Sights to see in Kyiv

This probably should have been one of our first posts but is good to finally come around to it.  Kyiv is a very old city but it has had a turbulent history so while you do see old buildings, there are not hosts of them.  The main thing we noticed when we arrived at first, even just driving into the city from the airport, were the Soviet era apartment blocks that are everywhere.  We live in a part of the city known as the 'right bank' which is the old part of the city and there are many of these blocks of apartments but on the left bank which we have not seen so much of, there are many many more of them. The river that flows through Kyiv is the Dnipro. The left bank has only really been built since the Second World War.

This picture was taken from inside a moving marshrutka. The buildings do actually stand up straight.                    The areas on the left bank have row after row of these buildings. 

 One of the first places we visited after our arrival was the main street of the city.  It is closed to traffic on a Sunday and many people go there and walk and shop. The first thing I noticed was how wide the street is. The footpaths are very wide too.  It is a very touristy place on a Sunday. There are many young women dressed like Scarlet O'Hara from 'Gone With the Wind' who walk up and down the street selling confectionery set out on small trays.  Many people have their photograph taken with them.  We went to the large square at the end of the street and there were many people there, especially young men, trying to earn money from tourists.  There were people dressed in costumes and immediately they saw anyone taking photos they would come and offer to take a photo of the group for them and have themselves in the photos as well and then ask for money because they had done that.  They could be very persistent.  There were also men with eagles and doves.  They endeavour to put the bird on your arm and take a photo and then you must pay.  You have to dodge quickly if you don't want to have it happen.  Anywhere where tourists gather this will happen. We were there in August and the square was very nice and peaceful.

This photo (which we did not take) shows the beautiful blue skies you see here. We would love to see more of them. You can also see how wide the main street is.  Not all roads are like that.  We do have an eight lane road in front of our apartment building though.  We  front on to one of the main streets of the city. 

Maidan on a quiet afternoon last summer before it became world news.

The persistent costumed young men. We had bought a frying pan earlier in the day and I carried it the rest of the day.  It features in a number of our photos, even here. They instruct you how to stand for the photo.

The square was built in 1991 just after Ukraine left the Soviet Union.  There is a very tall plinth with a young woman on the top with arms raised.  She represents independence.  The square is called Independence Square.  The next time we went there was on the 25th of December.  By this time the square had been occupied for about a month by protesters, so looked very different.  We have not been back since the protests there but I am sure it would look different again.  You will perhaps have heard of the word Maidan in the news.  Maidan is the word for 'square' and this is where most of the deaths occurred in February

Maidan in February looking very different from just six months earlier.

 Not too far from Maidan (Ukrainian doesn't often use definite or indefinite articles) are the churches of St. Michael and St. Sophia.  They are very grand.  Both of these places were involved in the protests as well.  At one point early in the protests, police moved in during the early hours of the morning to clear the protesters from Independence Square (Maidan).  A young seminary student at St Michael's received a text that this was occurring.  He went and asked permission from his superior for him to ring the church bells to warn the sleeping protesters.  He was given permission and for the next few hours he (later others came to relieve him) rang the bells. The last time these bells were rung as a warning was in 1240 to warn the people of Kyiv that the Mongols were attacking the city!  The bells were heard in Maidan and the protesters were able to repel the police raids. The special thing is that the bells normally cannot be heard in Maidan.

St Sophia's before it became a temporary emergency hospital.

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Again we did not take this photo but we wanted to show you the priests and demonstrators standing unarmed between the two groups.  They have their backs to the police and security forces. it is worth commenting that many of the casualties in the fighting were from expert sniper gunmen using high-powered weapons from long range, so these men were in great danger.

St Sophia church is only a few hundred metres away from St Michael's.  When the protests were at their height in the middle of February, St Sophia was turned into an emergency hospital and the injured protesters were taken there for emergency surgery by volunteer doctors or made their own way there and took refuge from the Special Forces and police who were searching for them. Priests and other clergy were much involved in the protests in attempts to keep them peaceful and to give aid to the wounded.  Often clergy stood unarmed between the protesters and police to try to stop police and special forces from attacking unarmed protesters. One couple we have met here at church lived in an apartment very close to Maidan.  They could see and hear much of what was going on in those turbulent days.  They told us of something that they said was not reported in Western media. During the days of the protests the Ukrainian Hymn (National Anthem ) was sung about once every hour. However that was not the only thing the crowds did.  Each hour the crowds also repeated the Lord's Prayer.

Demonstrators being led in prayer on Maidan.

The final sight for this time is the Taras Shevchenko University.  It really stands out.  It is not far from the city centre.  It is named for Ukraine's most well known and loved poet and writer of the nineteenth century.

You can see why we say you cannot miss the University.  In real life the colour is even brighter.

The buildings on  the left of the picture are parts of  one the most famous churches in Kyiv.  We had wanted to look at it and at catacombs beneath it but Charise and I weren't wearing skirts so we couldn't go in.  On the right is a war memorial.  Next to it but not in this photo is a below ground memorial to the estimated more than six million Ukrainian people who died in a man made famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s. The Soviet leaders tried to break the Ukrainian people by simply taking the food they had grown out of the country and leaving the population to starve.

This is the Dnipro River.  It is a very popular place not far from the city centre.  Not quite the Gold or Sunshine Coasts but nice not far from the city.