Hello everyone!
Wow, isn’t it amazing
that we have come this far? Now we have arrived in Kiev, the capital of
Ukraine. The capital is the largest city of Ukraine and is an important
industrial, scientific, educational and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. We
immediately noticed the city has high-developed infrastructure combined with
old buildings and has as in Iran, an amazing metro station. The stations are built
very deep underground so can also be used as bomb shelters even though it is right beneath the centre. Not only are they really useful in a busy city
like this, they are also very beautiful, they use these vivid and colorful decorations.
It was also well maintained because there was absolutely no graffiti or vandalism
as you would expect.
There was so much
to see so we went to a tourist centre and asked what we should definitely visit
in the limited time we have. They said we should definitely visit the two most important monuments, such as the Saint Sophia Cathedral and the Kiev Pechersh
Lavra (or Kiev Cave Monastery complex). Those two monuments were inscribed on the
World Heritage List made by UNESCO. All
outstanding cultural buildings are written down on this list. We were amazed by
the beauty of these buildings, fortunately we had bought new batteries for our
cameras.
We were very hungry so we decided to eat some of the local specialties
such as pampushki and varenik. Pampushki is a type of sandwich soaked in oil
and fresh garlic and varenik is a small pie with all sorts of stuffing. We had
beautiful weather visiting Kiev so we decided to have an early dinner in one of
the many botanical gardens.
Afterwards we were so exhausted so we headed back to our hotel
and planned the next day before we went to sleep.
The next day during
breakfast we discussed our plans for that day and as Julie mentioned in the
previous blog, I was going to tell you more about Chernobyl. So we decided to
go on a Chernobyl Tour, which was very interesting. We made sure we had a
guide and he could tell us that on 26 April 1986 a reactor N4 of the Chernobyl
Nuclear Power Station blew up during a routine maintenance operation. Almost
nine tons of radioactive material was blown in the sky. It even influenced Belarus, Poland and the Baltic region. About 135.000 people were evacuated.
Before we went on the tour our luggage had to be checked and they gave us a quick lesson about
evacuation. We first arrived at a monument dedicated to the fireman of
Chernobyl, the ones who saved many people. They showed us how they improved security, where everyone works, there even was a movie and a photo gallery about the disaster. After that we went to the town of
Chernobyl where you can find the Park of Glory, Second World War Memorial and
the Board of Memory to liquidators. Some things were just very sad to see, such
as the abandoned flats where private things such as toys still can be found. It
was all very interesting but we were happy to go back to the city.
Later that day we were
so happy to be back in Europe that we were still full of energy, so we decided
to go out in some of the clubs nearby. It was fantastic, we enjoyed ourselves
and knew that the next morning might be less active.
We were so tired the
next morning that we just decided to take a bus in which we could take a nap because the other night we didn’t get enough sleep. Still, everything was worth
it. I'm writing you this blog while everyone is asleep and the next morning we will wake up in Belarus.
Just keep on
reading!
Sofie Van Laeken
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