Do chicken Kievs really come from Kiev?
The answer, it turns out, is 'maybe'. Find out more here if you really want to, and see Edd vs Food below. Furthermore, nowadays the city is often spelled Kyiv rather than Kiev, but I'm old-fashioned as you all know. Continuing on the theme of trivia, allow me to clarify that this country is called 'Ukraine' and not 'the Ukraine'. Only two countries in the world officially start with 'the': The Bahamas and The Gambia. So now you know.
By most measures Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe. However the numbers are skewed by the ongoing civil war (or insurgency, or Russian invasion, call it what you will) in the east of the country, and by wide regional disparities more generally. Kiev itself is a bustling and prosperous city. Nonetheless things here are agreeably inexpensive. Metro tickets are the equivalent of 30p, and I have a spacious new-build apartment with gloriously powerful air conditioning for just £38 a night.
As with all the former Soviet republics, there are plenty of monuments to the Great Patriotic War, aka the Second World War. Also there is a memorial commemorating the Holomodor, the man-made famine of 1932-33 which killed somewhere between 3 and 7 million people, and which you don't always hear too much about back in England. Many people deny that the famine was imposed deliberately; but even if you take the 'good intentions' argument to its absolute limit, you can't avoid the fact that those who attempted to leave the famine-stricken areas were shot, or that people eating the dead bodies of their relatives resulted only in conditions being toughened still further (there were 2,500 'convictions' for cannibalism).
For the second time on this trip, I'm reminded of the idiots back home who still walk around in 'CCCP' T-shirts. Of course, even while the famine was at its height, the policy of forced collectivisation was vigorously defended by fellow-travellers in the UK, including many of the leading cultural & intellectual figures of the time.
On a happier note, I've taken in the first football match of this trip, in which Dinamo Kiev got beat 2-1 by Shakhtar Donetsk. In my unthinking prejudice I had always assumed that Ukrainian footballers had to kick balls through snowdrifts while wearing fur coats and Cossack hats. But it's 30°C here and I was sweating in the stands. Back in my apartment, the aforementioned air conditioning has been going more or less permanently. Unfortunately I have no such luxury in the metro, which is cheap and efficient but also crowded and fearsomely hot at times. And the people are friendly, but so are the mosquitoes...sigh.
On the whole, though, Kiev is a fascinating city and the Maidan on an evening is a magical place to be. More people should come here, and certainly I think I'll be coming back one day. In the meantime, I'm heading to the airport, where it'll be time for Check-In Kiev. Ha ha.
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| `The Maidan, epicentre of the 2014 revolution That revolution was not without some unpleasant elements. But more good than bad on balance, I think. |
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| Looking out over the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery to the Dnieper river |
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| Humongously long escalators on the Kiev metro |
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| St Andrew's church, overlooking Andriivskyi Descent |
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| Kreschatyk St, the main central shopping area |
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| Statue of Anna Akhmatova. Regarded by many as the greatest female poet of modern times outside the English language. Inevitably she spent much of her life censored, persecuted and impoverished by the Soviet government. |
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| Dinamo Kiev 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 2, at the Kiev Olympic Stadium |
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| Comfiest digs of this trip to date. Air-conditioned spaciousness on the 13th floor |
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| Edd vs Food #80 Chicken Kiev, in Kiev. At the Hutorets restaurant, to be precise. Here it's served on the bone, and there's no garlic in the butter. Much more rewarding than that time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky. But not as good as Denver Fries in Denver. |
