Concrete Rainbows and Beautiful Views

After our 36 hour trundle through the flat, grey and rather unlovely landscape of eastern Poland and western Ukraine, we woke up to find ourselves finally approaching the city of Kiev. To save on a night’s accommodation, we’d decided to take the train to Moscow that evening, and thus we had about ten hours to kill wandering around the Ukrainian capital. After booking our tickets and putting our luggage safely in lockers, we headed off naively in search of the centre and/or the grand cathedral that was pictured in gaudy blue and yellow posters throughout the rather grand train station. Given that we had no guidebook, not a single word of Ukrainian at our disposal and absolutely no knowledge about Kiev, this was a rather questionable strategy, and initially we found ourselves wandering down backstreets and then through a bustling market in which the products for sale included plastic bags from famed western ‘designers’ such as Marks and Spencers and Peacocks, which if you are a fashion conscious but poor Ukrainian can be yours for the princely sum of 10p.

After much confusion, we did finally find the centre, although the cathedral continued to elude us - despite ten hours of wandering all around the city centre, we never laid eyes on it. I have now come to the conclusion that said cathedral might actually be in Lviv. Anyway, after eating what turned out to be a really delicious lunch of veal with ceps and tomato sauce (much appreciated after two days of living on bread and apples), we meandered around aimlessly for the next eight hours.

‘Faded’ would be a fair description of Kiev; seventy years of socialism have evidently left quite a deep visual impact on the city, which still has a rather ‘back in the USSR’ vibe. Unlike Prague - which having been largely spared from the twin scourges of wartime destruction and post-war reconstruction has quickly returned to its art nouveau, Habsburgian best - Kiev looks just as one imagines an eastern bloc city to look; gloomy, grey and, well, a bit shit. There are some wonderful nineteenth century and art deco buildings, but with few exceptions they are falling apart, with paint peeling off the windows and graffiti adorning the walls. And then there are lots of the brutalist blocks so beloved of sixties town planners, most of which appear to be in various stages of decay. The aura of depression was also heightened by the fact that the city was cloaked in a thick, grey fog; we climbed the hill that advertised itself as a viewpoint over the city only to find that the viewpoint furnished us with only a beautiful view of Ukrainian fog. All was not lost, however, for the park was also home to some other Kievan curiosities. The first was an alarmingly large number of wedding parties; car after car was blinged up with crepe paper and ‘Anya loves Sergei’ number plates, and most of these cars seemed to house brides, who were wandering around in the grey slush in strapless, snow white wedding gowns. The second was a big fat rainbow, lovingly rendered in concrete by some enthusiastic party architect. Unlike Prague, which quickly tore down all of its Communist monuments (Stalin was replaced with a giant neon metronome) Kiev seems to be in no hurry to pull down the Soviet statues. Perhaps they can’t afford to, or can’t decide what they would build instead, for there is certainly no love lost between Ukrainians and Russians and little evident nostalgia for the USSR. Fittingly, however, the rainbow is now situated next to an endearingly crap bright blue dodgem rink, on which two slow, sad dodgems were knocking forlornly into the wall as the radio pumped out tinny American pop. It was basically post-socialism crammed into a single scene.





All in all, the blue and yellow ‘We love Ukraine’ banners that were bedecked all around the city seemed to be more of an aspiration that a reality, for Kiev today is certainly looking a little sad. Despite this, it was a place that was surprisingly easy to feel fond of, and not merely in the ‘so rubbish it’s good’ sense. The city has not only a faded grandeur, but a visible defiant pride in its relatively new independence. This was shown by the fate of the historic 11th century monastery St Michael’s (which dates from the period when Kiev was the capital of the first identifiably Russian nation, Kievan Rus). The monastery was torn down in the 1930s by the USSR, a fact which clearly enraged the sensibilities of Ukrainians (after all, Russia got to keep most of its historic churches intact). Upon independence in 1992, the new government decided that the only possible solution was to rebuild the monastery exactly as it was when it was demolished. Work was finished in 2002, so the St Michael’s Monastery that stands today, despite looking like its existed for centuries, is actually only six years old.



Sticking it straight back up again like it had never been away shows a certain moxie, as does Ukraine's general attitude towards their Russian neighbours. The recent gas issue gave rise to the following - amazing - poster, in which the newspaper Glavred gives the Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko (who isn't getting along so well with her erstwhile ally, President Yushchenko), credit for getting the gas supplies restored:



It is a very interesting time to visit Kiev, as I imagine that in another ten or fifteen years the city will look quite different from today. Clearly change is on the horizon, although the pace is being restricted both by the fact that the country has been bankrupted by the economic crises (and has had a few difficulties in remembering to pay its gas bills) and by Russia’s continuing belief that the Ukraine belongs to it. Ukraine, however, is certainly defiant, so who knows what the future will bring. Probably more political squabbling and arguing with the Russians, actually. Anyway, despite being a bit rubbish, I actually quite liked Kiev (mainly because I felt a bit sorry for it), and I definitely wish it well.