As I mentioned before, our next planned stop was Kiev, the administrative and business center of Ukraine. We spent in Kiev 2 days and were staying with my cousin who moved to the city in mid 90’s and has lived and worked there ever since.
Kiev is a city of parks, churches and construction sites. As you approach it by railroad you can see many scenic views with a mix of all three. The river that splits Kiev into two parts also contributes to the overall beauty of the area.
Being the capital Kiev attracts more investment and business than any other city in Ukraine. Imagine Washington DC, New York, and San Francisco combined in one piece. Of course you should scale it down to Ukrainian size but you get the idea.
The growth of business opportunities has caused property prices to skyrocket in Kiev. The 2 bedroom apartment my cousin owns now costs about as much as my 3 bedroom house in suburban Chicago. Prices for apartments in Kiev are approximately $100-200 per square foot with prices gradually going down as you go further from city center.
Abundance of business is the reason why my cousin moved to Kiev in 90’s. He is a professional freelance sound engineer who has worked with every possible rock and pop band in Ukraine. In 2005 he happened to be at the audio console when then elected president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovish was giving a press conference (the results of that election were later overthrown by supreme court).
Besides his main business my cousin owns a small sound recording studio and sells some equipment on a side. Given his skills there is no way he could have accomplished what he did in any other place in Ukraine. If I didn’t get a job in the US I would probably move to Kiev as well.
My cousin also has a great sense of humor. You can see it from some of the pictures here. On one of them he is posing in his studio at the drums. The other one is taken in Botanic Garden which is a huge park we visited together in Kiev. The sign says: “Beware of ticks. Stay on the trail”. In the background, my wife, my cousin and his wife stage three dangerous ticks. :-)
Forest ticks and encephalitis they spread are a big problem in rural areas of Ukraine and Russia. This article (rus) claims that a total of 270,000 people in Russia have become victims of forest ticks since the beginning of the year. I don’t remember this to be such an issue when I lived in Ukraine, but then maybe I didn’t travel that much.
Kiev has even more cars on the streets than Kharkiv making traffic jams a daily attribute of life in the city. The roads are however somewhat better than in Kharkiv. Streets often have clearly marked dividers and drivers can be somewhat polite to each other.
My next stop is Zaporozhye, the city of many factories and the birth place of Ukrainian kazaks. Stay tuned!
The next destination of my trip is Kiev where I am visiting my cousin. Kiev is the capital and the biggest city in Ukraine. For the trip we decided to take a train - the most popular way of travel over here. Tickets are fairly cheap (around $10-20 one way) and not hard to get unless you travel to hot destinations (like Crimea in summer time).
There is often a line of people at the station so be prepared to spend some time. Since the trains are owned and operated by the government there doesn’t seem to be any incentive to change the system. People who have money and want to avoid the wait have to find ways around it. The usual approach is to find a friend or relative of someone who works at the tickets booth and arrange a transaction privately. 10 Hryvnas ($2) in the passport usually do the magic.
I told you earlier about 
Ukraine is a beautiful country. The central part is flat and has very scenic views. I took this picture of sunflowers as we were leaving Kiev for my hometown. Karpati Mountains cover south-west. I never went there but my friends tell me the area is very nice as well. Crimea Peninsula is the southern part of Ukraine. Crimea has sub-tropical climate and is a popular vacation destination among Ukrainians and Russians.
We visited my home town over the weekend and left our kids with grandparents for a week (we are back to Kharkiv right now). During my 2 days stay I enjoyed homemade food (some of it is depicted to the right) and spent quite some time discussing Ukrainian politics and economy with my dad who gave me an excellent however a little sad explanation of why Ukrainians are poor. Here it is:
We went to my friend’s summer house yesterday. The house is a small cabin near Kharkiv and half-acre of land around it. We ate barbecue, drank beer and talked, talked, talked. My friend runs small business and has radically right (by US standards) views on economic situation in Ukraine. According to him Ukrainians a poor because they don’t want to work. They are grown up with an idea that the government will always take care of them which was one of the premises of the old regime. 
Here is the scoop of the problem which affects us directly. Ukraine issues two types of passports: internal to use inside Ukraine and external to use for travel. My wife’s external (travel) passport expired last spring and we obtained a re-entry permit from Ukrainian consulate in the US before going to Ukraine. We planned to get her travel passport renewed in Ukraine however once in Kharkiv we realized that we left her internal passport back in the US (you need to have it with you to renew your travel passport). I promptly asked my friends to DHL me the passport only to find that the Ukrainian law doesn’t allow passports in the mail. Now we (or rather my wife) are stuck in Ukraine without documents to leave the country and we can’t get them from the Government because Ukrainian law doesn’t allow us to receive necessary paperwork by mail. Tell me, should I laugh or should I cry?
Another thing that stands out compared to the US is how girls dress up out on the streets. They wear a kind of cloth Americans will only see at a party or a TV show. High heels and makeup is the norm even if you go grocery shopping. I find this especially appealing combined with the fact that girls here on average are skinnier than in the US. 
Ukrainian weddings don’t usually take place in Church like in the US. During Soviet times the government assigned a special official body (abbreviated ZAGS) to register marriages and little changed ever since. I have heard that lately couples do go to the Church after official part is over but this is still not very common.
At the restaurant parents and guests (who didn’t go to Memorial and the Wedding Palace) meet the young couple with bread and salt and then the party begins. The entire restaurant was reserved to the wedding. Music, funny competitions, jokes, and a lot of toasts and alcohol.