Doug’s World

More Kiev photos

Here are a few more shots I liked from Friday and Saturday:

Those first two pictures above are at a church that the czar’s daughter had built for her wedding, but she died before it was completed and never got married. (I don’t recall the names, sorry.) Anyway, while we were in the church Nina told me of how long ago the Ukraine was both Christian and Muslim, but then it became predominantly Christian because “Ukraine people like to drink and have fun, and Muslim religion has too many rules.” I found it ironically amusing that while she was saying that, the priest in black above came over and asked us to be quiet.

The taxi drive to the airport in Kiev yesterday was pretty fun, a brand-new Audi driven at speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour (124MPH) by a tall young guy who listened to techno-pop very loud as if he didn’t care what the customer thought. I tipped heavily for this refreshing behavior, of course.

Then, at the airport, one last bit of bureaucracy. I was 2 hours early for my flight, 2:05 to be precise, and the security guard wouldn’t let me go through their first checkpoint for 5 minutes. I came back after 6 minutes, 1:59 before my flight, and he sternly said “not yet, I told you!”

So I sat in the bar and downed a beer slowly, pondering why leopard skin and python patterns are so popular in Kiev. There were five such outfits within view at the moment, including the one framed here. And since the women all wear those ultra-high heeled boots too, I’m thinking somebody could make a fortune shipping to Kiev a bunch of leopard-skin boots with spike heels. That’s my entrepreneurial tip for the day.

And now I’m in Beijing. More on that soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 7:29 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.