Friday: Long Day in Kiev

It was not a "long day" in the sense that anything went wrong. In fact, everything went very well. I mean in a literal sense it was a long day filled with travel and sight seeing. We rose at 5 a.m. to make our 7:30 flight to Kiev. Alexy met us at the airport and drove us to the US Embassy, arriving at 10:00. We had our our fingerprints updated and were out of the Embassy by 11:15. Our return flight did not depart until 8:30 p.m. so, we had several hours for sight seeing in Kiev. Alexy delivered us to a shopping center where we ate lunch at a food court. Then, we set off on our own for some adventure.

We walked through the complex of churces and buildings at the "cave of the monasteries" where we took a tour of the underground cave complex with an English-speaking tour guide. The cave tunnels were tight and crowded with "pilgrims". We carried thin candles made from bee's wax. Essentially, it was a tour of the remains of 73 monks entombed in clear coffins. Renee and I can provide more details of this tour offline. When the 50 minute tour was over, Renee and I were very glad to reach the surface with its fresh air and bright sunshine.

Next, we continued our six-hour foot tour by visiting "Freedom Park". This contained impressive monuments and military/war museums honoring the "Great War of Independence" or, what we refer to as, WWII. The monuments and museums were created by Soviet Russia. So, the perspective of the exhibits through the eyes of communists and our view of them as Americans was interesting. Fighting to replace one evil regime (Nazism) with another, Communism. Kind of a lose-lose scenario. All in all, we were reminded in a very real way of the death, suffering and oppression suffered by the people of Ukraine over many decades.

Some exhibits did not allow photographs, never-the-less, Paul took a lot of photos of those things we did have permission to shoot. Too many photos to edit and share in a short post. Maybe we will get back to you on that in at later date. Alexi picked us up at 6:30 p.m. to take us to the airport for our 8:30 return flight to Odessa. We arrived at the apartment by 10:30, called the kids and made it to bed by 12:15 a.m. Saturday. A long day.

Saturday, we reconnect with Yuri and look for another possible meeting with Yuri's brother and maybe even his Babushka.