Sheep Guarding Llama

Tuesday.  Today I got up and decided to tackle the adventure of walking into the office all by myself.  Everyone offered to send a car for me, but that defeats so much of the purpose of living in such an awesome city.  I want to get out and get exercise, experience life in Kiev, and get some fresh air.  It is Spring in Kiev after all and it is gorgeous here, much like I imagine people expect Paris to be in spring time.  It is the perfect temperatures for doing some walking.  Chilly, but not actually cold.  If I was not walking, it would be far too cold.  But walking, it is good.

Kiev, as a city, reminds me a lot of Chisinau, which to be fair is the only other ex-Soviet city that I have spent time in so it makes a lot of sense that they remind me of each other.

So my walk in this morning went pretty well and I managed to not make any wrong turns.  I even had Max zip past me on his electrified bicycle while I was walking.  He saw me and stopped to chat for a minute before heading into the office.  It was handy that he saw me because he was able to explain the final turns to get to the office as it does get just a little complex navigating the small streets right at the end.

It is handy that so many people smoke at the office as there is always a congregation of smokers out in front making it very easy to find as you walk up the street, and there is always someone ready to unlock the door for me.  It also gives me a chance to stand out in the cold and cool down before going into the office.  It is a decent walk and while I don’t sweat while walking, if I go from walking hard in the chill to inside a warm office all of a sudden, I will sweat like crazy.  But if I let myself freeze outside first, I can do the office without a problem.

Everyone was pretty amazed that I had walked so far without a coat.  They were all bundled up and freezing outside.  I was decently comfortable in just a normal shirt and jeans.

For lunch today, Anton and I went out for pizza downtown.  It was really good pizza, but probably not as good as we normally get in New York or Italy.  We are a bit spoilt for pizza selection in our lives.

He also showed me around the high end grocery store in the city.  Wow is it impressive. It makes grocery stores back in the US just look silly.  While there I got meringues and beers to take back to the office.

There was so much amazing food at the grocery store.  Much of it that they made right there.  There were even several restaurants, including a wine bar, inside of the grocery store!

We put in a day at the office.  Then this evening Anton and I met up with some friends and drove out to far into the left bank and went to a brew pub way out in the suburbs of Kiev.  The beer was really good and we had a good time.  Very nice place.

It turned out that one of the guys that we were hanging out with was telling me about his business and suddenly I realized that he was the CEO of a company that I knew and had written about, even just today while on MangoLassi!  So that was really interesting and we had a good time hanging out.

The men’s room at the brew pub, which was a fancy, modern place, had one of the old fashioned hole in the floor toilets that I would never have expected to find here.  This is a first in Ukraine.

I had to take a picture as we are always talking about how we find these around the world.  I was really not expecting one in a new, nice brew pub!

It was not a late night tonight.  Got dropped off back at the apartment.

Monday.  Our first week day in Kiev.  I got up to a gorgeous morning.  Bright sun, crisp air, light breeze.  Just gorgeous.  And, as Liesl pointed out, a city that is far cleaner than anything in Italy.  Leave it to Liesl to notice the litter, or lack of it here.

Once up, I got picked up and driven into the office.  It really is not very far, but Anton insisted on driving me today.  So I just went in with him to make things extra easy.  I got a tour of the place, which is much larger than I was expecting it to be.  Multiple buildings and pretty much right in the center of the city.  Really nice facility.

We went out for lunch today to an Indian place that is near the office.  It was a big restaurant and really nice, but there was no one there but us.  Just the two of us in this giant place.  I have no idea how they make any money, it makes no sense.

Lunch was really good.  It was a short day in the office.  I went home and spent some time with the family.

Then this evening, Max and one of the guys from the office picked me up (via Uber) from the apartment and we went out to find an authentic Georgian restaurant that is well known.  Georgian food is common throughout the former USSR states because Georgia is the heartland of comfort food in Eastern Europe and was considered the best food in the whole of the USSR.  So today, much as how Italian places are common in the US and most western countries, Georgian are common in eastern European states.

This was a fully authentic Georgian restaurant with menus actually in Georgian. I’ve had Georgian before, in New Jersey, and it was decently authentic, but not to the same level at all.  This was really serious and, of course, we are in Kiev so this is a pretty good place to get real Georgian.  Nearly as good as you can get without going to Georgia itself.  Georgia is one of our top “places we need to go see next” on our travels.

I got a small khachapuri (cheese bread) which was off the hook amazing.  First, it was huge.  I mean really huge.  Like more than a pound of food.  Super hot, fresh bread in kind of a bowl shape, full of super hot liquid cheese.  They bring it to the table like that.  Then they break a few raw eggs into the cheese and whip it up right there in front of you at the table.  The cheese is so hot that it cooks the eggs almost instantly.  So it is kind of like scrambled eggs, but so thinly divided in all of the cheese that it just adds to the general body of the whole thing.

It is hard to eat both because it is very messy, but also because it is very hot and greasy.  You just grab and break off pieces of bread and dip it into the eggy cheesy goo in the middle.  Delicious.  I have wanted to try this for years.  So glad that I got to have it here.  Totally amazing.  I’m so sorry that Dominica was not able to come along; she would have loved getting to try this.  The cheese and bread as so unique.  They are not things that can be easily replicated in some other region of the world.  So getting this in the US would be, I assume, essentially impossible.

We also got some Georgian sampler platters of dips and veggies and stuff.  All of it was great.  I was so full by the time that we were done.

After dinner we took a long walk through the city to get to the metro and took that at Golden Gate station, so I got to see the opera, Golden Gate, and other major landmarks on the walk.  Kiev is a nice city to walk through, very safe and easy to navigate.  But it is large so going everywhere on foot is not very practical.

Golden Gate Metro was fun to get to go into.  Entering it requires you to go down the two steepest and longest escalators I have ever seen in my life.  I mean seriously deep.  I know that there is possibly the world’s deepest escalator in the Kiev metro system, but it is not this one.  This might be number two, however.  It is so long that you get vertigo just looking down it. If you are not careful you will get mesmerized and just fall forward and topple down it!

Max gave me a mini tour of the subway station which was insanely interesting.  It was very large and cavernous.  He explained that this was a Cold War nuclear shelter meant for Kiev residents to flee to and would protect them from a direct nuclear hit on the city above.  The giant blast doors still work and are tested regularly.  They were giant round doors that would close and as they closed people would be unable to get out and would slide down the doors into the subway station.  That this whole complex was built so deep and so thoroughly to protect them against us made it that much more interesting.  Very akin to the Halifax citadel.

So I got to ride the Kiev metro back to near the apartment and then walk just a small way from there.  It was a nice night, just a little bit chilly.  But I enjoyed the walk and seeing the city.  I am going to like it here.  I have found that I really enjoy eastern Europe.  Food, culture, people, and often even the weather here suit me very well.

Tomorrow I am going to attempt walking to the office all by myself.  I have no pressing need to be anywhere at any particular time so if it takes a while or if I get lost it is not a big deal.

At this point, very happy with Kiev and Ukraine.  I just wish that the family could come out with us.  Although everyone, I am sure, is very much enjoying some decompression time right now and is pretty happy to not have to go anywhere.  Having solid Internet, television, Netflix, power, and water is a bit of a novelty for them and they are all taking advantage of it.

In the office I have a redundant gigabit connection, so even faster than the apartment!  We are going to get spoiled.

Sunday.  We woke up to a beautiful early spring day in Kiev.  Liesl and I were up early this morning.  Luciana was tired and needed a lot more sleep.

First task this morning is getting all of the devices in the house charged.  Most things are dead after a full day of traveling yesterday.  So we carefully got as many things plugged in as we could.

One semi-casualty of the packing and moving is my Kindle Fire tablet.  At some point in Noto it had fallen into a couch and been lost.  It worked its way into the mechanism of the pull out folding bed and had been sat on, a lot.  The case is pretty much destroyed and we thought that it was completely dead for sure.  But after working on it for a bit, it seems to take a charge still and turn on.  So it might limp along for a bit.  It is certainly in very rough shape, though, and I can’t believe that it will last for much longer.  Any abuse and it is just going to fall into pieces.

This afternoon Anton and Max picked us up, and two of Anton’s kids came along, and we went out to go sight seeing in Kiev.  We explored some parks and historic areas, walked some downtown neighbourhoods and then went out for lunch in a really cool restaurant with hanging tables. I had a veggie burger that was really excellent.

Then we went out for pastries which the girls liked very much.  The meringues in Kiev are amazing.

On the way home we went up one of the big hills in Kiev by taking the city’s public funicular up the hill.  That was a cool treat.  We miss out in the US by not having these types of transportation.  They only make sense in cities that cater to a populace that gets out and goes lots of places on foot.  If no one is walking around, funiculars just do not do anyone any good.

We had a very fun afternoon and Kiev really is a gorgeous city.  It is the seventh largest and one of the oldest cities in Europe.  The Internet access here is crazy.  It is so fast.  Maybe the fastest that I’ve ever gotten to use at home.  Although my Internet at the house in Texas is quite fast.

After the family was dropped off back at the apartment, Anton and I ran some errands and went back to his apartment for tea.

While Anton and I were running errands, Max went to the apartment and picked up Dominica and the kids and took them out to the local grocery store so that they could stock up on supplies.  The apothecary is right around the corner from the house, between the apartment and the grocery store, too.  So everything is easy to get to and she knows where it is now and we are all set for a couple of days before we need to venture out and figure out grocery shopping on our own.

After tea we drove out to meet up with Max and Taras at a hard core, underground, knock and know the password speakeasy.  It was a great place and the drinks were fantastic.  We had a really cool evening out.  What a great introduction to Kiev.

So it is only one day, but we are already loving this city.  Great food, beautiful parks and architecture, the people are wonderful, the bar scene is excellent.

We are looking forward to our time here in Ukraine.  Tomorrow I will be going into the office to hang out with the guys.

Saturday. The day started in Catania on the eastern coast of Sicily.  We have a wonderful hotel here near the airport.  If we return to this region, we will certainly use this hotel again.  It has been great.

We got up, were dressed and fully repacked an hour and a half before it was time for our shuttle to the airport, which we had scheduled last night.  Then we took the kids down to the hotel breakfast.  They love doing breakfast in hotels for some reason, they are never willing to skip that.  It takes forever, though, because they are painfully slow eaters.  So even with an hour and a half it felt like we were in a panic to get through breakfast in time to make it to our airport shuttle!

I ran uploads all night while we slept and we have managed to upload basically everything from the last three months.  That’s a big relief as we have no idea if we will have a chance to upload things again until we return to the US.  It is anyone’s guess what our connections will be like in Ukraine.  It is a very high tech country, so likely it will be very good.  But you never know, especially with rental apartments.

We got to the airport and boarded our Lufthansa flight headed to Munich.  This is our first time ever flying through Munich, or anywhere in Germany for that fact.  We’ve been to Germany, including Munich, multiple times before but always by train, never by plane.  So we have never dealt with a German airport.  Norwegian, Dutch, but not German.

Our flight went really well and we were in Germany in no time.  We had a long layover in Munich, so tons and tons of time to hang out and relax.  We were there in the morning and do not fly on to Kiev until this evening.  So lots of time to camp out and chill.

Munich had a great airport lounge that was essentially empty.  We had the whole place, and several gates, all to ourselves.  The kids could run around, I could take videos, and we were even able to Facetime with the family back home while we waited.  It was a really nice break to our day of traveling.  This is our new favourite airport to fly through.  So comfortable and nice.  And the wifi is excellent.

The kids raided the vending machines in Munich for candy to eat in the lounge while they relaxed there.  I had enough time that I took the chance to set up my laptop and actually get some things done.  Plenty of places to charge things.  There were even lounge chairs for taking naps!

In the evening we got our connecting leg from Munich to Kiev.  It was mid-evening when we arrived in Kiev.  We got our luggage, went through customs and were greeted by Anton and one of his employees at the door.  They had two cars waiting for us so that they could fit all of us and all of our luggage.  This is the easiest arrival in any country that we have ever had.

It was a long drive from the airport, which is on the left bank outside of the city, to our downtown apartment which is on the right bank right in the heart of the city.  It was great getting to see the city right away, though, and we got to take the big bridge over the Dnieper.  We’ve gotten to see nearly all of the great rivers of Europe at this point.

It was pretty late when we got to the apartment.  Anton had taken care of everything.  The apartment was all set, they already had the keys, it was stocked with all kinds of food for us, anything that we might need was ready.  Internet was already figured out and worked really well.

We will see Anton tomorrow.  He did not have time to hang out tonight, they just dropped us off and made sure that we were good for the night.

Our apartment is really cool.  It is a classic 1970s Soviet block apartment built in the USSR during the height of the cold war.  I’ve always wanted to live in one.  This is a really awesome cultural and historic opportunity.  These old apartments are not going to last for forever, they were not built to be around a long time.  Another decade or two and none will be left.  This is a really special and unique experience for us and especially for the kids.

Ours is a two bedroom deal.  Both bedrooms are decent sizes.  The girls got the bedroom with the view out onto the main street.  Our bedroom has the view onto the courtyard behind the building.  We have a small enclosed balcony built off of the living room.  The space is very odd because it was converted from a very old structure.  There is a scary, ancient elevator that was adapted into the building, but we will take the stairs a lot, I would expect.

The oddest thing is the bathroom situation.  The toilet has its own miniscule room.  I’m really lucky that I even fit into it.  That’s not going to be fun to have to live with, but it is functional.  To wash your hands or to take a shower you go to a different room next door that has the sink and the tub, but no toilet.  But the two are not connected.  You have to use the hallway to get between them.

The kitchen is really tiny, we really can’t use it for much of anything.  But the view is nice and we were not planning on doing very much cooking while we are here.

We are incredibly excited to be here in Ukraine and can’t wait to get to see more of Kiev.  We are going out tomorrow to explore.  Tonight, it is time for sleep.  It is chilly compared to where we have been.  The southern tip of Italy going into spring is very warm.  The beginning of spring in north-eastern Europe is pretty cold.  But it should warm up very soon.

Good night from the Miller family is Kiev!

Friday.  This is it, our big moving day.  We started the day in Noto, Sicily, Italy and will finish our move tomorrow night in the dark in Kiev, Ukraine with friends.  What a huge day and the start of yet another amazing Miller family adventure.  There is always so much excitement in the air as we move on to a new country and we are all really looking forward to what lies ahead in Ukraine.  This is one of our rare trips where we are moving to a place where we have lots of friends so unlike Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania, and Nicaragua where we moved without knowing anyone and being completely on our own, we will be arriving and have friends meeting us at the airport and around to help us with things.  There is a lot less to go wrong on a trip like this and after how badly things went in Noto, we are really looking forward to this.

I was up early and managed to do a little posting while I attempted to manage the last minute photo uploads to Flickr.  My policy is to always attempt to have all media uploaded before a moving day because there is always so much risk of things going wrong, like phones being lost or stolen, on a day like this and we would hate to lose things like our pictures.  We have to take our chances with our videos, though.  Our Internet is Noto (and Rome, and Palermo) was always so bad that we could not even attempt uploading videos.  As it is, I am just making do with whatever pictures I can upload and have to take chances with the rest.  It is what it is.

While uploads were going and the kids were just waking up and getting ready to go, I ran down to the bank to hit the ATM for our final round of cash before we left.  Don’t want to travel without any cash available to us.

Back at the house it was a final round of cleaning, some final espresso from our true Italian “on the range top” espresso “machine” and then time to wait for our ride to the bus station.  This was the same woman that had taken me up to the hospital when I had pneumonia.  My pneumonia, by the way, is much better now.  I’m not one hundred percent, but I am not too bad.  I still have a bit of a cough, but it is lingering from before and I am certainly feeling much better.

It was a super tight squeeze right at the end as the last of our stuff did not fit into the luggage for the final packing.  Dominica had to struggle quite a bit to get us completely packed up and not to leave stuff behind.  Our guess is that the humidity in Italy is a little higher than Texas and our clothes and stuff have swollen from that.  We do not have more “stuff” here now than we did before.  If anything, we have fewer things to take on with us.

Our ride to the bus station arrived, I posted our status and shut down the laptop, threw it in my back pack and we were out the door.  Dominica and the girls rode down with her, I took what was left and walked down the hill with it on my own.  It was a lot of luggage to move, but I made it.

We waited at the bus stop and found it a bit confusing this morning as the busses came out of order and ours was late and none were labeled well.  We bought some breakfast foods from the little cart there and the girls played on the playground one last time while we were waiting.  Noto has been a city of playground time for the girls as it was one of our main activities while we were here.  It has been good for them.

We were onto the bus and underway up to Catania.  We are taking the bus the whole way so that it is cheaper and easier.  We are in no rush to get up there as we have a hotel there tonight and do not fly out until the morning.  So we have all day to get to Catania, but transfering to the train in Siracusa would mean moving all of this luggage again and we really do not want to deal with that!

We went through Avola for one last time.  We went past Siracusa.  We arrived in Catania and caught the hotel shuttle from the airport (the bus goes to the airport itself) to our hotel.  It was the same hotel that Dominica had used when she was transferring to Orlando for Tricia’s wedding back in February which was handy as she already knew where to go and what to do.

We got to the hotel and it was really nice.  We had a good room and immediately noticed that the Internet access was incredible.  We managed to do more uploading while in the hotel tonight in a single night than we did the entire time that we were in Rome, Noto and Palermo over a period of nearly three months!  I had almost forgotten what real Internet access was like.

We hooked up our Fire TV Stick to the television in the room as well, connected it to the wifi, and were able to use all of our online accounts.  Such a great system.  We’ve been doing that since we were in Panama and are so glad that we carry a Fire Stick with us, it’s one of those really great traveler’s tips.  It is so useful.

For dinner we just ate in the hotel’s restaurant.  Dominica, Liesl, and I did a vegetarian buffet option that they had. It was rather limited, but pretty good.  Luciana ordered calamari.

Back in our hotel room the girls watched Sing tonight.

After our dinner and movie it was time for bed.  We have power, water, hot showers, fast Internet… life is good again.  Tomorrow, onward to Germany and then Ukraine.  Our second new country (after Vatican City) of 2017.