Randomness in Kiev

Policeman is always on his duty

In Kiev you can find a lot of streetart. My favourite was a park on the top of a hill where was set up a kind of Alice's wonderland. Among other statues, there was rather huge slide. I was in the good mood and went up there to slide down. It was quite steep and long and so I was for some time just sitting up there and collecting my courage. All this time a man who was close by had had a look on me. It made me feel a little strange and I decided to slide down quickly. When I was on the half way the man approached the slide track and for a second I was already quite anxious. But when I started to stand up the man helped me and showed his certificate - he was from municipal police..

In the evening of my last day in Ukraine I was in Kiev with a Chinese girl and we went to Pinchuk gallery - a gallery for nowadays modern art. I was a little surprised but only in a positive way when I saw this side from Ukraine - until that time I hadn't have any contact with modern movements in Ukraine, the country had seemed to me rather conservative.

In this evening everything was quite random and spontaneous but that much more exciting! The queue to gallery was really long (it took at least half an hour to enter the gallery). We had stand in the queue max 2 minutes when one guy came to us and asked to make a deal - we stand first 15 minutes in the line and then they come and stand the last 15 minutes, meanwhile we can walk around. At the first place we where hesitating a little but as we wanted to see some places around before they were closed we agreed to collaborate.

The gallery was really interesting. My favourite was the room with African style wooden statues which depicted the McDonalds man. Plus Sky Cafe on the last floor - place where we could enjoy really nice modern interieur and even better view on the city. When talking to those two guys we had made the deal it came out that one of them was audioengineer. At least I hadn't heard before that there excsists something like this. When talking and talking this audioengineer came to the idea that he has to show us his friend's place. And so we spent our last evening with some very cool local people who we met really randomly.

One of the guys took us to the train station. Oh, I almost forgot - before we went to the shop and we were recommended the best Ukrainian black bread and cheese I've ever eaten! The wholes in the cheese were just magnificent!

At the railway station we wanted to take the skybus to the airport but we should have had to wait more than one hour. Then one other came to offer us his minibus for the ride. The guy who accompanied us to the railway station was a little suspicious and told the car driver that he wouldn't like us to go with him. The car driver got really angry and they really started to argue. Our friend told that he is from Eastern Ukraine and that's why he just has to be suspicious all the time.. But our car driver felt really-really insulted and expressed it in every way he could.. So we experienced that besides being very hospitable, Ukrainians are also very proud and this cannot be wounded!