The Metro

On Saturday we made our first venture into the under ground rail system here in Kyiv.  I have basically lived all my life in Brisbane and we don't have an underground so I have no point of comparison but the Kyiv Metro just blew my mind.  The first thing was the speed. Here I am talking about the speed of the escalators to go down into the metro.  Charise was ahead of me and as she stepped onto the escalator I saw her stumble and thought she was going to fall. Then I stepped on and I thought I was going to fall.  The escalator moves much faster than the tame ones we have in Brisbane.  These are also much steeper than any I have used before.  We went down about the usual distance and came to the end.  Because you are moving quite quickly it is tricky coming off at the end until you learn the knack.  You are kind of catapulted off the end.  This is so much so that they have a raised portion at the first step off to slow down your exit. Well, ahead of us you could see twenty or so meters and then I expected we would see the trains.  But no. Instead we came to another escalator.  This was a real!!!!escalator.  Unless you have seen one like it is almost hard to describe.  Maybe there are many under grounds like this one in other parts of the world and many of you have seen them but it sure was new to us. The escalator stretched down away from us so far you couldn't see the bottom.  It was incredible!  The escalators are not new so they clank and rattle.  So down and down we went. I didn't think of it on our first experience because we were just so amazed but on our next time ascending I timed our ride up.  Remember this is travelling quite a bit faster than a regular escalator in Brisbane.  We ascended for two full minutes! It is amazing however how quickly you become used to things.  This is Tuesday and we used the metro first on Saturday and already we are quite used to the incredible depth we reach but somehow I don't think you really comprehend just how far down you go.
We have just found some actual statistics about the metro so I thought I would add them for your amazement. So the Kyiv metro has some of the deepest stations in the world.  The Arsenalna station (which we used today) is the deepest metro station in the world at 107 metres deep, and the Universytet station (which is just a couple of stations from us) has one of the longest escalators (87metres long). The site that put up this information then says "Many stations have two long and intimidating escalators in a row,"  They are very correct. They are very intimidating!  When I was in PNG in the 1970s I landed on the world's steepest airstrip a few times and now I have been on the world's deepest underground.

The metro system here is very good. It is very cheap and there are no timetables because trains come every few minutes.  There are three metro lines in the main part of the city and our flat is opposite a metro station so it is very convenient.  We do not intend to have a car while we are here so we see a lot of the metro.  This description may make me seem a country hick but it certainly was one of my first adventures in Ukraine! We also do a lot of walking.  Most days since we have been her we have walked about  ten kilometres.

Today it was even more because we went to a tourist centre where they have built typical houses  from the various parts of Ukraine and put them together on a site that is approximately 150 hectares.  This meant a lot of walking to see most of them.  It really was quite beautiful and the general scenery was beautiful too.  One thing I noticed was that it was very quiet there except for the rustling of leaves in the breeze because there were very few sounds of birds. Tomorrow more sites to see but this should involve a little less walking. As it ended up, today Bill and I walked the furthest of all our days so far (about 15k).

Here are some photos of the houses we saw.

Charise in a traditional Ukrainian headdress.