Ukraine, part one

[sakirmo]

I arrived in Kiev on the afternoon of Aug 27th. Funny thing, I never understood how close that place is until I flew there, the flight time from Helsinki was only 1 hour 20 minutes! That's practically next door

Comments

[veranillo]

I'm adding this post to memories because it seems that you covered a lot of places I want to visit on Crimea and the info about times and distances will be very useful for me. What about language bareer? Was it difficult to communicate with people on a daily basis? (although, as I remember, you know some Russian so it probably wasn't but I'm wondering if I go with a couple of friends and no one speaks Russian, will we get by or do we have to rely on sign language? ;)

[sakirmo]

Sure, and feel free to ask me anything else you'd like to know, I wrote a more detailed personal diary on the road so I'll probably have more info to give you, if you're heading there!

To be honest, yes, it was difficult to communicate with people. I know only *very* rudimentary Russian - just about enough to read cyrillic alphabet and to put five words together to form a basic, grammatically ridiculous sentence to say what I want, but usually managed to understand only a fraction of what people replied/said to me. And it doesn't help that people are generally neither friendly nor patient to non-Russian-speakers down there; I recommend that you mentally prepare for being yelled and rolled eyes at, because it's bound to happen at some point ;) Hardly anyone I met spoke English and I'm not sure if I saw any signs in anything but cyrillic there... you do get by relying on sign language, just as you would everywhere, but it's really best if you expect the worst in terms of a language barrier :)

[veranillo]

My cousin told me the same. He speaks fluent Russian and said he cannot imagine not knowing the language and having a smooth journey (he was also in Odessa and Crimea but then travelled further East - he spent three months in Russia). When I was in Lviv, I didn't have many problems but it was because many people in this city are of Polish origin or at least speak Polish.

I don't know exactly when I plan to go to Ukraine but when I do, I won't forget to ask about more detailed info :) So keep the diary for me, please!

[sakirmo]

LOL, I remember how in one of the Lviv cafés they brought me a Polish menu, without asking anything :D I guess their reasoning was "she's a foreigner, Polish menu is the only foreign one we have, let's give her that!" but I can safely say I know even less Polish than I know Russian (although maybe a few words more than I know Ukrainian?), so it wasn't really that helpful :)

[the_mongrel]

It sounds like a fascinating trip, despite the pesky sickness.

[sakirmo]

I guess it was, although being ill inevitably takes most of the fun away... still, I'm glad I went :)