model and introduce it to a client as perfect solution.  Any good model needs to be tailored to client needs. In other words jokes and stories about software-developers and computers, I think we missed that.  But hopefully those people will be fine, now it all depends solely on their commitment to personal growth.

Basically that is about trip. Still,  do you know the best thing about being a volunteer ? You act among like-minded people and met new ones.

Chicago photos trip 2004

Just posted good pictures of Chicago to Flickr (my Chicago trip 2004) - see pictures here

Jeans Beach club

Entrance on Sunday is 35 UAH and there a few people between 10 a.m and 13 p.m. 10 minute walk from metro Gidropark
Advantages : 
- 5 volleyball playgrounds which may be used for badminton as well
- 1 playground for wet football
- chaise lounge, bar and drinks are  available
- like one of my friends said “the wall protects us from “gopy”

Disadvantages :
- stinky dirty polluted water of Dnirpo river. 35 UAH can’t improve it.

Conclusion :
Good place for weekly Deloitte volleyball. But if you  look for a beach on hot summer day – avoid Dnipro river

Impressions about major London's attractions

Disclosure : The impressions are solely personal and should not be treated as eternal truth. Level of fatigue, hunger and weather conditions might have had impact on impressions. 

National Gallery :
I am the greatest fun of the art in world. So it was just fine to see good paintings, especially one of Leonardo Da Vinci. I felt very smart that I visit the Gallery. But it was more of a team play than personal interest. Free of charge, by the way

See picture of National Gallery here

London eye :
  Actually less then you would expect of it.
First - because you feel too safe while locked in the glass cabin, no adrenaline. The view at the top was good, but not the best in the city. Second – it cost 13 pounds (1 pound = 10 gryvnias) with online purchase discount and not included in London Pass.
Still it  is worth a visit, as everybody would ask you “Have you been to London eye” ?
Interesting fact : It is called British Airways London Eye, so I assume it is BA property.

Pictures of London Eye and views from  London Eye

Tower of London  :
Brochure : Home to the Crown Jewels and centuries of remarkable stories.
Mine experience : Fine. Jewelries are fascinating as always.  White Tower is a huge museum with lot of weapons.
I really liked  the wall which has all royal emblems in chronological order. It is felt like an independent  line in the history of British monarchy.
But I did not quite felt that royal spirit. Perhaps, because kings and queens do not  live there anymore.

Picture of Tower

St Paul’s Cathedral :
Why would non-believer go to place of worship ?
To feel the spirit of the place. It is magnificent. I spent hall an  hour reading manuscripts at tombs to English famous people. I would learn who is Duke Wellington later, but I felt he was a great hero only by words at his tomb.
To see the London from the top. Golden Gallery is 85 meters from Cathedral floor (434 steps according to brochure, I did count but confirm there were a lot of them). The view of London is brilliant. On small spot of viewing space that dominates London skyline against the chilly wind the panoramic view tastes sharp.

 

Views for St Pauls Cathedral

Tower Bridge :
Wonderful guides. The clear-cut English language they spoke is the best thing about the exhibition. Also to add are the explanations for the  Victorian engine rooms’ work. I usually have difficulties in understanding the work of mechanisms, but this time I got the main principle.
The panoramic views under glass are nor so spectacular, they are just fine to my opinion. But the story of the bridge is a story of impressing engineering achievement of 19th century.

Picture of London Bridge

Britain at War experience :
Usually I an fond of war history. However this museum is not a was history with maps and battles description, it is civil  life under conditions of war. Gas masks, ration books, old newspapers, safety instructions for bomb attack which are accompanied by sounds of war times. Educational experience. And sense of reality in the old underground air raid shelter.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
Sunday Times “The beating heart of theatrical London”
I have read all Shakespeare’s plays at 18. Since that time I had a dream to visit Shakespeare play in original English language.
I adore Shakespeare. Visiting Globe was like visiting a house   of worship for me.

The tour led by enthusiastic Kitty discovered for me the evolution of theatres and their visitors. The theatres were entertainment place during the Shakespeare’s time. All of them were located outside old London at other bank of Thames due to strict moral rules within the city. The atmosphere could  be compared to modern British stadium as people would watch play, discuss best actors, drink beer and have fun. In other words it was not a high scale intellectual entertainment of modern time. The stand place to Globe yard cost 1 penny in Shakespeare time. I am glad, Globe still has 700 of five pounds s
tanding tickets in the yard, from which I bought one.

“The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare.
The reality turned to be different from the way you imagine. I was barely able to understand about 20% of language. I was not able to obtain what people were looking in Shakespeare for centuries, the beauty of his language. I knew the plot and watched the play, but to failed to hear it.
The dream is modified now. When my English becomes better I have to come back for “Romeo and Juliet ” in UK. Hopefully I won’t be alone at that future play.

HMS Belfast
HMS is a cruiser. She was launched in 1938 and served with distinction in both the Second World War and the Korean War. Now she serves as floating museum.
Big guns and engines you may find at any modern ships, what was really exciting about the tour is kitchen. There are separate rooms for bakers, butcher,  potato slicing and so on. The quite natural manikins of man and food help to imagine the whole complex of feeding the big crew.

Chelsea Museum and Stadium Tour
It really behind the scenes of big football.
Most interesting things :
- The building and stands is one architectural unit. That’s means small shops with beer and snacks are easily accessible from any stand, they are actually on the top of each big stand. It also means that toilets are 1-2 walk from the stand and there are plenty of them. Quite a difference from Kyiv Olimpiyskiy
- Museum has over 100 history of Chelsea with lost of interactive videos and club attributes. Personally I enjoyed studying final standings of each championship staring from early 20th century.
- Fans love Roman Abramovich. Shevechenko is ok, they are ready to give him second chance.

Apsley house and Wellington Arch
The house is residence of Duce Wellington descendents and contains a lot of his belongings. I finally studied who the man was. Next time in Deloitte IPO quiz I feel even more confident about British history. Wellington Arch is a little bit of monuments history. And it has nice view point on Hyde Park.

Sherlock Holmes Museum
221 Baker street is the world famous address, so I could not miss it. But it seems there is no return to childhood to me. I did read all Conan Doyle’s stories, some more than once. But nowadays I forgot what the most of museum artifacts were about. It felt like ordinary old house with lot of unusual staff. No sadness, just acceptance of  the change.

London Zoo
Most exciting thing about Zoo was to search for the attraction. Regent’s Park, where Zoo is located, it probably the largest in London. So I made  a couple of circles, checked a lot of sport events, passed beautiful Mary’s flower gardens before getting to the Zoo entrance.
Gorilla was cool, very close to visitors. All others are allright animals as well, except lion is really hard to find in his huge cage.

Vinnopolis
It is huge house of wine. The ticket includes 5 wine tastings and one cocktail. There were a few groups of  Cityworkers in suites, so young tourist in shorts and running shoes felt out of the crowd. Not much socializing was available for me, so I had to concentrate on  wine regions study and tastings itself. The best one is red from South Africa.

London Aquarium
14 zones dedicated to species, who live in water. Hundreds of species. Baltimore aquarium in USA definitely got more, but it does not matter. I always calm down in aquariums and fee very comfortable. Don’t understand why everybody is so excited about sharks, whilst there are red, yellow, green, blue little fishes to admire.

Catamaran Cruisers. Circular cruise on Thames River.
If there is a nice weather – “must to do”  for tourist. You do discover the heart of London by sailing on its major artery. Good video to watch  from my cruise at You Tube

London. By Kyiv tourist's Eye.

General :

London :
It  is city of intellect.  It is everywhere – in planning of Underground system, at advertising posters, in operations of  historic sites, tours at  modern attractions and in the air of City financial district.

People :
They  here have a good sense of style. Classy is a good word. This opinion is based on the way they dress, walk on the streets and sell me a beer in a bar.  I did not socialize much with the Londoners, so they opinion is based on external factors. But my two friends got the same one.

Unique thing only London has : Weather
I would like to quote  Shakespeare’s Globe tour guide Kitty “The English weather is changeable, to say the least”.
The rain starts and stops up to seven times a day. Sometimes it combines with sunshine, sometimes with wind.  It rarely a pouring rain, rather it has a calm friendly character. Most of people don’t try to use umbrellas unless they have to. First day I used my umbrella all the time. Till the last day I understood the rain is common thing and not a huge inconvenience. Seventh day did not open my umbrella a couple of times.

Glossary  :

London – the capital of Great Britain. Also a home to world famous cultural heritage. Also a city where I have spent 7 days from Sat, June 23rd to Sat, Jun30.

City – financial district of London where offices located.

Pound – money of London.  One pound is about 10 gryvnias.

London Pass – Ad says “Your passport to London”. A card which gives you access to over 50 London major attractions. I bought it with travel pass for all means of transport within central London. Total cost with an online discount – 106 pounds.

My hostel – International house of Westminster university. Rooms are available only during summer period.  Nice quite place within walking distance to central London and lot of attractions. The cost is 21 pound per person per night.

Sasha&Olya – We friend with whom I was traveling. Because of different interest half of time we spent together and for the rest was separate. During the visit they have made most expensive metro trip I have seen in my whole life – 8 pounds for one-way 10 minutes underground trip, which equals 160 trips in Kyiv metro.

Visit’s personal statistics:

•   Visited all famous tourist attractions (except Madame Tussauds as it is not included in London pass). For more detailed information see “Impressions about major attractions”
•   Saw 4 sharks and one gorilla
•   Drunk about 10 pints of beer (1 Guinness, 4 ciders, 5 lagers). If not consider cider as beer then 6 pints.
• The amount of food eaten in Chinese bufees cannot be precisely quantified.
• Sailed on  one Thames cruise
• One more dream fulfilled (see :”Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre”)

   

Observations :

1 The statement that pretty girls may be noticed at the street only in Eastern part of Europe is myth. There are plenty of nice looking girls on streets of central London , it is highly unlikely they all are tourist from the Eastern Europe.
However there is a wholly different attitude to outlook, to my opinion. Girls in London have less cosmetics, simple clothing (jeans are very popular), they rarely use heels. It seems they are very comfortable with own outlook, which is very natural.

2 Everybody knows that Great Britain has left-side traffic. Well, it not solely about cars, pedestrian are the same.
So a good test to determine who prevails in the crowd (Londoners or tourists)  is to analyze how the human traffic flows. At Oxford  street, shipping Mecca, crowd tends to move right-sided, while further form central underground is naturally left-sided.
The comic situation occurs where split between tourists and Londoners is about equal, then it four lines traffic on two sides pavement. I had that situation in the underground a couple of time. Even it says “Keep left”, right-side movement is unconscious thing for us.

3 I understand tight security measures in Britain regarding flights. Planes fly over London constantly, a day you may see up to 10 planes flying low over the city. I saw them over Parliament, Chelsea Stadium, Shakespeare’s Globe, Tate  and other prominent sites.  It is breathtaking view if a plane is low enough. It is one more good thing about London, a few people know about.

4 The navigation for tourist is made using KISS principle (keep it simple stupid). Arrows and signatures are everywhere, only complete idiot may get lost in central London. Especially I admire bus stops, as they have so called destination finder : by the name of your destination you are able to look up bus route and where it steps. No surprise, but each bus stop has a map of surrounding area.

5 People in pubs  have a good time and enjoy socializing. The pubs were drinking pubs, there was no entertainments (karaoke, big TV etc), but I have not seen any drunk person in the pubs I have visited. People come there to talk and meet friends.

6 1st of July England goes smoke free. In the central area of London 95% of transport are buses and cabs. The city has big green parks. Social advertising raise issues of energy savings and lowering emissions.
As a result of that air seems much cleaner then it is in Kyiv. Government and citizens not only concerned about environment they live in, they do things. (just check this ad in underground) I wonder how many years Ukrainian society is behind that type of thinking. 

To watch a couple video shots from London please go to You Tube

If you pan visit to   make sure you visit Official London Website – tons of useful information.