Kiev

Our program included a trip to Kiev, Ukraine last week and it proved to be a very beautiful city despite the gloomy weather. It is much greener than Moscow and it has a rich heritage. A couple of the guys in our group and I bought a few beers and spent one afternoon just walking around the city and enjoying our drinks and the sights. It's really kind of a nice combination: beer and mindless tourism. We did visit a few interesting sites, which you'll see below.

A statue of who-knows; the point of this picture is that we arrived in Kiev too early in the morning

Natasha, Kyle, Shamella, and Ben at too-early-in-the-morning

This is Mikhail Bulgakov's apartment in Kiev, where he grew up and where he worked as a doctor for the White Army during the Russian Revolution. It was nice to contrast this apartment with his communal flat in Moscow. This apartment was featured as a setting in many of his books, including Preobrazhensky's flat in Heart of a Dog and Master's apartment in Master and Margarita (that's the book that was on my dresser, Emmy).

A statue of Bulgakov sitting next to his apartment

This is a video from the top of an undeveloped hill in the middle of Old Kiev. Kiev, like most Central and Eastern European places, has a significant pagan history. This hill is a place where witches traditionally come to cast spells on the city. You can see why from the view! The next day, we thought we spotted a witch casting a spell because of the way the woman was waving her arms, but maybe that wasn't the case. Anyways, it might be significant that the iron stairs leading up to this hill from the street (Andreivskii Spusk) sit almost directly across from Bulgakov's apartment, since Bulgakov is notorious for writing about the occult.

This is some awesome graffiti I saw one day; it reminded me of my buddy Nathan Hill, who likes robots


The graffiti is on the back wall of a playground

Domo Aregato, Mr. Roboto

This is the original bell tower of the Kiev Lavra (Monastery of the Caves). The Lavra is home to a functioning community of Orthodox monks and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which causes some friction when the monks want to build something in their monastery. Under the monastery buildings are networks of caves that house holy relics and icons. That is usually the main attraction, but I did not take pictures in the cave networks.

In the center is a restoration of the main monastery church

Here is the backside of the same church pictured above. Impressive!

This is the view from inside the monastery: to the left is the Dnieper river, in the center is the extended campus of the monastery where the monks actually live, and to the right is a monstrous (i.e. big and ugly) metal statue memorializing Soviet victory in World War II

One of the four planned Soviet buildings in Old Kiev, which currently serves as the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Some of the Orthodox churches in Kiev were destroyed and it was planned to build four buildings like this one to replace the churches.

This is a second Soviet building like the one show above

Our group visited Kiev at the same time as President Bush. As you can see, the Communist pensioners turned out en masse to protest his visit and NATO's proposed inclusion of Ukraine.

Red tide

The average age of these protesters has got to be at least 50!

Here you can see the protesters in action! I think one of them is saying "Bush go to hell" with an accent, but I can't tell.

An active church (there were lots of these . . .)

This is St. Michael's, which was only recently completely reconstructed from the ground up. The original was a victim of Soviet remodeling.

This is a mural outside of St. Michael's which depicts (I think . . .) something like heaven and the bottomless pit (hell) in the center bottom

Energia

Energia is the home of the former Soviet space program. It was by far one of the best excursions that our program has arranged. Our tour guide spoke excellent English and was extremely knowledgeable. During our tour, we saw things like a duplicate of Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin's original re-entry capsule, a life-size model of the Mir Space Station, and a couple cosmonaut toilets, too. Today, the remaining engineers at Energia work on commercial satellite-launching ventures.

Sergei Korolev, father of the Russian space program (and the space race)


Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space

The Energia/Buran shuttle model designed by Energia during the 1980's

A contemporary copy of the original Sputnik, which means "traveling companion" or "satellite" in Russian

Me standing next to a huge camera that was launched into space in order to take a picture of the dark side of the moon


These are all models of the first stuff that was launched into space: batteries, solar panels, cameras, and those sorts of things


Another model of space-junk; I can't believe this stuff worked


In the foreground you can see an early model cosmonaut toilet


And here is a later model space toilet, found on the Mir Space Station


The first re-entry capsule was designed for laboratory animals


The next re-entry capsule was designed for Yuri Gagarin; this is the real deal


This gadget is the coolest piece of technology that our guide showed us. It is a gyroscopic stabilizer that was used on the Mir Space Station as a joint between the gigantic modules that comprised the station. The stability that the central axis of the gyroscope supplies when a torque is applied to the gyroscopic frame allows the modules to be rotated with a small amount of energy, which is at a premium in space. Our guide said that each kilogram put into space costs twenty-thousand dollars, so that it's best to conserve on heavy batteries and large motors with gizmos like this.


And lastly, a cosmonaut suit, which comes in one piece; cosmonauts step into the suit from a hatch in the back

My Friends the Bums

Hey, guys, what's up?

Phew! That fire stinks like burning plastic!

You see, there are these bums that have a campsite outside of my apartment building and, I suppose, drink there. It is really a gross sight when the snow melts, because scattered around this little grove is a ton of trash, a self-made bench, and a firepit. Anyways, I've been keeping track of them whenever I see movement down there and I decided to start taking pictures. The other day was eventful, so I took a video. I asked my host mother if she thought that they would enjoy speaking Russian with me, since they looked pretty relaxed sitting around their fire, but she said that it was verboten for me to visit them, since they were probably insane and violent.