Kyiv

The number of people visiting Ukraine has taken a hit with the outbreak of the civil war in eastern Ukraine. It’s unfortunate, because the rest of the country isn’t affected from a security standpoint. Central and western Ukraine are as safe as ever. There’s so much to see and do throughout Ukraine. One of the places that were highest on my to-do list at the time was actually Chernobyl, and the surrounding Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. When I realized how easy it was to organize as a guided day-trip from the capital, I immediately looked into traveling to Kyiv. Add in the fact that there’s a huge aviation museum in the city itself, and the decision to go was already settled for me.

FRIDAY, August 24th

Initially, I flew with SWISS to Frankfurt. Once I got to Frankfurt, I had dinner in the Lufthansa Business Lounge in the Non-Schengen area of the terminal.

I had recently acquired Frequent Traveller status with Lufthansa’s Miles & More frequent flyer program. This enabled me to access the lounge, despite flying in economy. The flight to Kyiv departed as one of the last flights from that area of the terminal. Because of this, the lounge was relatively quiet. Someone seated next to me asked to borrow a phone charger. After a bit of small talk, we found out that we were both going on the same flight. He was Ukrainian, had been studying in the UK, and was now flying home to his family. He gave me several tips regarding Kyiv, which was really awesome.

The Lufthansa flight to Kyiv was almost full, but it still departed on time, meaning that we arrived on time. This was nice, because the flight arrived as scheduled shortly before 2 AM, which was already late enough. Any delays would have been horrid. I took a Uber from the airport towards the city, to meet with the owner of the airbnb apartment I was renting.

SATURDAY, August 25th

Because I got into town so late, I needed a decent amount of sleep. I was going to spend a total of four nights at the apartment. I actually started my day by going to a local grocery store to pick up something for breakfast for that morning, and the rest of the stay. Just some yogurt, bread and pastries. After having picked up the groceries and eaten some of it for breakfast, it was time to explore the city.

My apartment was literally just a block away from St. Sophia Cathedral, so this became a natural starting point.

It is one of the main landmarks in the city, as the oldest standing church in Kyiv. It was constructed between 1017 and 1031, to celebrate Prince Yaroslav’s victory against some tribal raiders.

A lot of the outsides and some of the towers are later additions. Most of the interior frescoes remain from the original building though.

After I had exited the church, I realized that preparations were being made for an electronic music concert inside the monastery compound, with sound testing going on. This somewhat ruined the atmosphere. The St. Sophia Cathedral complex is surrounded by walls. There are several buildings beside the cathedral inside the walls. The concert was being set up on a lawn between some of them. I usually like electronic music, but just outside a 1000-year-old church? Come on guys!

I continued walking around Kyiv, going towards the Zoloti Vorota, otherwise known as the Golden Gate. No, it’s not a cheap replica of the bridge in San Francisco. That being said, it’s actually still a reconstruction. There used to be a gate through the city’s medieval fortifications here, built in the 11th century. In 1240, Mongol hordes destroyed it when they sacked Kyiv. The structure was redone in 1982 using what fragments remained of the original gate. There are no walls surrounding it, so it almost looks like a little church with its tower. But there’s a covered passage inside, between some parts of the original walls.

Further towards the south, I walked past the National Opera of Ukraine. The next point of interest was St. Volodomyr’s Cathedral, built in the 19th century. Because Kyiv is full of Orthodox cathedrals, churches and monasteries with longer historical backgrounds, St. Volodomyr’s Cathedral isn’t one of the most important ones.

But it’s definitely got one of the prettiest, most detailed interiors. Its yellow exterior stands out in an appealing way. Inside, the walls and columns of the church are covered from top to bottom in frescoes, with golden decorations all over.

Just across the street from the church were buildings belonging to the Taras Shevchenko National University. One of the main buildings really stood out with its maroon red color.

Across from the campus is a park also named after Shevchenko, a Ukrainian poet, with a statue of him in the middle of it.

Just a few minutes of walking further east from the university, is one example of Ukraine’s tumultuous 21st century. A statue of Lenin was torn down by Euromaidan protestors in 2013. The Euromaidan was a three-month period of protests, centered around Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti square. It all started when the government at the time decided against agreements with the European Union. More on that later. All that remains of Vladimir Lenin’s statue now is the column on which he stood. The word “Lenin” is still written in Cyrillic on it, with some pro-Ukrainian decorations added in.

At this point it was almost 2 PM, and much overdue for lunch. Not far away was a restaurant called Pervak, which has a traditional Ukrainian theme. As such, the menu is also full of Ukrainian dishes, so it was an easy choice for lunch.

In order to save time, I ordered a Uber to take me out to the one sight in the city of Kyiv I was looking forward to the most. Just next-door to central Zhuliany Airport, the other international airport of Kyiv, was the Oleg Antonov State Aviation Museum. Trust me, it’s a lot more exciting than the long, dry name suggests.

It displays a very large collection of aircraft from the USSR era, mainly created by Ukrainian manufacturer Antonov. Also found here are Ilyushin, Tupolev, Sukhoi and MiG models, as well as Mil helicopters. What was really, really cool about the museum was that they also sold tickets to climb onboard and enter a select number of the aircraft. Sometimes you could even get inside the cockpit!

The ticket office had different prices for some of these aircraft. I didn’t need a long time to decide what I wanted. I bought a combined ticket to enter all the aircraft that were open for visitors. Over the course of the almost two hours that I spent at the outdoors museum, I took several hundred photos. I’m a geek when it comes to aviation. Thus, I could easily write an entire, separate blog post about the hundreds of aircraft shown here. But I’ll keep it short. The following are three of the several aircraft that it was possible to enter.

The Ilyushin Il-62 was a four-engined airliner, designed for long-haul operations with room for up to 190 passengers. It was built between 1967 until 1995. As of today, there’s only a handful of them still flying. North Korea’s state airline Air Koryo owns most of them.

The mint-green color of the cockpit was very typical of Russian-built aircraft.

Another aircraft that could be visited is the Mil Mi-26 helicopter. It is the largest and most powerful helicopter to have gone into serial production.

It’s maximum take-off weight is 56,000 kg (123,000 pounds). In other words, that’s the heaviest that the helicopter could possibly be including load and passengers and still fly into the air. Most airline jets are heavier, but some regional jets and commuter planes weigh less.

For a helicopter, it’s massive. I took this photo standing in the middle of the cabin, so there’s plenty of room behind me too.

Produced throughout the 1980s up until 1997, there’s still plenty of these helicopters in service.

There was also a Tupolev Tu-134 that used to be the VIP aircraft for the Ukrainian president. The interior of this particular aircraft remains in the VIP configuration.

The Tu-134 was mostly designed for use as an airliner on medium-range routes, with room for up to 84 passengers. Produced from 1966 until 1989, some Tu-134 are still in service with obscure airlines in former East Bloc countries.

What also deserves a mention is that there was an indoor museum exhibit as part of the Aviation Museum. Inside was an exhibit focused on the history of aviation in Ukraine. There were some really cool photos from the dawn of flying in Ukraine and the USSR.

Zhuliany Airport, which is just next to the museum, has been active since 1923. It was the only airport of Kyiv until the newer Boryspil International Airport (which I used) opened in the 1960s. On display as well inside this museum building were several different aircraft engines, mainly jet engines.

Because the public transport connections from the Aviation Museum were pretty spotty, I took a Uber back downtown again. There would have been better options from Zhuliany Airport itself. However, walking along the edge of the airport complex to the terminal would have taken almost half an hour on its own.

I decided to visit the Chernobyl Museum to get some background info on Chernobyl. I was going to visit Chernobyl a few days later. Unfortunately, there was no signposting in English at the museum. That being said, the photos were often self-explanatory.

You enter the museum walking down a staircase. Above you are signs indicating all the cities and towns that were evacuated. Then, you enter a room full of portraits, IDs and personal effects. These belonged to the workers employed at the power plant, or in the period after the accident, to clean up from the disaster.

There’s plenty of photos from the evacuation too, as well as the aftermath of the accident. The damage to the nuclear power plant and the medical treatment for those who suffered from radiation sickness is also shown.

Before and after photos from the city of Pripyat, built specifically to accommodate workers at the power plant, are quite moving. It was also a bit of a teaser for my visit to Chernobyl itself.

Having visited the museum, I walked down the Andriyivsky Uzviz, one of Kyiv’s most famous streets. The name translates to “Andrew’s descent”, because Apostle Andrew, according to legend, erected a cross on a hill here.

It’s a pedestrian street, lined with cafés, markets and hawkers. There’s a couple of museums related to local artists too. It’s quite a nice atmosphere along the Андріївський узвіз street, as it’s called in Ukrainian, although it can get crowded.

The walk downhill passes along picturesque St. Andrew’s Church and ends at the massive Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Stalin ordered this government building constructed in 1934, in a classic, grandiose Soviet style. A church was destroyed to make room for the building.

Right next to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, another example of Kyiv’s decorated Orthodox churches with beautiful golden domes. Like the church that gave way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Monastery was torn down by the Soviets in the 1930s as well. The original structure had been here since 1108.

What stands here today is a reconstruction of the complex, made in 2001. Owing to this, the colors of the building haven’t faded at all, which does make it stand out. The church is however not only golden on the outside, there’s gold all over the panels on the inside. It’s an actual, functioning church today. A church service was going on at the time, so I couldn’t take too many pictures of the interior.

Next up, I wanted to enter the National Museum of Ukrainian History as well. It is located just a couple of blocks away from the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. However, its ticket booth closed a full hour-and-a-half before the museum itself. A lot of places will not admit anyone less than half an hour before closing time. But not selling any tickets for 90 minutes? I haven’t encountered that before.

Instead, I turned around and started walking in the other direction. The next point of interest became the Friendship of Nations Arch. The monument is very interesting considering its background and Ukraine’s modern-day politics. The Soviets built it to celebrate the 1654 alliance between Russia and Ukraine. That was the beginning of an ever-growing Russian influence over Ukraine. There’s several socialist realist statues indicating brotherhood, underneath the arch. The fact that the monument isn’t damaged or covered in graffiti is a miracle, given the current war in eastern Ukraine.

There’s just a Ukrainian flag painted on the base of one of the statues. However, the fact that kids just rollerskate past the statues and that people climb on top of them for selfies, is perhaps enough of an indication of what locals think of the monument nowadays.

I went on a long walk through the park that stretches along the riverside of the Dnipro river. On the way, I passed, among other things, the stadium of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer club. Then I turned back towards my apartment. The last stop of the day was the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which translates to Independence Square.

The “Maidan”, as it is sometimes referred to locally, has seen numerous protests and sparked a couple of revolutions. Independence protests were held here in the early 1990s, hence the name. Protests centered around the Maidan created the Orange Revolution of 2004. But none of those protests were as dark and bloody as the Euromaidan protests that stretched over three months from late 2013 to early 2014.

The Ukrainian government at the time had elected to reject proposals from the European Union. They sought closer ties with Russia and Central Asian countries, essentially the former USSR allies. This angered the local population, which wanted to look towards the West for much-needed prosperity for one of Europe’s weakest economies. Protesters barricaded the Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Demonstrators covered the monuments and columns of the square in Ukrainian and European Union flags and slogans. Police and military surrounded the square and besieged the protesters.

Violent clashes frequently broke out between them. Victims were cared for by volunteer doctors rather than official ambulances at times. Elsewhere in Kyiv there were demonstrations as well. As the police used violence against the protesters, support for the movement grew stronger. The death toll of the Euromaidan protests varies depending on the source. It is officially confirmed as over 100. Some sources clam almost 800 people lost their lives due to the violent fighting at the Independence Square over the three months. More than 2,000 people got injured. Memorials around the square remember the events of the Euromaidan, with pictures of the events, like the one shown above.

The Euromaidan protests culminated in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, which overthrew the government of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The removal of Yanukovych was popular in central and western Ukraine, but not in the eastern regions and Crimea, which has a higher amount of ethnic Russians. The revolution led to the Russian annexation of Crimea. It also caused the civil war in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. The pro-Russian “People’s Republics” created in Donetsk and Luhansk are a direct result of opposition to the revolution among ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

The Independence Square was in a rather relaxed, festive mood when I was there though. Lots of locals were out enjoying a summer evening on the weekend. Independence Day for Ukraine was just two days prior. The square still had plenty of banners and signs from the festivities.

I decided to have dinner in a popular restaurant right underneath the square. Just below the square is an underground shopping centre. Inside is a really nice restaurant that isn’t easy to get to. You have to find one specific elevator within the shopping centre. It takes a while before you encounter the signs for this particular elevator. In this specific elevator, there’s a separate floor dedicated to just this one restaurant. The restaurant had WiFi, so I briefly FaceTimed with my parents. The food was actually really good, but I didn’t remember to take any photos of it. Oops. After my dinner, I went home to shower and change clothes. Then I went out to experience some of Kyiv’s nightlife. 

SUNDAY, August 26th

I had set an alarm on my phone which did indeed wake me up. Then I turned it off, still half asleep, without getting out of bed. Next thing I know, I actually woke up an hour later. Oh well. I took the metro out to the end of the line. From there I ordered a Uber to take me to the Pyrohiv Museum of Folk Architecture.

Теремки, the last stop for the metro line 2, in southern Kyiv.

It’s an open-air museum located on the southern fringes of the city, in a sparsely populated area surrounded by forests. That’s the reason it’s not well-connected with public transport. There’s a couple of sporadic busses once an hour or so.

The museum spreads out over a huge area, and I spent around two hours walking throughout the museum. It’s a lot more interesting than the name suggests. However, unless you’re into traditional culture or architecture, there are other, more exciting spot to visit in Kyiv. That being said, it was a beautiful summer morning. The remote location of the outdoor museum, far away from the city centre, makes it a really great place to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air, while learning a thing or two.

The museum consists of over three hundred original buildings from all around Ukraine. They have all been transplanted into this outdoor museum. The structures cover various time periods, from several hundred years old farming huts, to 20th-century houses complete with appliances made in the USSR. You can enter many of the houses to have a look at the interior.

The living room/kitchen of a different farmer’s house than the one pictured above it.

In some cases, several houses from the same village have been moved to the Pyrohiv Museum.

 The living room of a house in an area of the Pyrohiv museum displaying typical 20th century housing.

The interior of a different house in the 20th century time period.

In a few spots, particularly in the sections with more traditional houses, there are staff members who do traditional crafts or music. Unfortunately the attention to detail with some of these acts isn’t complete. One guy was playing on a traditional instrument using empty aerosol cans.

That wasn’t the only modern thing I ran into there. Because of the genuine replicas of old buildings at the open-air museum, a local film crew was shooting a movie on-location at the museum.

One part of the Pyrohiv Museum of Folk Architecture has a lane with dozens of food vendors selling Ukrainian street food and typical dishes. There was a great selection of food and it was quite cheap, so I had lunch there.

After I finished eating, I turned around and started walking towards the exit. There were irregular mashrutka busses servicing downtown Kyiv, but it wasn’t clearly signposted where exactly they were going. As I was running a bit short on time thanks to the fact I got up late, I ordered yet another Uber. These were surprisingly cheap but reliable for getting around Kyiv. I only needed to get back to the Teremky metro station anyway. That was the station I used to get to Pyrohiv earlier in the morning.

I took the metro to the Dnipro riverside. Then I went for a stroll along the river down to the Foundation of Kyiv Monument.

Legend has it that four Slavic siblings founded the city, with the oldest, Kyi, giving the city its name. The exact age of the city isn’t 100% ascertained. Most agree on the year 482 AD, which is also why the city celebrated its 1,500 year anniversary in 1982. Humans have lived in the area since the late Stone Age.

I continued towards the Rodina Mat, otherwise known as the “Nation’s Mother Monument”. To get there, I took a route that led from the riverside uphill through a park. A security guard stopped me. His assistant explained to me in English that I was certainly allowed to cross the park over to the monument. However, it would cost a fee. This was no scam by the way, this was very official indeed. In another section of the park was the Percherska-Lavra Monastery, the holiest site for Orthodox Ukrainians. I assume it was somehow possible to access the monastery through the park. That would be the reason why you’d essentially have to buy a ticket. I didn’t plan on going to the Lavra until later. To save the money for now, I took a detour around this park to get to Rodina Mat.

The “Nation’s Mother” is a huge, over 100m (300 ft) tall female warrior. Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev constructed it in 1981. The shield still bears the state emblem of the Soviet Union with the hammer and sickle.

There’s a lift which runs up to a platform on the statue. Supposedly there’s a second elevator that runs up to a different observation deck at the top of the shield. It was closed when I visited. The main observation platform is at the feet of the female warrior. At a height of about 36 m (~110 feet), you get nice views of the surroundings and the city.

Looking toward the Kyevo-Percherska Lavra monastery complex.

Views of apartment buildings on the east bank of the Dnipro river.

Inside the base of the monument is a memorial to Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the Second World War, named “Hall of Glory”.

Over twelve thousand names of those who were awarded Heroes of the Soviet Union, and Heroes of Socialist Labor, are carved on all the pylons.

Above the pylons are some mosaics for decoration. Waiting for the viewing deck elevator provides a good moment to appreciate the memorial.

Below the Rodina Mat monument and the memorial is the Great Patriotic War Museum. The museum is dedicated not only to Ukraine in the Second World War, but also to the current War in Donbass in eastern Ukraine. The permanent exhibition deals with the “Great Patriotic War”, as WWII is known in the former USSR. A makeshift exhibition space in the front lobby areas of the museum cover the War in Donbass. The Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting in the Donbass region are depicted as heroes, with portraits of the fallen, along with some of their personal items.

There’s various signs, flags and vehicles riddled with bullet holes on display. The pictures of the destroyed Donetsk Airport were especially telling of how violent the conflict is.

The downing of Malaysian Airlines’ flight MH17 by pro-Russian separatists is also covered in the exhibit. A picture indicates anti-aircraft artillery entered disputed territory, shortly before the time the plane was shot down.

While I agree with most of what was presented there as being factual, it is of course a very one-sided version of the story of the War in Donbass.

Having gone through the War in Donbass exhibit, I continued to the main WWII exhibit of the Great Patriotic War Museum. It deals exclusively with the fighting that took place on territory which belonged to the former Ukrainian SSR. It also details the war’s effect on the local population. In the first room, there’s wrecks of German and Soviet planes on display.

Ukraine was overrun by the Nazis, and millions of Ukrainians were captured. These were soldiers, Jews, and ordinary locals. Over one hundred thousand were executed at a hill known as Babyn Yar, on the outskirts of Kyiv. The vast majority of the captured Ukrainians were deported, either to concentration camps, or to become forced labour in Germany. Several dozens of these are shown with portraits, ID cards and postcards sent back home to relatives.

(WARNING: Graphic content coming up in the next few sections). Those who got deported to the concentration camps suffered a fate much worse than that of the forced laborers. The Great Patriotic War Museum doesn’t hold back when displaying what happened to them. Several torture instruments are on display, as well as a guillotine and a combine harvester-like machine adapted to crush human corpses.

There’s even a piece of soap made from human fat, and gloves made from human skin.

There are just no words that adequately describe the horror that concentration camp victims suffered. The total disregard for human life that the Nazi regime showed is also indescribable.

Throughout the museum, there are several personal effects taken from captured or fallen Nazi soldiers. Some of these are medals, others being everyday items.

Decorating several of the rooms inside the museum’s exhibitions halls are large, patriotic murals. They were all made originally for the Great Patriotic War Museum.

The most haunting display of the museum is one, long hall with thousands of photos on both sides, called the Hall of Memory. In the middle is one long table, with glasses or flasks at every “seat”.

The photos depict Ukrainians, mostly soldiers but also some civilians, who died during World War II. The empty seats at the table are a sort of symbolic memory for them too, named “Table for Funeral Dinner”. Looking at all the faces on the photos is truly a moving experience. Approximately seven million Ukrainians lost their lives during World War II, so this is just a fraction of them.

The next point on the agenda was the Kyevo-Percherska Lavra, the city’s main monastery and one of the holiest sites in Ukraine. On the way there from the Great Patriotic War Museum, I passed along some of the war museum’s outdoor exhibits. These include military vehicles, including a few planes. I didn’t decide to enter, as the aircraft were perfectly visible from the other side of the fence.

Once I arrived at the Kyevo-Percherska Lavra, I realized however that it would be possible to enter after the official closing times for free. Sure, not every building would be open, but I didn’t need to see every part of the monastery. I skipped it and planned to come back later. I decided instead to make a trip over to the National Museum of Ukrainian History, which I missed out on the day before.

On the way I stopped by the Holmodor Victims Memorial. It is a group of statues dedicated to the over six million Ukrainians that starved to death in the early 1930s due to the Soviet farming policies.

A small museum exhibit underneath explains the tragedy in greater detail. A lot of grain output was confiscated, with the official goal of being redistributed, but it never was. The Ukrainian Government considers it systemic genocide. Ukraine has fertile soil and produced more than enough to feed its own population. It is believed Stalin purposefully confiscated the food in an effort to target Ukrainians.

I got on the metro for a couple of stops and continued walking towards the history museum. I made sure to get inside in time, before the ticket office closed. The museum’s collection starts off with a vast selection of archaeological items, beginning from almost ten thousand years ago.

Among some of the most interesting pieces at the start are ceramic figures from the Eneolithic Age (5700-4700 years ago). There’s also plenty of Iron Age weapons, tools and jewellery, some of it golden.

Further along in the path through the museum is a section with various types of currencies used in Ukraine. There’s plenty of coins and bills from the Soviet period.

The next parts of the museum cover Ukraine during the era of the Tsarist Russian Empire. The displayed items were mostly from the 19th century. There are several maps, documents and furniture from this time period. However, undoubtedly the newest part of the National Museum of Ukrainian History’s exhibits deal with the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent revolution.

A tent used by some of the demonstrators was displayed. Inside of it were pictures of the violent clashes and protests.

In the room surrounding the tent, there are even more pictures from the demonstrations.

A very interesting juxtaposition to the Euromaidan section are several rooms dealing with the 20th century, ie. Ukraine under the Soviet Union. The communist policies of industrialisation is a common theme throughout, as well as some of the propaganda from the time. But the Chernobyl disaster also receives plenty of coverage.

I didn’t finish every single part of the National Museum of Ukrainian History. The staff was quick to turn off the lights, asking you to leave already 15 minutes before closing time! I’m not talking about a reminder that “we are closing in 15 minutes”, which most museums do. I was told to head for the exit already. Don’t get me wrong, I would consider it rude to push the time and force the staff to stay longer than necessary. But is it too much to ask for that you don’t close until, well, the actual closing time?

That being said, I set off for the Kyevo-Percherska Lavra to get inside of the monastery. It is officially closed for tourists after 7/8PM (depending on the day of the week). However, it is still open for church services a couple of hours after that. There’s no one at the entrance enforcing the “no tourist” rule. No one seemed to mind me slipping inside with the churchgoers. I certainly wasn’t the only visitor that didn’t come there to pray. Honestly, the “no tourist” phrase probably refers to the fact that most of the buildings were closed. The only thing I truly missed was the monastery’s caves, most of the other side buildings weren’t interesting anyway.

Outside of the main church was a fragment from a church that stood at the same site in the 11th century.

Once I got inside the main church at the monastery, I was careful to take pictures without offending anyone. Since I wasn’t exactly supposed to be visiting the monastery at that time, I definitely tried to not be in anyone’s way.

When I first reached the Lavra, the sun had already began setting. By the time I left the main church building, it was getting dark outside.

I walked back north to the nearest metro station, Arsenalna, and took the metro back towards my apartment.

For dinner I went to a Ukrainian restaurant near my airbnb apartment. I had some borsch soup (pictured) followed by chicken kiev with homemade noodles.

The fact that the restaurant was just a block away from the apartment was practical. I needed to go to sleep early, to get up in time for a long, exciting day.

MONDAY, August 27th.

On this day, I took a day-trip to visit Chernobyl, the site of the nuclear disaster in 1986. There’s so much to share from that trip that it is covered in a second blog post. Click here for the blog post regarding my visit to Chernobyl.

TUESDAY, August 28th

I woke up and showered, before packing my bags to leave the apartment. I had arranged with the owner of my airbnb when to meet me, so I could hand over the keys in person. Considering that I had first arrived at the apartment in the middle of the night, and now needed to leave early in the morning, I must commend the owner for being very flexible! After that, I ordered a Uber to take me to the airport. My flight was scheduled to leave around 7 AM. It was quite early, but I had plenty of time to get some breakfast at the airport beforehand.

The flight to Vienna, with Austrian Airlines, was punctual and pretty uneventful. Unlike the beautiful days before, it was foggy in Kyiv that morning.

When I got to Vienna, the weather was much nicer, with sunny skies. The onward Austrian Airlines flight to Zurich also departed on-time. This left me plenty of time to relax at home before going to work later that day.