Kyiv, Ukraine
I am in Kyiv, Ukraine for about two weeks. Kyiv is the Ukrainian spelling. The Russian spelling is Kiev. (Actually they both use the Cyrillic alphabet.)
Regardless of how you spell it, we are here in Kyiv for photography. We took an overnight train from Lviv. It left at 10:47 PM and arrived the next morning at about 7:30. We had kupe which is four bed to a compartment. Train tickets were something like 168 Hriven. As far as I am concerned, the overnight train is the best way to travel. You go to sleep in Lviv and wakeup in Kyiv.
There was supposed to be a free shuttle from the main train station to our accomodation, but we couldn’t find it. There were dozens of marshrutka near the McDonald’s going all over creation, but none had the name we were looking for. (Marshrutka are the ubiquitous private minibuses I’ve seen in every city in Ukraine I’ve been to.) So we took the metro three stops, changed to another line and went one stop to Ploshcha Lva Tolstoho. The Kiev metro was jam packed with people. There was a huge crowd trying to buy the blue-green plastic tokens you need for a ride.
The metro in Kiev goes down very deep so the escalator ride is a long one. Like many former Eastern block countries, the metro was probably designed to function as a fall-out shelter when the west attacked them. The former USSR put a lot of effort into helping their population survive a nuclear war. It must have been part of their strategy.
Kiev has a completely different vibe than Lviv. While Lviv is kind of small and laid back with an old-world charm, Kiev is big and bustling and is always on the go. The city never sleeps. You can buy a beer from a kiosk on the street 24 hours per day. Beer is considered a soft drink and people walk around with open beers all the time. Serious drinking is done with vodka and cognac. One gentleman told me that every government meeting starts with opening a bottle of expensive vodka. They drink it straight and never mix it with anything. Never try to outdrink a Ukrainian.