Catching Up!

I just updated the post called “Travelling”. It is funny, when I read it I couldn’t understand it well so I am not sure how my readers followed it. So I re-wrote it explaining how I left Kharkiv in the evening of Wednesday for Kiev Boryspil, stayed overnight near the airport and then went back to the airport Thursday morning to take the Sky Bus into  town. And I added a photo of me sitting outside the railway station wearing the hat that Marina gave me. It was intended as a Christmas present, not to be opened till the 25^th but I had no room in my luggage for the mysterious box so I asked her if I could open it then. So, for the rest of the journey, to Kyiv, Nezhin, Lviv, most of the time, I “carried” it on my head. With my long blond hair, I truly look like an artist. Or maybe a crazy poet.

I sent the photo to Marta and she noted my blue fingernails. I can take selfies simply by saying “sonrisa” which is a lot more convenient than setting a timer. I will let you guess what “sonrisa” is in Spanish. 

 
I bought a sandwich and a Coke in the station and took the train at about 1.30pm. The journey was only about 1.5 hours and Marta was on the platform to meet me. We hugged and walked out of the station, both saying basically the same thing: that it was most odd having seen each other online for such a long time then here we were in real life. The same thing happened when I met Marina for the first time. She looked much younger than I was expecting and I joked that maybe she had sent her sister to meet me. Marta was as I expected to see her. We quickly got to like each other quite a lot. She checked me into the hotel (you can see a photo of my room) and we walked around the town and I’ve added a couple of photos. Marta complained that I was talking and looking at the ground too much instead of looking at the town. It was funny. We passed four churches in quick succession. So, after that, I paid more attention. The streets were very wide but there was very little traffic. The whole town was like that, lots of wide open spaces. It is a town, not a city. Marta showed me her flat where she lives now and also her new flat under construction where she hopes to move in soon. The builders keep on delaying the delivery date. It sounds like Spain. “Mañana”.  It reminded me of when I was waiting for my flat in Spain to be completed; I was so impatient.

By the time we had walked around, talking all the time, it was about 6pm and we went to a small restaurant very near to my hotel for a meal.  It was 
below ground and there were one or two small alcoves with tables and we chose one of those. Haha, very trendy but not very practical, the menu was on an iPad and we had to order by click. I just wanted a nice person to come along, take the order and explain that the meat dish included potatoes so we didn’t need to order a side dish. Sometimes technology overtakes what we humans actually need. I mean… a fridge that orders its own food? I can do that, for the moment at least. So, we ended up ordering more than we could eat so we asked for a “doggy bag”. A doggy bag is rather like asking for an autograph and then saying, “It’s not for me, it’s for my daughter”. It’s not really for a dog, it’s so that they don’t chuck the food away which is very sad. Unfortunately, next morning, that’s what I had to do.

Marta came to the hotel at 9am and we went together to the railway station by bus. We crossed the line and waited. We were travelling 3^rd class -  it was fine. The carriage comprised bench seats more like a waiting room and we had our reserved place. But I wouldn’t want to travel a long distance like that.

We arrived in Kyiv 1.5 hours later and we had about two hours before our train to Lviv. We went for a coffee in the station and I’ve included photos of Marta and me. I don’t want to go on too much about our getting on well but it feels as thought we have known each other for years. And the age difference is irrelevant; it is about mental age - mine is much less than my actual years. And I make no apology for including lots of photos of her; she is a beautiful Ukrainian girl with a personality to match. But it is funny; in the photos in Lviv we appear like a couple but of course we are not (in the physical sense, bf/gf). But it felt like it. And for me that was just so nice, I cannot explain it. When it rained, we shared my umbrella and walked arm in arm (I did the same with Marina in Pisa, it was so sweet). I rarely felt like this when I was younger; I was not able to feel like this. I was for ever analysing, do I love her, don’t I love her…. Maybe I took after my father. Now I feel so much love, it almost overwhelms me. For Marta and of course for Marina also in Ukraine.

So… I have taken this post up to the time we took the train from Kyiv to Lviv and I will write about Lviv in my next post. But all the photos are here. We had a great time. We climbed the tower, we drank hot chocolate. It rained quite a lot!

I am writing this late on Wednesday (25^th) but I am very tired. I got back from Ukraine yesterday at about 5pm in Girona, had my hair cut (not much!) and then went to the Meetup group which I organise. And then I had another meetup this morning, Girona Grapevine.

We caught the train to Lviv at 1.30. The Intercity trains are modern and comfortable and are arranged in compartments which seat 6 in 2^nd class and 4 in 1^st class, meaning that the seating is the same but the middle seat is not used. For an English guy, this is nostalgic because that is how trains were many years ago. We went to Lviv in 2^nd Class and came back in 1^st. We chatted a lot and Marta talked with the other people in the compartment while I studied the Ukrainian words which she gave me or listened to music. The time dragged a bit at the end of the journey because the total time is 6.5 hours and the train seemed very slow. Coming back, it was faster and took just a little over 6 hours.

We arrived at around 8pm. Lviv was shrouded in a damp mist, very misterious! We took a taxi to the hotel – all the streets are cobbled and there are many trams which gives the city and old-world feel. The hotel was called Eurohotel and was quite luxurious at the entrance but the room was quite small. I had phoned the hotel earlier to ask if they had a superior room and they said that they had already upgraded it to superior. What they didn’t mention was that they had changed my original booking of a twin-bedded room. The girl at Reception proudly told us about the room having a big double bed. I am sure it would have been really big, both the room and the bed but obviously we couldn’t accept that so we had to “downgrade” back to the original twin-bedded room.  Sharing a room makes a lot of sense because it is cheaper of course and more sociable. It is cool! And we each have our privacy because we used the bathroom to change, of course.

We wandered around for a short while, bought some fruit juice for the room and had a meal in the hotel restaurant on the 8^th floor. It was enormous and luxurious and not too expensive. Marta chose a steak meal while I was away checking the reservation, it was excellent. And we didn’t make the mistake of ordering too much!

We both slept well and had a breakfast in the room of juice and sausage and bread which Marta had brought with her. It was fun, like camping out. Around 10am we left the hotel and walked for about 15 minutes down to the centre of town.

  We had considered booking a tour but, in the end, we were just happy walking around. You can see photos of Marta by a monastery wall. We found a small tourist office in a tram as you can see. Marta bought me a Lviv mug which I now use at home for tea. Thank you, Marta! The little office also served coffee, the smell was irresistible. I joked and said that it made people stay longer and buy more! The weather was fine and sunny, not too cold, I guess around 12c.

Marta had been here before but a long time ago.

For me, the highlight of out tour was the tower of the City Hall. 

There were many people making the climb which was quite tough. I wasn’t going to do anything stupid like trying to impress Marta how fit and macho I was, she was impressed anyway. So I stopped briefly to rest a couple of times. The view from the top was wonderful.

We had a pizza and took photos of each other! When we came out, the weather had changed a lot and it was now rather grey and raining intermittently. We had no wish to go back to the hotel so we continued our walk around the city, sometimes using my umbrella, arm in arm. Like a couple of swells! We laughed a lot, Marta complaining that I was holding the umbrella in the wrong place.

Lviv is famous for its chocolate and I looked up the Chocolate Workshop in Google Maps. We had hot chocolate as you can see. On the way back to the hotel, I wanted to buy Marta one or two red roses (I am not in love, song by 10cc) but she wanted potted plants which she could plant at home. So she carried the bag with the plants all the way back to Nezhin which was rather sweet. I hope they grow well!

In the evening we ate in the hotel restaurant again but because we had shared two pizzas earlier, we just had salads. The hotel was a little out of the centre so there was no choice of restaurants near by.

We slept better this night and next morning I went out to buy what I thought would be bread – we had seen a small shop on our travels. But in fact the shop was selling hot filled bread, I chose bacon and cheese and then bought two coffees on my way back to the hotel. I booked a taxi to the station at 10.30am and we arrived at the station in good time. The station had a smell which I have not experienced for many years, a steam train was puffing smoke into the cavernous space! Fortunately our train was electric!

It arrived on time, it was enormous!

I really enjoyed the journey back, the time passed very easily. As you can see, we shared a table by the window and Marta tried teaching me some Ukrainian. She also chatted a lot with our two (because it was 1^st class) companions. In Kiev and in the west of Ukraine, I hear Ukrainian. In the east, in Kharkiv for example, they speak Russian. I am slowly learning how to recognise the difference in the written text, Ukrainian sounds different.

When we arrived back in Kyiv, Marta checked if there was an earlier train back to Nezhin but she had to wait for the train which she had booked, at 9pm. So I suggested that she came back to the Ibis Hotel where I had reserved a room for myself. She sat happily planning her lessons for the following week. I don’t know if I said before, she teaches English. Then we walked back down to the station and had a super meal at Kamyusha (Камюша) which is a 50s themed restaurant, very cheap. The menu is made to look like a magazine (www.katysha.com.ua). If you visit the website, see those prices! In hryvnias, 30 to the euro. Some dishes are 1 euro. After the meal we went back into the station and found Marta’s train already parked and we said farewell with a hug on the platform and I went back to the hotel.

  Here are some more photos!

Cobble-stones and trams, that is Lviv!

The following two photos really belong in the next post - they are in the airport.

Nezhin and Lviv

This is my first opportunity to update my blog since Thursday and now it is 7.30am on Monday morning in Kyiv. I am staying for one night at the Ibis Hotel, then this evening I take the Skybus back to Boryspil. And then tomorrow morning at 9.50am I take the UIA flight to Barcelona.
During the day today, I will write about my short visit to Marta's town of Nezhin and then the weekend we spent together in Lviv. So much to tell you!
Needless to say, I am reading each day about the worstening situation in Catalunya and it fills me with alarm.
But, for the moment to more mundane matters of breakfast and buying a charger for my phone because I left mine in the train, together with my personal wifi hotspot. So the only connection online will be from the Ibis or Ligena Hotel this evening in Boryspil.

Travelling

I updated this post from home in Spain on Wednesday. 

I think maybe my friends in the UK are worried about what is happening in Catalunya is filling the pages of the international press. I am getting that sick feeling in my stomach again.

Wednesday (18th) I checked out of my hotel in Kharkiv and Marina came with me to the airport, we spent a short time together before she had to go to teach and then I went through security. The flight was less than an hour and I was soon in Ligena Hotel in Boryspil. The hotel lays on a shuttle bus from the airport.

On Thursday (19th), I go to Kyiv to take a train to Nezhin, to see Marta....
After the night in Ligena Hotel I took the hotel shuttle bus back to the airport (about 15 minutes)...... The bus arrives at the top floor of the terminal building which is International Departures. I passed through the security at the entrance - it is strange to be here but not catching my regular flight to Barcelona, that will be on Tuesday. I took the escalator down to the ground floor and took the Sky Train into town. 

Here I am at the Central Station waiting for a train to see a girl who I have never met in person! I sent this to her on Skype. She noted my blue finger-nails!
 

About Catalunya, I am truly scared at what will happen. Companies are leaving in droves. A man in business who voted for independence has just lost a big client in Germany. Now the reality of the reckless drive for independence is coming home. For a very long time, the independistas have been in denial about Catalunya automatically leaving the European Union. Now it is beyond doubt and there will be some very ashen faces among businesses which expected to continue trading freely in the EU.
Maybe today, Mariano Rajoy will trigger Article 155 but what if the Parliament in Barcelona physically prevents it? Or if a large crowd blocks the Parliament Building. In any case, I predict violent demonstrations in the streets because the chances are that Carles Puigdemont will be arrested for sedition.

Posing.... again!

Marina likes to pose as regular readers will know, so that's what we did on Monday. She knew an interesting building a little out of town to do a photo-shoot. I took about 300 photos in all (Nikon D7100 DSLR). I'm not sure where the photos end up, I am trying to persuade her to update her website with more photos.
After shooting the pictures, she went off home by taxi because she had an English lesson to give and I took a tram back to Heroiv Pratsi where there are two large shopping malls. I had a burger and Coke, I can't remember the price but the burger was about 50 euro cents. Admittedly is wasn't very big but by then it was about 4pm so I didn't want to eat too much. Later I took the Metro back to Sumska Street and my hotel.

Today (Tuesday) was less successful! Marina had booked two restaurants in 5-star Kharkiv Palace Hotel but I thought at first she was talking about a restaurant for this evening. But her intention was to shoot photos in each of the two locations but the hotel does not allow photos apart from those taken on a mobile, such as selfies of photos of plates of food I guess. To do a serious photo-shoot is 2000 uah for 2 hours (€64). I asked Reception if they had a lower rate for non-commercial photos but there was just one rate.
If it had been half that, I would have paid it (if Marina had allowed me) but 2000uah was quite a lot of money if we weren't claiming it on expenses! Marina wanted me to take photos on my phone but I felt that wasn't really honest seeing that only I would be eating anything and I wasn't really in the mood for eating anyway. Unfortunately we ended up arguing about it and went back to Hotel19 in not a very good mood! I think Marina was tired because, by then, all she wanted to do was go home, so we called a taxi for her. But it was a great shame because she had gone to a lot of trouble to get ready with dresses and makeup. It is no surprise that there is a big gap in outlook between a young girl of 27 in the east of Ukraine and an English guy of 74. Normally it doesn't matter but she just wanted to go for it and I felt that it would be unwise to attempt it because we could have ended up humiliated. That didn't bother her but it did me!!
When we arrived back at the hotel I asked at Reception what their rate was for taking photos in public areas and the answer was 500uah. We have taken lots of photos here in the past but we never have to pay because I am resident.

Bowling

I will add more words later! This was Sunday and the photo is of the fruit and veg market. 

The other photos are of Marina and her friend, Vika. We went bowling as you can see. We had so much fun - we were like teenagers and my age in years was quite irrelevant. We laughed so much in the restaurant afterwards that Marina was almost falling off her chair.

Vika ordered (Ukrainian) champagne but of course I paid for it together with the bowling, and the meal in the restaurant afterwards. If you have any lurking feelings about "buying friendship", then dismiss them instantly. I can promise you, this was a wonderfully moving friendship. The only stage at which relative age would be relevant would be in a sexual relationship but I am sure that you can see that this is quite different than all that stuff! Maybe they will find the husbands that they wish for but meantime, they had a great time with a guy who unfortunately is outside the age range (in years but not mentally). We will meet up again tomorrow for a farewell supper (I am writing this on Monday evening). And then I leave them to go and see Marta in Nizhiyn on Thursday. I will be a little sad because I like Vika a lot. To see her and Marina together gave me enormous joy.

A view of Catalunya from Ukraine

I'm writing this on Sunday. Later I am going bowling with Marina and a friend of hers, Vika. I try not to think too much about the bad things going on back home. I don't read Spanish papers and there is no Spanish TV here. But I read The Times which, during the last week or two has been intensely anti-Madrid which upsets me a lot, because it is rather like supporting the illegal forces instead of the side which is attempting to uphold the law.
Most people reading this will know that Carles Puigdemont has been given a deadline of 10am on Monday (tomorrow) to make it clear whether he is actually declaring independence or not. It is not as though Madrid is asking him to decide, it is really to ask, who is calling the shots.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I want to move out of Catalunya regardless of the outcome because I cannot stand the poisonous atmosphere which will continue in any case. It is splitting families and friends. In my case, although I try not to think this way, I feel upset with my friends who support independence whereas before, I was very happy to co-exist with people who felt differently from me. Maybe they will feel differently about me because I don't hide my wish for Catalunya to remain part of Spain. Now people associate remaining part of Spain with the police violence on 1st October although I share their opinion. The big difference is that I don't see that it makes any difference to the legitimacy of the referendum and independence, it is quite separate. Two wrongs don't make a right.
When I go back on 25th October, I have 3 weeks before I go to Thailand and The Philippines which will be another welcome relief from the upheaval in Catalunya. But some of that time will be spent in Valencia because there is a very good chance that I will make it my new home. The big problem is my flat which I own. In the short term, I would have to rent it out and use the income to pay the rent in my new home and hope that they more or less match but I have to pay tax on the rent that I receive. In the longer term I would want to sell and buy but what chance of selling my flat when there is so much uncertainty. I could have done without this but I am a great believer that out of something bad, there comes something positive. And I will be moving to Spain, real Spain, where people speak Spanish, where I won't get nagged for not speaking Catalan. And Catalunya can sink for all I care. Even if Puigdemont declares independence, Madrid will immediately apply Article 155 which takes direct rule and forces new elections. This will cause enormous bad feeling which may spill onto the streets.
I think independistas ought to spend a week in the east of Ukraine and then talk about freedom and more money going to Madrid than comes back. When Catalunya wakes up to all the money and commerce escaping to Spain, they may see things differently. 

Arrived!

I ended my last post boarding the plane to Kyiv. The flight takes 3 1/2 hours, it is a 737-800 of Ukrainian International Airways and the return fare is never less than €300. Ryanair attempted to break the monopoly about a year ago and Kyiv Boryspil Airport agreed but the powerful owner of the airline overruled it.They even started taking reservations.

These flags, Catalunya, Spain and the European Union are flying outside the terminal, will they still be there when I return?
The flight arrived 30 minutes late, so by the time I got through Immigration which is very quick, and went up one floor to Domestic Departures, and got through security, I walked straight through the boarding desk to the bus waiting below. I guess I could have made it if I had been 15 minutes later but is is a little too tight for comfort. And I could have asked to jump the queue for Security.
I met my dear friend Marina at Meeters and Greeters and we spent a pleasant hour in the bar close by before I started to think that I should be heading for the hotel. We took a taxi together and dropped Marina off at her home which is not far from the airport.
I had a meal in the hotel and they gave me a free ticket for their disco next door. By now it was well past midnight but I was an hour behind so I went back to my room to change into my trendy girly gear and spent about 30 minutes in there. The sound level was enormous so I couldn´tstick it for very long. In any case it is not music, it is DJ generated beat. The girls were beautiful and smartly dressed and the guys rather shy and wearing the kind of clothes that they would wear in the street. I hesitate to generalise but in Ukraine I often see this contrast between the sexes.
 I didn´t sleep well. At about 5am I was woken by a loud crash. For a moment I had no idea where I was. I think it was the disco emptying its bottles into a refuse bin in the courtyard outside. It took me a long time to get back to sleep ad I was woken again by stuff being emptied into the bin. I complained in Reception but they can´t change their room. I asked that they are quiet but I can´t depend on it. It´s terrible, going to bed half expecting to be woken at 5am with breaking glass.
I complained bitterly at Reception next morning and they promised to talk to the disco. I had some breakfast and went back to sleep for an hour and felt much better. I never need much to catch up. Marina and I arranged to meet outside Universitat Metro at 2pm, I was expecting to be eating somewhere, she told me that we going to a place with plasticine but first we were going to a fair. On the way we passed hand-prints of various celebrities. I have attached various photos. The fish were from the local river and were still alive, so obviously air-breathing, like lobsters. I decided to give that a miss. They were very strange-looking to me.

After the fair, we walked back towards the hotel and, very close to it in Shumska Street, we dived in through an unmarked door, down some steps and Marina knocked on a door. There was a small sliding window and a man's face appeared and demanded a password which fortunately Marina had prepared. The door opened into the most beautiful restaurant. It was if they didn't want customers. The walls were covered in thousands of sculptures in plasticine. We took a seat and Marina ordered for us because the menu was all in Cyrillic.

 We were given our plasticine kits and I chose to create a Union Jack. I had to look it up in Google Images because I couldn't remember exactly how it went. The food was brilliant, Marina chose salmon soup for me, we shared a piece of roast chicken and chips and finally had cherries in a dough cover. We also had ginger tea. The bill was 400 uah which converts to about 13 euros. This is typically Ukrainian, it was so quirky. And one could almost imagine in advance that they didn't take anything as normal as a credit card! The food was absolutely top-class.
By now it was about 5pm and Marina wanted to go home but before that, we continued down Shumska Street to Ave Plaza shopping mall which has been updated since I was last here. There is now an Intimissimo and Calzedonia. Marina wanted to look at the shops so we visited Intimissimo and one or two less expensive shops on upper floors but left without success. She took a taxi home and I walked back to the hotel, had a beer and then spent some time in the room before eating later in Abajour which is the hotel restaurant below ground. I thought about going to the disco again but it was 11pm, a good time to sleep and too early for the disco anyway!