Thursday 1st March

We arrived in Kiev around 10:30am, in a pretty grim looking side of town. The first view of the surrounding areas around train stations has returned! We went into the ticket hall to book the next train, and surprisingly enough, no one spoke any English. We decided to go to the hostel and get them to write it down for us! We had a bit of a walk to our hostel, a 30 minute walk or so. But there were no road signs so we had no clue where we were going. The only option that looked promising was straight ahead looking on the map it showed dead ends. So off we walked blindly following the directions on the iPod hoping that we were going the right way. We realised it was the correct way once we managed to match the road with map in hand!

We had our first 'culture shock' of the trip, by the fact that we don't understand ANYTHING written anywhere. We also had locals coming up asking us random things, directions I assume. What I would like to know is why ask someone with a huge rucksack looking at a map? Doesn't it give you the hint that we also have no clue what so ever as well!!!

We found the street out hostel should be and ask directed found a grey door, but we couldn't find no sign so we were getting right confused. We did eventually find the hostel sign, which is the smallest sign ever designed! We walked up more stairs (I do hope I get to reap the benefits of all this stair walking!). Our hostel was very homely, it was basically an apartment fitted out as a hostel. We got settled in and got ourselves sorted! We asked the hostel staff to write in Cyrillic our next train destination, St Petersburg but a change in Moscow as the direct train to St Petersburg goes through Belarus and you need a transit visa, which we do not have! We picked up the hostel map so we could stop off at the supermarket to get dinner on the way back. The map was pretty pointless. One side had the Cyrillic names, which is fine as we needed it to match up to the street signs; however our hostel wasn't even on the map. The other side was the English translation, which was stupid; we instead used this side to try to match the way the road bends and the other roads coming off.

We got back to the station and managed to find someone who spoke basic English. She didn't understand anything we were saying, but we managed to get a ticket to Moscow. That was a start. We decided to leave it and get the ticket to St Petersburg in Moscow. We found the supermarket and got all our dinner items and headed back to the hostel.

We managed to find some English TV to watch, the discovery channel! I am now more knowledgeable regarding building super cars and god knows what else!! I remembered that I had already prebooked a ticket from St Petersburg to Moscow so we decided to do the same and prebook our ticket to St Petersburg to save any further hassle! With that done and out the way we didn't have to worry about anything but to get to the station in Moscow.

We were pretty boring and decided to just stay and in for the rest of the evening since this has been our only stop we have been able to relax. I had planned to go to Chernobyl site, however it has recently changed it legislation and you needed to book 10 working days in advance as security needed this information before you arrived. This annoyed me as this was the reason we came here. Never mind! We decided to use this stop to relax and prepare for our next journey and get better. I have had a stinking cold since Berlin, which is not cool. The hottest sleeper trains and colds do not mix well!

We went to bed at a reasonable time, and we have decided to do the free tour of ancient Kiev tomorrow!

Friday 2nd March

We got up and dressed ready to go out, got directions of where to go and off we went to find the meeting point. Due to the crap maps, as explained above, we got a little lost and confused to where the hell we were and miss the start of the tour. b*****. We'll do it tomorrow. I was already in a bad mood at the point due to stupid maps, stupid writing and annoying locals, plus with my cold it was the first time we both wanted to be at home.

We decided to have a wander around the city; I won't repeat what I thought of everything as my mood made everything seem 10 times worse than it properly was! We decided to head back along the main high street. To cross the streets we had to use the pedestrian subways, we went do a seemingly normal looking one and it was actually an underground shopping mall. This confused us even more and it totally messed up our directions! We finally emerged and had no clue where we were; I did eventually recognised where we were and headed back to the hostel.

Stu convinced me to get into the lift. Let me describe this lift; it was tiny, looked old and dodgy in any case. I should have trusted my instincts of my fear of lifts and small spaces and walked but no I walked in. Stu pressed our floor number and the light went out. At this point fear arrived! I was a blubbering idiot about to start hyperventilating! We found the button for the light (thank god!) and started to press all the buttons to find the help button. Nothing worked, but the light. Stu tried to open the doors but it was properly jammed. We did start shouting for help, we even tried to phone home to find the number of the hostel to ask for help, but Stu's phone wasn't working. This made me worse, Stu kept trying to tell me to calm down but it didn't really work at all. We came to the conclusion that we may be stuck in there for a while then the light came back on permantly and we pressed the floor 4 and it worked. I have never been so pleased to see daylight! We got back into the hostel, where the staff found my state rather amusing. It took a good 10 minutes for me to calm down! We have both agreed no more dodgy lifts (I just think no more lifts EVER!) and I will NEVER complain about stairs again!

This event really had not helped my sour mood, even though I had cheered up before getting in the lift! We decided to play it safe and stay in the hostel for the evening with the staff. We did have a good evening in watching some random Ukrainian TV and trying to guess what was going on! Luckily I went to bed in a better mood than when I woke up. We had to check out tomorrow and get to Russia; now I was worrying again…!

Saturday 3rd March

We woke up and checked out. We started checking all our details for the next 24 hours of travelling. The one problem we had was we need to get to a different train station to the one we were arriving in Moscow. We were going to try and attempt to book a taxi, luckily some Russian's had checked into the hostel yesterday so we asked them for help. They told us not to get a taxi and to get the metro; he also wrote the train line and station we need English and Cyrillic so I could give a good crack at a translation!

We headed off for the free tour at 12, our tour guide Natalie was Ukrainian and spoke pretty good English, but her accent was really strong so Stu was struggling to understand!! I had to become a translator again. We met in Kiev's Indpendance square, it has a huge monument that takes centre stage; Berehynia is a female spirit in Slavic mythology, which recently came to be regarded as a "Slavic goddess" with a function of "hearth mother". There is also the original gate to the city (which was tiny) with the Ukrainian patron saint St Michael who sits on top of the gate.

We walked around the square and found some quirky art work that we didn't notice the day before! One of the guys on the tour has been living in Kiev for a couple of months and has never noticed these before!

We walked towards the St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, Natalie asked how old did this building look, a range of years between 200 - 1000 popped up, but no, this building is only 13 years old! It was originally built in the Middle Ages by Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych, the monastery comprises the Cathedral itself, Economic Gates and the monastery's bell tower. The exterior of the structure was rebuilt in the Ukrainian Baroque style in the 18th century while the interior remained in its original Byzantine style. The original cathedral was demolished by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, but was reconstructed and opened in 1999 following Ukrainian independence. It was literally the bluest building you could see for miles!

We saw the statue of Saints Cyril and Methodius who are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet. I gave them my two piece of what I thought of this nonsense of a language!

We walked around the corner to see The Saint Andrew's Church, which it was built in honor of Saint Andrew. All these churches were really impressive; their structure is so complex is amazing how they managed to build it.

We walked through a children's playground, just because it was an architecture site in itself! It didn't too child friendly though, lots of hard and sharp edges! It did have a cool slide area that was taken from inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. It was a giant Cheshire cat and tea cups!

We saw, another, statue Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (now part of Ukraine). He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state. In 1654, he concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav with the Tsardom of Russia, which led to the eventual loss of independence to the Russian Empire. There are rumors as to where he is pointing to, some say Poland, some say Moscow. Apparently a couple of guys worked it out and he is pointing at neither!

The last stop was the Golden Gate, which was not very golden at all. They think it was called this due to the amount of money it collected from people entering the city.

Once our tour had ended, we returned to our hostel to get ready for our night train to Moscow. Nerves started kicking in again! Over the years I've heard some pretty bad stories regarding Russian customs. We boarded our train and got settled in; about 2 hours in the cabin attendant came round with white arrivals/departure cards we had to fill in. This was easy enough. I saw the words Belarus written on the card and started worrying that we were going through Belarus which would have been a problem. But apparently Belarus and Russia use the same departure cards. That's kinda stupid! We got to the section where it asked who our 'invitee' was, erm ok, however we couldn't remember who this was and our visa had it written in Cyrillic. I considered copying this but the space we got was tiny and we wouldn't have been able to copy it correctly. Cue expensive phone call to home! Luckily mum and dad found the name of the invitee so we calmed down a bit.

Ukraine border control was nothing compared to entering Ukraine, simple look at the passport and stamped it! It took about 30 minutes to process the whole train. Next was the Russian border. Apparently the border guard was standing at the cabin door for a while and Stu was desperately trying to wake me! It was 3am in the morning and just wanted to sleep. The whole process of border control was just simple…quick and easy. I don't know who has been making up crap about border control but we had no problems. I think the Russians have recently eased up their security which is a benefit!

After that I went back to sleep ready to find the next journey which was going to be tricky!

Overall view on Kiev:

Kiev didn't impress me; I didn't really have high views on it either. The only reason why I wanted to go was to see the Chernobyl site, which I didn't get to do, so it felt a pretty pointless stop. I would like to know how the Ukraine will handle to expected visitors for the 2012 Euros being held there. The locals are grumpy, unwelcoming and stare at you (yes I know we are odd looking but still!). I will go back, only for a short trip to go and see the Chernobyl site, but in the summer as it was pretty cold!

Total miles travelled from UK: 2372

Transport taken:

Trains = 8

Hours ahead of UK:

+2

Our photos:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150843457008986.513900.501883985&type=1&l=ba9d94858e