This is way past due, but I wanted to add it to the blog anyway.

Last summer, I got to visit Kiev for a few days. It was wonderful. My friend Sasha at Texas A&M is from Ukraine. I had met her parents once before when they came to Texas, so they invited me to stay with them. So kind. Furthermore, Sasha rounded up 2 or 3 friends to be my ‘tour guides’. One of them actually moved to Houston a few weeks later and has become a close friend.

St. Sophia is one of the most famous cathedrals in all of Eastern Europe. Actually, Kiev was once the center of the Russian empire (then called Kievan ‘Rus’), and its Orthodoxy was centered here… Built as early as the 1000s, some of the Rus’s most famous rulers, like Yaroslavl I, were buried here (though only a few of the tombs survived through the years).

And actually, the Metropolitan, otherwise known as the head of the orthodox church, lives at St. Sophia… Google it if you want more details because the notes in my head have failed me. Too much has happened since I was there…

With its name taken after Hagia Sophia in Turkey, there’s a lot in common in their Byzantine architecture. It was really cool because I had a day in Istanbul right before my visit to Kiev so I got to see them ‘side by side’.

I wish I had written this post sooner so I could include more words. Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten a lot. But, I remember Pechersk-Lavra. From as early as the 11th century, Orthodox monks began using the caves as a prayer haven. Basically, this is an old cave monastery. You can still walk through the caves and see the hundreds of mummified and/or buried saints. We took the shortest route through as I was a little creeped out looking at mummified people, but it was an interesting place. You are given a candle to carry through for lighting. Many come simply as tourists, but others come as Orthodox followers, praying and paying respects to the saints before them.

Pictures aren’t allowed inside the actual caves, but enjoy the pictures from in/around the rest of the area.

After the cathedrals, Julia and Max took me up to the top of some tall apartment building to view the city. It was awesome.

The next day, I had a new ‘tour guide’. Alyosha was studying architecture, so he was really excited to show me all different kinds of buildings and statues.

Unfortunately, the communist government in the 1900s destroyed a lot of Kiev’s important religious centers. Believers gathered as many icons and pieces of churches as they could to salvage them, but St. Michael’s was mostly destroyed and has been rebuilt since.

Kiev’s soccer team is the Dynamo… Just like Houston’s team 😛 But really, they have a really big historical importance. During the Nazi occupation, the entire team was executed in a shooting line-up because they beat the German team in an exhibition game. You can google it to read more. And there have actually been several movies made about it. [the 1961 Hungarian film drama Két félidő a pokolban and the 1981 American film Escape to Victory also 2012 Match originally in Russian: Матч (2012)].

Actually, Ukraine suffered horrendously during World War II. Between the Nazis and the Soviets they just couldn’t get a break. The war museum was eye-opening. Maybe I just never paid attention in history, or maybe we never discussed Ukraines fate in our american-centered history courses. I had no clue that hundreds of thousands of ukrainians were put into concentration camps. We talk about Germany and Poland’s concentration camps because those were the centers, but Ukraine was just as bad if not worse. I saw some things at this museum more gruesome than even what I saw at Auschwitz. Heartbreaking.

Even more, before the war, Stalin took all their bread and people were starving for years in an essentially man-made famine.  It’s more complicated than that of course, but though Ukraine had plenty of wheat in the years before, the Soviet Union started micromanaging and declared all food property of the state. Before long, they were having people grow new and unusual crops that didn’t necessarily fare well in Ukraine’s climate. Between the new rations and the new unsuccessful crops, one of history’s largest famine’s took place. Millions died, and there are myriad stories of cannibalism and mothers eating their babies.

This isn’t totally related to my particular trip, but I remembered seeing this clip years ago. It will give you a brief picture of Ukraine’s war ‘history’ beautifully drawn in sand by a girl on Ukraine’s Got Talent.

Watch it, it’s worth your 8 minutes. And if you can’t read Russian, at the end, she writes, “You are always nearby”.

Last, we went to a temporary modern art exhibit. It was amazing. AMAZING. A lot of the art was naturally from post-soviet countries, so it was incredibly interesting. I could talk about my favorite exhibits for ages, but you’d be bored because art is something to experience, not read about. I’ll suffice it to say, I deeply wished there had been someone from home there with me to discuss and analyze and enjoy, because the exhibits were eye-opening and exhilarating.

And that was Ukraine. There was a lot more, but for now, enjoy it through these pictures 🙂