Amazing what we find when we go through the files on our computers. I found this, and decided to add it to the Kiev file, but thought I would share first. Might make you want to dip back and have another look at another time!

Otherwise this week we have been buying up furniture for our new house. Our days in Edinburgh are numbered now, and we shall be on to pastures new. Now read on!

Kiev – 25 March, 2007

The sun is pouring in and Beethoven is playing and I feel very virtuous sitting here in my make-up and not much else. Just tried on 2 body warmers…wondering if it’s the day to cast off the winter coat.

The ethnic goat skin extravaganza that I bought with such enthusiasm last year seems hard and scratchy, and just walking from the bedroom to the sitting room has left a raw patch on my neck where the skin has been glued on to the woolly bit. Might have to try slicing it off with the fruit knife. (the collar bit). So a project for the morning I feel. (Just done it….and it’s a bit better)  Incidentally my embroidery is coming on in leaps and bounds…looking pretty damn good if I say so myself! So many cakes and cups of tea have been threaded in along with all the reveries that have made up my life over the last few months.

John and I had a social day yesterday…we met Stan and Judy in Podil for lunch. We were alarmed that we weren’t going to eat till 4pm, (brunch? Help!) So we had to have a fried egg sandwich first then off we went down Andreivsky. We met and spent the afternoon visiting various art galleries and churches, that without local knowledge we would never have seen.

Podil looks to me like something out of the Wild West…low buildings and wide streets. Apparently it means the hem. It’s the hem, or the bottom of the city, where all the workers would have lived, close to the river.  Now its trendy and bohemian. ( I should have worn my goats skin waist coat and looked like a proper hippy)

We don’t know this couple. Judy does supply teaching at school and she suggested we meet up, so it was an interesting afternoon. Judy is 55 from New York and is married to Stan who is Russian and they have been in Kiev and Russia for the past 15 years. He has had many careers, but at present he is director of a big charity project for the jews, (or something).

So as virtual strangers we went into the gallery of modern art, and were confronted with penises galore. I felt as though I was seeing an adolescent boy’s jotter…so many ‘naughty’ images that usually dominate when testosterone is rampant. So Stan explained all this pornographic ‘art’ and the feelings of freedom and being actually ‘allowed’ to express nudity, religion and politics with such graphic accuracy. We stood bemused looking at 3 ‘bondage’ studies, where the very lithe and beautiful blonde was trussed and tied naked to the branches of a tree. It was obviously painful as one picture showed all the wealds that had occurred from the ropes cutting into her wrists.  I could just imagine a nice couple walking their dog through the woods and coming across the model and photographer in action! The mind boggles!

There were other strange images of dental x rays and the usual bizarre turns of imagination.

Some of the galleries were down funny alley ways, and so much of the art looked like childish doodles…and I felt quite a fraud keeping a straight face and trying to look interested.

The contrast was incredible when we visited the churches. The iconic art and murals of eight or nine centuries was unbelievable.

We visited one church or monastery that is a pilgrimage sight for many from all over Europe. There was a coach load from Belarus when we went in. One of the features is a natural spring of ‘holy water’ in the court yard. We dutifully lined up and cupped our hands and had a small drink and a prayer, and then Stan read the sign on the wall. I imagined it said, ‘drink here and you will thirst again, but drink from the spirit and you will have life everlasting’ or whatever…memories of the Jesus Well in Crieff, when I was at school. But no…it just said, ‘Don’t wash your feet or your clothes here’.

We called into an apothecary museum which is also a working pharmacy, and I bought some soap made to an 825 year old recipe. It is reputed to give you soft skin…so I had a go last night and they DO NOT LIE! I shall go back and get a truck load, if I can ever find my way back through the tangle of streets!

We had lunch in a Georgian restaurant, thank the lord again for Stan, who just ordered up for us. It was different and delicious, but the main high light was Stan himself. His stories were magical, and he gave us lots of pointers. The reason Ukranians don’t smile outside, is that they see no need to smile without a reason; it’s a sign of idiocy or perhaps prostitution. So there we are…we have been critical of all these gorgeous girls strutting about like androids, when really it is we foreigners that have the problem, flashing our dental work to all and sundry.

He and Judy lived in Moscow and another town somewhere beginning with S and he was the director of 4 Coca Cola factories. We asked about mafia and he said he had to pay $4 million for protection, and one day he came out of the office and the mafia were on one side and the KGB on the other. Judy had rung him and asked when he was getting home, he replied, its not when…but if!

Judy, not to be out done told of the time when she was walking past a building innocently, when suddenly a big cavalcade stopped and the VIP got out and then all his gun men and security guys made a circle round him their heads whipping about for pot shooters…until the guy got in the door. Judy meantime, felt very exposed as she wondered if maybe the possible assassin might just settle for her!

These were the days when people would drive around all day searching for a packet of Marlboros (as if anyone would??? but I am not a smoker) and there was bread queues etc. Stan was there on his own at the time, and he was with a Swiss colleague (in his 40’s), who was very interested in this young 17 year old. Stan was so embarrassed as he felt like a pimp at the disco with the pair of them. He sat between them, as Swiss guy says, ‘Tell her I want to f…her) Stan says, ‘No, you can’t say that…say  you love her’ Swiss guy says, ‘ How can I say that; I have a wife and 3 daughters, just say I want to f…her and would $10 be alright?’ So Stan relays the message. The girl was very excited and asks Stan if this is a good price!!!

So we talked about the government, Yushenko, Timoshenko and the corruption and the traffic police. It was interesting … and then we waddled home … totally full of Georgian soups, and meat and hot spinach. Got home and collapsed and returned to our staid world of the brown chairs and lurid carpet.

Today is market and food buying day…and then another week of school. Time is flying!

3^rd April. 2007

Since the rally at the weekend things have escalated, and Yushenko dissolved parliament yesterday, and the crowds are gathering in Independence square, and masses are arriving from Russia to support Yanukovich, so its looking a bit scary. We are all on alert at school and everyone has been told school may be cancelled tomorrow. The traffic and congestion is terrible with such crowds. Who knows what will happen. As we live very close to the parliament we see all the tents where people are settled for the duration, in the Marynski park. Apparently the police back Yanukovich (the PM) and the army back Yushenko (president) There may be clashes.

Natasha arrived for a week, and the sun shone and we whisked her around the monuments and churches,

ate pancakes with red caviar and then she and I took the night train to Lviv, a small city bordering Poland.

The big sleeper had seen much history by the looks of things, and it was all so strange as we were bundled on to our bunks and awaited to see who our berth companions might be. It turned out we only had one man sharing with us. He was a customs and excise inspector, on his way to Lviv on business. He had no English, we had no Russian (apart from hello and how much) but it turned out that he and Natasha had done standard grade German at school. Long ago I was testing her on her vocabulary and one of the sentences was, ‘I have a guinea pig and two cats’. I remember saying at the time, ‘well that doesn’t sound very useful.’ Little did we know that the Customs and Excise man would ask Tasha if she had any pets!!! She dutifully trotted out her sentence and he was most interested!

Lviv was delightful and charming. We wandered around looking at statues, buying necklaces and eating fondue and drinking a bottle of wine. We were so overcome with sleep we went to the cemetery and lay down by a grave and slept for an hour.

I chose a young eighteen year old to rest beside; he had a nice face on his tomb stone. The return journey was less interesting, and we just spread out our purchases and wanted to wear everything at once!

I have lost some of the early diary accounts for Jan-June of 2007, but here are some pictures of Christmas and the frozen days of January and February. Please note the nude bathers…apparently the thing to do, for long life and beauty treatments!!!