Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Day 4 - kiev sunny morning

Today i take the most charming transport to town, the phantastic old tram. The driver also collects the fares (one hrivna 50 kopeks = 0.15 euro) and she ist a beautiful mature lady handling the machinery and humans with supreme professionalism. All public transport is full to the last bit of standing room, and everyone is courteous to the max. Money is handed from person to person, with the most minimals commentary, tickets and change is passed through multiple hands to the front to the driver and back to the origin, tickets are handed to people next to the manual pattern-hole-punching ticket-validating contraptions, and returned.
I take a few photos of people and views in the sunshine, I see a beautiful art-noveau building, a fountain of a man tearing open the mouth of a lion, mondane things and very very cool unexcited people.
I decide to take the metro to the main railway-station to find out about my 322 bus to Borispol airport on Thursday. The metro is a bit frightening to navigate, the are absolutely no signs in latin letters. It takes a bit of sherlock-holmes-ery combinatory reckoning.
The outside of the main train station (McDonalds entrance) seems to be a market of casual male labour, in beautiful sunshine and a cacophony of hawking. Inside the exquisite halls you can find information and services underneath a palace-like canopy. Very impressive, it really gives architectural respect to the people, to travellers and workers.
It is not a functionalistic cage, but a liberating celebration.
The 322bus runs every 30 minutes 24/7, and trains to moskau are 70 euro, st.Petersburg 55euro, Odessa 8 euro.
On platform 1 I inspect the train Venice-Belgrade to Moscow-Ushgorod, little 6 people sleeper compartments, with fine silverware and tea-cups in windows, passengers smiling, train-personell impeccable uniforms, and rolling stock in good shape. I want to take this train one day.
I have a fine green tea in the station's upstairs restaurant (1 euro), inside a hall fit for kings. Here I am writing these lines and since they have free wifi internet (shara-vara at bigmir.net), you could have been reading this a few seconds after i finished this sentence.
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