My old friend Yakov invited me to come to Kiev, Ukraine for the last weekend of summer bank holiday. I took an additional day off, and booked a flight from London Gatwick to Kiev. It is about a 2.5-3 hour flight. I used Dot2Dot to get from Kings Cross station to Gatwick. In hindsite, though it was a fairly easy way to get to the airport, I would have been better served to have simply taken the Northern Tube line all the way to the airport. It would have been faster and cheaper. Next time. . .
When I arrived in Kiev, I got my first experience dealing with former Soviet protocol. It took almost 2 hours to clear Passport Security. OY!On the way downtown, we passed a bunch of Soviet apartment buildings that look like giant boxes. They call them "cell" buildings as they were built as modules and assembled together on site. They are rather scary looking, and all I could think of was that they look like hives full of drones. I'm guessing that was the idea.
I was incredibly grateful the entire weekend that I had Yakov and his wife Oksana with me as Kiev, though the largest most metropolitan city in Ukraine, is still not a very tourist non-Ukrainian speaking friendly city. It is an intimidating city that is loaded with history and Soviet built influence.
Many structures are imposing, including the Metro (subway) line. It is full of art and marble. It is built in that Soviet Art Deco style and has a huge bust of Lenin in one of the stations. The metro line is one of the deepest in the world. In fact, I visited one station that is reputed to be the deepest subway station in the world.
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