We’re Here!

I’m writing from our… interesting… soviet-era hotel room, sleeping on a bed that I actually find fabulously comfortable, while Ois says it’s “not a bed, it’s just the box spring!”

We arrived yesterday at 5pm local time (1am Montreal time) to a beautiful warm day here in Kiev, after a brief stopover in Paris, where sadly, no macaroons were consumed- but $8 cups of airport coffee were. (That’s poor grammar, however my throat is currently too sore to bother trying to fix it. Thanks recycled plane air with coughing people.)

(Above: Where’s Waldo? I mean, where’s the Eiffel Tower?)

We were met in the airport by one of the translators who works with our agency, a young woman named Anna, who was as lovely as they come- relaxed, cheerful, speaks 4 languages fluently and is learning a fifth. With her was our driver, Victor, who had some kind of blue Ukrainian mini-van with cushions and some plastic flowers and a picture of the Virgin Mary over his rear view mirror with a little dollar store plastic fan. We drove the 30 mins from the airport to downtown Kiev. Now, do you want to know what Kiev looks like?

It kind of looks like Manitoba! Lots of farmland, except not in perfectly laid out squares from the aerial view. Before we got here I was really wondering what the light was going to look like, and what the air would smell like, because that is the thing that usually hits me like a 2x4 straight away. Well, the light is exactly like Manitoba: warm, clear, pure colours, no deep shadows; the air has it’s own scent- crisp, not humid, but with sort of a very faint basement-y smell somehow. Not unpleasant, I like it!

We had some capers in the hotel upon check-in though. It seems that amazing rate booked on Travelocity was blamed on a “computer error”, so when we arrived to check-in, if I wouldn’t have pulled out the iPhone and hit “calculator” we would have paid DOUBLE our reservation rate. I’ll spare anybody else the hour and 15 minutes worth of details, but Oisin turned into Johnny Cochran in about 2 seconds, and was on the phone to Travelocity, reading back their very own “guarantee” to the poor bastard while asking him what exactly it stood for in the first place if they were trying to say they couldn’t rectify the problem and guarantee their very own booked room rate. Poor Anna. She waited with a smile on her face until we sorted it out, and she even made a phone call to ensure we had an apartment ready & waiting for us if they weren’t going to honour the price we booked. I bought her a glass of wine which she tried to politely protest about until I told her we all needed one after that!

Well here’s a tip, next time you visit Kiev and find yourself arguing about a room rate reservation with Travelocity before you turn down an available apartment because you are determined to stick to your principles after arguing for over an hour with a guy at a call center: Before you even get into it, ask to see the room in question first. Ha, our hotel suffers from what I like to call “Manhattan Complex”. This means it has a stunning, luxurious lobby (where did they get all that illuminated onyx for the walls and countertops? Look at those modern flower arrangements! Look at the custom leather club chairs!) But then as soon as you step out of the elevator, it’s like you are a visitor in a mental ward that has been accented with leftovers from a renovated Chinese buffet restaurant. A nice accent to the 1950’s cinderblock walls and indoor-outdoor carpet!

In any case we dumped our stuff after having a laugh and decided to walk around downtown Kiev and maybe get a bite to eat with our remaining $10 as we were too lazy to exchange any more money. Kiev at night is absolutely beautiful. It’s beautiful in a way that is absolutely unique to the city; I’ve been all over Europe, Asia, Australia etc etc… and it has it’s own look that is unique to anywhere else in the world. The buildings are spectacular. “Grand” really isn’t the word. The detail work combined with looking sturdy and steadfast is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The stone seems to radiate a soft golden light from within, coupled with the city lights at night it’s like being in another world. There are park benches everywhere, it seems people really enjoy just sitting and watching the world go by. The streetlamps are elegant, the outdoor cafes come with pale, billowing curtains and twinkling string-lights, there are canopies of trees everywhere and bubbling fountains, cobblestones, and things are built on a gentle hillside so the views are stunning. We were laughing because we stayed up watching the Ukrainian music channel where it’s permanently 1994 house music with some very strange and disturbing concepts- in between the bouncy, multicoloured and sequined Europop, we saw a video where a lady gets glamourously beaten up in a parking lot by her boyfriend, then bound, murdered and shoved into a car trunk all the while smiling with bed-messed hair and perfect makeup. Every single man on TV was horrifically ugly- even the boy bands- paunchy, pale, bug-eyed, while all the women look like supermodels. This seems to be true on the streets as well. Everyone is so tall! Is anybody under 5’10 in height? At least I know where I get it from, I am happily amoung my people!

So we continued wandering around looking for something quick to eat and stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall (literally) where there were all sorts of bun-like things in the window and a massive variety of beer. I don’t know how that lady sits in there. It was smaller than a closet! We pointed to a couple of different buns and a beer each and she sweetly wrote down the price on a bit of cardboard so we could understand and we all exchanged smiles. Back at the hotel it was good to just get into bed and be properly horizontal for what felt like the first time in years. Happily, the buns were delicious! They smelled like Soapie Gramma’s house when she was cooking, or the food hall in the basement of the Bay in downtown Winnipeg! Yeasty and tangy like delicious sausage. Which is what one of them contained- the other had a cured ham of sorts and some cheese. God, they were good. And only about 70 cents each! The beer was $1. Bargain!

Well it’s morning now, so I’m going to have a shower, then head downstairs for the complimentary breakfast, which I hope includes some more of those good bun-type things. Then our adoption agent here is coming to meet us to explain just what goes on at our appointment, and what to expect when we go to the orphanage, etc. I’m really looking forward to meeting her. From what she sounds like, she’s a bit of a bulldog, and that is EXACTLY who I want fighting in our corner when we do this whole thing. That’s it for now. Peace out!