| ABOUT
THIS TRIP
10 days
December 1998
INTRO
It was the end
of October when same my university-mates organised to visit the
Polytechnic institute in Kiev. For me it was a unique chance to
get the ukranian visa to visit the country, thus I didn't miss it.
LET'S
LEAVE!
At the beginning
of December we flew from Milan to a snowy cold Kiev.
We stayed in a student house visiting the university, the city,
having parties and knowing a lot of people. I also had my time hanging
out by myself, as I did looking for the fishermen fishing holing
the ice. I had to go to Kiev outskirts, but at the end I found them!
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IMPRESSIONS
Kiev
was so beautiful in the wintertime with his soviet
old fashioned dashes. Many images about the town
are still impressed in my mind. His long huge boulevards
with hills of snow running along them. The big old fashioned
chandeliers that decked the metro. The endless fast
wooden escalators to reach it. The golden
onion shaped roofs of the churches. The silence
and the atmosphere of the Pechers'kyy
monastery at the dusk. The immobile
fishermen on the frozen Dniper river who, every
five minutes, had to move the water in their hole otherwise
it froze. The awesome statue of the woman
with the sword. The snowball fight: Ukraine versus
Italy.
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But overall
the wintertime atmosphere with his amount of snow and the pale light
around everything charmed me.
Moreover I won't forget the nice
people I met and the amount
of vodka I drank.
SOME
SADNESS TOO
This trip left
me some sadness too. The Ukranian economic situation was very precarious
and the state had no money; I figured a tough future for this country.
I knew an ukranian girl whose parents were teachers and got just
50 $ each month, but it was six months they didn't get paid. In
the university it was so cold that students wore jackets during
lessons. The coldness was everywhere. I clearly remember the ice
on the part inside of the bus window. When we went at the
theatre, the main one in Kiev, I was freezing up inside during the
performance... despite I'm not an "easy-freezing" person
at all!
Anyway I saw a
lot of people striving to have a better future, especially youths
who wanted to learn languages. I found many english speakers, and
even some people who learnt italian. It's an huge efforts when you
have to think to buy the food for the next week or to heat the house.
Alby
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