Day 10 - On to Ukraine (Kiev)

So, last night I actually wrote my blog at the restaurant before I returned back to the hostel.

It was on my return to the hostel where I had yet another little adventure with my rental car.

As I walked across the town square I saw a police car double parked in front of mine. He was talking with someone and he was also taking photos of my car.

Um, this can’t be good…

Apparently along with all the stores and restaurants on this main drag of the town there was also someone’s garage door opening.

And I was blocking it…

I mean, I didn’t even see it when I parked and there sure as hell wasn’t any markings or signage anywhere.

Anyway, luckily I got there when I did and was just able to apologize my way out of it. I got in the car and moved it down a couple of spots and continued on my way to the hostel to go to bed.

I thought more about it later. If I had arrived 10 minutes earlier the police wouldn’t have arrived yet and I would have just walked back to the hostel none the wiser.

End result: car would have been towed and I would have woken up to a huge surprise this morning.

So after all the misadventure with that cursed car yesterday I actually lucked out in the end.

Still can’t believe that happened though! Crazy!

Anyway, after that little adventure I went back to the hostel to sleep as I had just been through a long day with only 5 hours sleep.

I went to bed around midnight ready for a good nights’ sleep ahead of my 8am wakeup to go to the airport.

All was good with the world until 4am…

That’s when 2 drunk Spaniards stumbled home and into our room.

The drunken loud whispering and the sounds coming from rummaging around in the dark were nothing compared to what came next.

Loud snoring.

And when I say loud I mean “you can put your headphones on, crank the music and still here him snore” kind of loud.

So much so that at 4:30 I decided to just pack my stuff and leave.

I hung around the empty common room for awhile and then just finally decided to go to the airport early.

Waaaaaay early.

My flight didn’t leave until 10:30 and I arrived at the airport at 6:30.

After filling up the tank of my rental car (60 euros/90 dollars – yeah, that was money well spent) and dropping it off in the airport parkade I headed inside the airport.

The completely empty airport.

Well, at least there’d be no snoring…

I sprawled out on a row of cushioned seats, propped my head up on a makeshift pillow made with my bags and closed my eyes.

I actually was able to doze off for a bit and before I knew it, it was coming up to 9am.

Soon enough it was time to check in and go through security (bye bottled water) and then there I was boarding another flight.

Thankfully my bag made the trip with me this time as it was waiting for me on the carousel at the Kiev Airport when we touched down.

Coming out of the airport here in Kiev I was inundated with people harassing me to get a taxi.

Memories of my times in southeast Asia last year immediately came flooding back as that happened almost everywhere I went.

I shooed them all off though as I had the directions to the hostel and I was gonna figure this out on my own, dammit!

The directions were multi stepped but I was off to a great start when I walked out the doors of the airport and there was the Sky Bus sitting there waiting for me.

The bus takes a 45 minute drive downtown to the railway station which also was its’ last stop so there was no problem with getting lost.

Until, of course, I disembarked from the bus…

First of all I was in pants because that’s all I packed. It was 28 degrees today in Kiev – not really pants weather.

So here I was, the typical tourist, straight off the bus in a big backpack, overdressed and sweaty looking aimlessly around at the buildings.

My instructions were somewhat clear about heading to a subway station 100m to the left of the railway station I got dropped off.

Problem was there was no clear signage anywhere and everything was written in Cyrillic.

I asked a couple of people but they didn’t speak English. Finally I found a info sign post with the subway name in both English and Cyrillic.

I took a photo of it and then walked up to people and showed them that.

All of a sudden I was in luck and I got pointed in the right direction.

Yay! Onto the subway I went!

This is actually when I feel most like a traveler – taking the local transit with not another English speaking person in site.

I actually had to take two different subway lines but I made the connection pretty seamlessly and a half hour later I walking up to my new hostel here in Kiev.

day-10-on-to-ukraine-kiev_8791

I spent the afternoon just relaxing at the hostel stopping my relaxation briefly to go out for dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant just down the street serving up a buffet of local food.