Travel Blog debuts

by Greg Bloom,
Jun 05 2008, 00:08

© File photo In the last four years Kyiv both changed a lot and remained the same.

Former Kyiv Post editor Greg Bloom returned to Ukraine last year after a four-year hiatus to update Lonely Planet’s Ukraine guide. This is the first of several articles documenting his travels around the country.

When people ask me what I miss most about Kyiv, my home from 1997 to 2002, I tell them two things. One, the lifestyle. Where else could you live like a king on a paltry editor’s salary? Two, the Kyiv Post. In the heyday of the Kuchma years, amid a journalistic landscape dominated by temniki, the Post was a rare bastion of independence.

How things had changed when I returned to Kyiv last summer. Thanks to soaring fuel and real estate prices, it appeared that living like a king now required actually being a king – or its modern-day equivalent, an oligarch. The house on the outskirts of Kyiv that I had almost bought for $20,000 seven years ago? It was now worth $200,000. The city had its first skyscraper. Decrepit Bessarabska Quarter had morphed into an entertainment complex for the Rolex set. The proliferation of fancy restaurants, already well underway when I left, had turned into an explosion. Taxi prices had quadrupled. Men dressed smarter and women’s fashion had become slightly less …. er, nutty. In short, the ever-emerging middle class had emerged, and Kyiv was awash with money. Politically, the changes were no less profound, as the Orange Revolution, flawed as it may have been, had ushered in an era of unprecedented freedom for the press.

Given those changes, I expected my first emotion upon returning to Kyiv to be one of estrangement. Yet that wasn’t the case. On the contrary, I felt like I had never left. It started the moment I arrived at Boryspil Airport. Sure the recently expanded airport looks a little different. But the Boryspil experience has changed little. The same mad scramble for position at passport control is the first thing to greet the increased number of clueless tourists now pouring into the country thanks to relaxed visa rules. Provided they find an English-language immigration card (there were none when I was there) and figure out which of the nebulous huddles masquerading as lines they are supposed to be standing in, they face a wait of up to 30 minutes. “Dobro-friggin’-pozhalovat” to Ukraine.

I finally got my passport stamped by an officer who gave me a look that, if hardly welcoming, at least bordered on indifference. Unfortunately my bags remained in Frankfurt. Stuck in Kyiv without luggage there’s only one logical thing to do: start drinking “vodichka.” The diminutive form of the word vodka is frequently employed by denizens of the former Soviet Union, to whom “vodichka” is a precious and familiar friend, to be consulted whenever the world gets especially cruel or (alternatively) especially kind. As in the old days, it proved remarkably easy to scare up a few drinking partners, despite it being mid-afternoon on a workday. It didn’t hurt that I still have scores of expat friends remaining in Kyiv.

No less familiar than the company was the setting – the outdoor patio at Zoloti Vorota, unchanged after all these yeas and still everybody’s default meeting point on warm summer days. Directly across Volodymyrska Street, on either corner of Prorizna Street, the same two beautiful neo-Renaissance facades still faced each other. After a few drinks, you would have had a hard time convincing me that I had ever left Kyiv. The only thing telling me otherwise was the street traffic, which was denser and consisted of noticeably fewer old Soviet Ladas and Volgas, and noticeably more late-model, middle-class Western marks like Opel and Toyota, as well as  BMWs, Mercedes and Hummers.

Later that night we ended up in the Klitschkos’ club on Bohdana Khmelnytskoho, which had just opened up when I left town. My visit here confirmed a few more things that haven’t changed in five years: Moneyed Ukrainians still like gambling, sushi, clubbing, bowling, and pole dancing, preferably all under one roof. With my vodka-and-beer hangover the next day, and wallet lighter by at least $100 lost to the Klitschkos’ casino, the feeling was complete. Yeah, it was good to be back home.

I spent the next few days getting down to work updating Lonely Planet’s Ukraine guide. Hardly a thankless chore, it involved lots of wandering around to my old favorite haunts. It also involved checking out every hotel in town. One week, 100 metro rides, and 50 visits to renovated former Soviet hotels later, it was time to set out toward virgin territory. It was time to set out toward Ukraine’s flat, yawning centre, home of the country’s legendary black loam – and not much else.

More observations on Kyiv are on Bloom’s blog at http://mytripjournal.com/blukeblog

www.bigmir.net
www.korrespondent.net
www.ukrbiz.net
www.uasport.net
www.ukrjob.net
www.afisha.ua
www.pink.com.ua
15minut.com.ua
www.bigbn.com.ua
www.novynar.com.ua

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