Gdansk, Poland

If you think 'Gdansk' is a difficult one to pronounce, be advised that my local train station here is called 'Wrzeszcz'.

This is where my 2019 blog ends. (Don't all burst into tears at once). I'm not going home just yet, but I will be soon, and anyway my camera appears to have stopped working. I really don't expect you all to read my waffle without the compensating benefit of a few pretty pictures. Nor do I have any confidence about getting my camera fixed in a foreign country where I don't speak the language. It's a fair bet that they'd charge me 250 zlotys for an 'inspection fee', after which they'd put it in a cupboard for 24 hours and then tell me it can't be repaired.

Also I've decided to discontinue the tradition of ending each blog with a 'homecoming' picture, because otherwise Sunderland will always be the first thing people see on my blog when I'm between trips. It doesn't exactly lure people in.

Gdansk is nice. Nothing to write home about. Some significant history to do with World War 2 and the Solidarity trade union movement of 40-odd years ago. Further north up the coast are Sopot and Gdynia, nice seaside towns, bathed in sunshine at this time of year. My Gdansk apartment is in the Zaspa area: it's on the 6th floor and it has balconies at both front and back, through which cooling breezes make a steady one-way journey. My local Carrefour has a decent selection of imported beers. Everything's cushty.

Apart from interludes in Finland and Spain, and both parts of the island of Ireland, and now in Poland, this trip has been all about the north-western remnants of the former USSR. The three Baltic states are of course very different to Ukraine, which is in turn a long way removed from Belarus. But I enjoyed all five countries and I'd gladly go back to any or all of them.

I don't know when my 2020 trip will take place. Probably it won't be in summer, because for the past two months I've been sweating like a dyslexic on "Countdown", and I don't think I want to repeat that. Nor have I picked a continent just yet. Let's see what the visa rules look like after Brexit. It's all going to be sorted out soon, right? Right?

Enjoy the rest of 2019.

Along the Motlawa river

As above

Sopot

Sopot pier

My apartment in Zaspa

Mrozinscy?
Didn't he used to be in the Szmiths?

Edd vs Food #82
Home comforts...

Minsk, Belarus

In 1991, the only member of the Belarusian parliament to oppose the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one Alexander Lukashenko, a former collective-farm director and Soviet army official who then became president in 1994 by winning Belarus's first ever democratic election. 25 years on, guess who's still in charge?

Belarus is commonly known as 'Europe's last dictatorship' and essentially it's true. No serious opposition leader has ever stayed out of jail for long. Belarus is also the last place in Europe that retains the death penalty. Most of the economy is state-controlled, albeit often via cronyism and corruption rather than formal socialism per se. Civil society is kept on a very tight leash. In short, this is a country that goes against almost everything that I believe in.

And yet, and yet...I've hardly encountered any police or security officials. The streets and parks are clean and safe at all hours. The metro and buses are cheap and reliable. Unemployment is minimal. Nobody sleeps rough. During a night out along Zibitskaya, where the best bars are, the clientele drank deeply, laughed loudly and sang karaoke lustily; they all looked as happy and carefree as anybody else in Europe. Not much English is spoken, but people are friendly and reliable wherever you go. It's cooler here than in Kiev, and mosquito-free as far as I can tell.

Does this mean I'm suddenly converted to Soviet nostalgia and to benevolent dictatorship? Not at all. But it's certainly given me something to think about. There is a growing worldwide cynicism about our smugly complacent Western liberal-capitalist-democratic model, and we can't just laugh it off.

It's time for an innovation: sound. On the Minsk metro, each impending departure is announced by a pleasing Fmaj9 chord (that's what you get if you play an F and the next four alternate white notes on the piano), as well as "Please mind the closing doors!", spoken by a camp version of Darth Vader.  I have recorded it for your listening pleasure and it's here.

One last thing. I had a bit of bother on departure. Foreigners are supposed to register with the police if they stay longer than 5 days: it's normally the hotel's responsibility to do the paperwork, but you have to do it yourself if you're staying at a private address, and evidently that's what AirBnB apartments are. Anyway, I hadn't registered, and so all of a sudden I was an illegal alien. I spent some time being interrogated politely by two uniformed officials, both lithe young blondes of course, at the end of which I was given an administrative warning and a long confession to sign (in Belarusian). How many of you have ever brushed up against the law in a dictatorship, eh? Beat that. I am now officially a Bad Boy and I bring excitement into all your lives. You're welcome.

Church of Saints Simon & Helena, at Independence Square

Memorial to 5,000 Jews shot in this place by the Nazis during one day in 1942.
This sculpture recreates the victims being herded down into the pit.
Each figure was sculpted individually by hand.
There are pregnant women, and children clinging to their parents. One man plays a violin.

This is the headquarters of the KGB.
Yes, it's still going, and yes, they still call it that.
Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures here.
Oops.

Statue of Lenin. (Independence Square used to be called Lenin Square).
One day this will be knocked down.

Island of Tears
Memorial to soldiers killed in the Sovet-Afghan war, 1979-1989.

Museum of the Great Patriotic War (WW2)

Homely Soviet-style AirBnB apartment

Edd vs Food #81
Potato cakes
In foreign fast food joints, it's easy to avoid linguistic confusion.
Just take a pic from the menu and show it at the till.
And then you can put the photo in your blog when you forget to take a picture of the actual food.

Kiev, Ukraine

During all the long journeys and lonely walks that have filled up my travels over the years, I've spent a lot of time lost in my own thoughts, time during which I turn over many profound questions in my mind; and as my flight to Ukraine came in to land, I found myself confronting one of the profoundest questions of all...

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.

`The Maidan, epicentre of the 2014 revolution
That revolution was not without some unpleasant elements.
But more good than bad on balance, I think.

Looking out over the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery to the Dnieper river

Humongously long escalators on the Kiev metro

St Andrew's church, overlooking Andriivskyi Descent

Kreschatyk St, the main central shopping area

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. 

Dinamo Kiev 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 2, at the Kiev Olympic Stadium

Comfiest digs of this trip to date.
Air-conditioned spaciousness on the 13th floor

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.