Knib... or Kiev as I've heard it pronounced in some parts...

Arrived!
The supermarket opposite our hostel. Ahhh only in Moscow!!!
Ukrainian fashion # 3. Love a bit of pink!
The Ukrainian circus. Note the monkey on a motorbike and more importantly, the dog on a parachute!
A well-tended Ukrainian road
Stubby-holders, Ukrainian style.
Saint Sophia's, the most beautiful cathedral in Kiev:
...from another angle...
A random shoe sculpture, no idea what it was about, but I liked it.
The Ukrainian poet and local hero: Shevshenko. I napped under his watchful gaze in this park and felt safe in his arty kindness.
Mary's everywhere in Ukraine!
K means sewage!
Jane Mansfield and the Turk. Orthodox fashion...
The most impressive thing I think I saw in the entire country. Mosaic made up for 2700 hand-painted pesanke (Easter eggs) that made up the face of the Madonna... I was blown away!
Happy Barks and his shaslic.
A band that was described as Russian Rock. You haven't lived until you've seen 'Sweet Child of mine' sung with a Ukrainian/Russian Accent.

Dancing to said Russian Rock: Talking shit after one or two too many vodka and apple juices...
Exhausted and no doubt hung over, I couldn't go on, and neither could Barks so we collapsed and slept (pretty well I must say) in the middle of a bustling round-about.
Beautiful Kiev
Saturday with The Age, ops, I mean the Kiev Post... just as interesting, only lacking the Good Weekend.
Barks and his favourite car: the Lada.
Barks in a proud Ukrainian moment having purchased a mystery box (that turned out to have a cake inside) that he wanted purely for the Boss bag. All the local men carried one and although his beard and salt & pepper hair got him a long way to being Ukrainian, it wasn't until he sported the proper accessory that he was fully welcomed into the Ukrainian fold.
RRRRRRRRRussia here we come!

We Love Lviv

No, this is not the entrance to Guantanamo bay or Auschwitz, this is the border crossing into Ukraine!

We made it, a border beer was bought to celebrate...
Borat country

We made it, helllllllllllllo Lviv, or Hbib as we fondly called it due to our interpretations of the Cyrillic alphabet
Typical Ukrainian taxi decor
The first of many fabulous Ukrainian appreciation moments. This is one of my faves, I had to stalk him forever to get a shot that defined the back fat in just the right light! The stair case up to our hostel, very Gaudi I thought
Typical Ukrainian bar Ukrainian fashion appreciation moment #2
The oh-so-analogue tram ticket system. Love it!!

....on our way to this gorgeous, lush cemetery....
This is how the locals adorn their graves for the first year after burial, it hides the settling of the dirt. A typical corner store, note the readily available beer and voddy in the window.

This was the first night we spent in Lviv. We went to this bar that was an old bunker full of pro-independent Ukraine and made me feel incredibly patriotic and proud. We spent the night partying with a bunch of Polish boys who showed us how the Eastern Europeans really drink!!!

Pretty Lviv
The world's largest fairy floss!
And this was what we called black market fruit. basically these women turn up at the market's edge, sell fruit from god knows where for 10 minutes before the cops come and they disappear, but not before we got our fill!
Jan's favourite cafe

The City from the top of a hill
Our night at the opera, we got a box seat and everything, pity none of us could keep awake...

bus dreaming....
Ok, this was the exciting bit when, armed with a smudgy photocopy of an old envelope addressed to my Grandfather as my clue and a local 'kid' called Eugene as translator my three mates and I went out to the county to find some of my relatives.. and we succeeded. This was us on the public bus..
Ukrainian poverty.... extreamily prevelent I'm afraid...
We had a slight glitch at the first house which my relos had moved out of and were renting it instead. This info was all given to us by this lovely neighbour, without a word of English. He took a shining to Bark's beard and insisted on a photo with the two of them together. It seems that beard was to be very well respeced in the Eastern Bloc
Success!! And after an amazing day meeting people I was rapidly embracing as my family, we were dropped back at Lviv station to embark on our second Ukrainian city experience: Kiev. Lviv turned out to be one of my top 6 cities of the trip, I was sad to leave it....

Kraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy Krakow

2 hours sleep, one really hot day, two ladies, two heavy back packs, 1 long walk with heads down and determination on our minds, 1 bus back to Prague, 1 train to somewhere.... 1 very slow train to Krakow, 1 tram and 1 more walk and we made it..... just in time to shower, get the drill around our couch-surfing host's apartment and then back onto the town; rest is for the wicked, or so it seems in Krakow.
Stefan, our Polish host can only be described as.... unique. With loud techno blaring through the corridors of his building, stuff everywhere, 2 computers with at least 5 conversations running at the same time to prospective couch surfers, a mad little puppy called Tequila, a cage full of rats and a membership on his profile page to an S&M site just to keep boring surfers away!
Part-Sri Lankan part-German, living in Krakow and hosting up to 5 'surfers' a night at all times, he lives his life on the wild side and promptly dragged us deep down into it as soon as we arrived. The night I spent on the town with him I achieved the most inebriated state on the entire trip, even resulting in a drunken injury and a large chunk of it completely forgotten. What I do remember of Krakow that night though, I don't think I'll ever forget. Groovy bars deep in the ground, clubs with 5 separate rooms pumping various versions of Euro-trash, organic lemon vodka shots (yuuuuuuuuuuuuuummy) and cobblestones that became more and more difficult to scale as the night became day. Winks and I sat down on one of our last days of our trip to a plate of bangers and mash in Edinburgh and conducted a survey of the most hedonistic cities we'd ventured to. Sleep, Diet, Exercise and Alcohol consumption were the criteria, and I'm proud to say, the undeniable winner was Krakow with its edgy clubs, groovy people and fabulous but stodgy food. As for exercise... whats exercise??!!
Anyway, despite the rich experience, a distinctive lack of photos resulted, perhaps I was too distracted to remember to snap, and so I leave you with only a few glimpses of the amazing place that Krakow is...

Old Town is a bustling tourist hub, swarming in foreigners, hawkers, pick pockets and golf carts; the only vehicle allowed. Here they are all lined up in a pretty row. I stopped counting the amount of times a tour was pushed my way as I walked past these mini cars, but it was worth it for the photo:
I couldn't resist stalking these two until I got a shot clear enough to share the hilarity with you all: Note the writing on the back of their hoodies...
(Hers says: That's my boyfriend, his says: That's my girlfriend!!!)

And that's it for the sight and sounds... bit lame I'm sorry. This is our final night in town, back at one of our favourite bars called Moments. The K comes out!!

How's the decor??!!

Stefan and I rabbiting on as we were prone to do...

Me looking edgy and Polish I hope..

Stefan himself as we left his world and embarked on our next... The Eastern Block.

...and that's it for the EU for a while. So its goodbye to anybody speaking English, goodbye to the Latin Alphabet and goodbye to the world that we had ever comprehended and Dobre Dan.... Ukraine!