Eastern European Oddysey – Part 2 (Kiev, Warsaw)

While Western Europe is famously well-connected by trains and planes, Eastern Europe…not so much.  In fact, the reason Blake, Michael, and I came to Istanbul in the first place was because we found it unusually difficult to get from Bucharest to Kiev without spending at least one night at some major transportation hub.  And while a 6:00 am flight from Istanbul to Kiev seemed rational at the time we booked it, the reality of the accompanying 3:00 am wake-up call was a cold slap in the face.  Watching him sitting on his bed at that ungodly hour, cross-legged and shirtless, eating a breakfast of a can of beans (without utensils) and a banana, simultaneously complaining about and relishing its grossness, I couldn’t help but think–Blake, it’s good to be your roommate again.

In Kiev, we visited the city’s beautiful Orthodox churches, St. Michael’s Cathedral and St. Andrew’s Church, and the ancient monastery, Pechersk Lavra.  Within the monastery, we saw the catacombs where the bodies of saints are kept under afghans in glass coffins so visitors can see the proof of their sanctity–their exposed, non-decomposed hands.

St. Michael’s Cathedral

St. Andrew’s Church

Pechersk Lavra

Also within the monastery complex is an amazing museum–a collection of miniature works by the artist Mykola Syadristy.  Each must be viewed with a microscope, many are almost invisible without it.  The works range from a complete chess set to sheet music to engraved portraits of artisits and politicians, to a ship with golden sails and ropes 1/400 the width of a human hair.  Syadristy had to make his own tools and learn to pause the beating of his heart in order to complete such fine hand movements.

We then visited the Memorial to the Victims of Holodomor, which honors the 6 million Ukranians who died of starvation in 1932-1933.  This was a man-made catastrophe, widely considered a genocidal mass-murder perpetrated by Joseph Stalin as an attempt to crush Ukranian nationalism and its citizens’ capitalist ideology.  Hearing the Ukranian perspective on Stalin makes the celebratory portraits of him with Roosevelt and Churchill seem even more bizarre.

Memorial to the Victims of Holodomor

As the Ukraine is a former member of the USSR, it retains some Soviet culture.  We were all prepared to be coerced into giving bribes to crooked policemen, but to my disappointment it never happened.  However, Kiev’s train station proudly carries on the confounding traditions of communist commerce.  It offers dozens of ticket windows, each selling a highly specific category of train tickets, each with different opening and closing hours, and each announcing intervals during its opening hours that it would actually be closed for a scheduled “break”.  However, with experience it is a fairly straightforward process–here is a simple 12-step guide to purchasing a train ticket from Kiev to Warsaw:

1. Attempt to purchase tickets online from rail company (after entering your personal information, web site will fail to load purchase page).
2. Attempt to purchase tickets online from a travel agency (only delivery option will be to pick up tickets in Warsaw).
3. Go to Kiev train station, find a ticket window with a feasible description, wait in line.
4. Discover that you are in a ticket hall that only sells to Ukrainian nationals, relocate to foreigner ticket hall.
5. Wait in line at the “International Destinations” window.  Ticket agent will only speak Ukrainian and will wave you away.
6. Find English-speaking ticket agent at the next window.  She will be unable to sell you the tickets you need and point you to the “International Destinations” window.
7. Ponder the futility of the situation.
8. Ask English-speaking ticket agent to write down in Ukrainian the five words necessary to communicate your desired ticket purchase to her neighbor.  Although annoyed, she will agree.
9. Attempt to purchase tickets at “International Destinations” window.  Credit card machine will be out of service.
10. Find ATM.
11. Return to “International Destinations” window with hand-written note and cash, wait 10 minutes while ticket agent manipulates DOS-based reservation software program, successfully obtain tickets!
12. Upon boarding the train, realize that although your seat numbers are consecutive, only 2 of 3 are in the same sleeper car.

After a rather inhospitable 17-hour overnight train ride, we arrived in Warsaw.  In town we walked through the former Jewish ghetto and to monuments in remembrance of Poland’s war-time tragedies.  This is a city that was truly leveled by bombs–it’s “Old Town” is really rather new, having been fully reconstructed since the end of World War II.

Warsaw World War II Monument

Old Town

We visited the huge Łazienki Park with its outstanding botanical garden and palaces on islands and dined at Czerwonym Wieprzem, the traditional Warsaw hangout of international communist leaders.

Łazienki Park Botanical Gardens

We also made a day trip to Lublin to visit the Majdanek concentration camp where 150,000 people were imprisoned by the Nazis, of whom 80,000 were killed.  The camp has been carefully preserved to maintain its historical integrity and offers  chilling insight into the conditions and atrocities that took place there.

Monument to Struggle and Martyrdom, Majdanek

Three Eagles Column, Majdanek

Having recently visited World War II and Holocaust memorial sites and museums in Germany, Great Britain, the Ukraine, and Poland, I am grateful for the resources these countries have invested to help people understand and remember its horrors.  At the same time, it makes me wonder if we, the people of the world, have missed the point.  Now that we are aware of the consequences of large-scale international warfare and systematic mass-murder, should we not be doing everything we can to avoid it ever happening again?  Should that not be a matter of daily focus, something citizens demand of their governments and governments demand of each other?

On Thursday, my Eastern European Odyssey ended as Blake and Michael flew home and I back-tracked to Istanbul.  It was an eventful and memorable two weeks, and I give thanks to the team for letting me join their party.  Traveling alone is great, but traveling with friends in strange places is special.

Landscape Alley, Kiev

Urban Bear Pit, Warsaw