Київ Day 4(3) – 22 Nov 2009 (Киев/Kiev/Kyiv)

First off, the promised night shots of Kyiv following our adventure in Chernobyl earlier in the day:

After, I headed back to the hostel to get a good night’s sleep before our final day in Kyiv. In the morning we woke early and got onto the metro toward the southern end of the city to see the WWII memorial park and the Motherland Statue. We got off at the same metro station as for the Lavra and began walked down that same street.

On our guide map there is a silhouette of something that looks like the Statue of Liberty and so we were all confused until we saw this:

Then we walked to another metro station to see the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial. We saw these along the way:

We made it to the metro and traveled to the north part to get off at Babi Yar. At our exit point metro station I finally had an experience where the language barrier really made a difference and I felt totally helpless.

The metro exited to an underground market area, like it seems to do here and we decided to walk into the store to load up on some food. I brought up the rear and was a bit behind everyone, enough for there to be a gap to allow other people to cross in between us. I turned a corner around a pillar and noticed a young woman being directed by two older men. I didn’t think of it as anything at first so I lowered my gaze, and both them and I turned to avoid each other. As I lowered my head I saw her cane and realized she was blind and then noticed that each of the men were clasping her arms tightly, one man on each side. Immediately, I looked back up and saw fear in her face. I quickly glanced at the two men’s faces as we finally passed each other and noticed subtle paranoid look in their faces. I thought, “Ask her if she needs help,” and then realized I couldn’t, as I didn’t speak Ukrainian, and I didn’t even know how to say it in Russian.” So I just stood there. And did nothing. Then I followed my friends and asked them about it, but as it was purely my intuition that interpreted the encounter, I had no proof they just let it go. Although, it still bothered me it was at this point too late to do anything. So I spent the rest of my day bothered, and embarrassed of my inaction, trying to justify what happened with “intuition is flawed.” I guess this is how people get away with stuff in front of crowds of people.

But we made it to the Holocaust memorial. I didn’t know about 30,000 Jews were killed here in WWII and buried in mass graves, underneath where this monument stands.

Then we made our way over to a cemetery across the street, unrelated to the Holocaust. A pleasant surprise walked toward us on the way.

After this we headed back to the hostel to grab our stuff, eat a quick dinner, and board our train home.

We boarded the train and as usual, I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have preferred. But we made it back and that’s what counts.