Heya.
Not much to report, I'm afraid. To give you an idea of what Karkhiv, located in eastern Ukraine not far from the Russian border, is all about, you should know that two of the metro station names feature the word 'tractor', and one of those names is 'tractor factory'. Really. You might say Kharkiv is the Detroit of the Ukrainian steppe. Based on the size of the metro system, Kharkiv is almost as big as Kiev, say 4 million.
I'd heard it was a heavily Russian, industrial city, which it is, and doesn't rate a mention in my Eastern Europe lonely planet, but I wanted to check it out anyway. The centre has a certain charm, with plenty of buildings that look pre WW2, and there are some interesting sculptures, besides the usual Pushkins and Lenins, scattered around.
I've spent one-and-a-half nights here spent (a new low) sleeping upright in the 'rest hall' with the other low-lifes. I haven't seen any ladies advertising rooms here, and no-way was I gunna front of wtih the 150 GRY ($30US) for a bed. The night in Odessa was spent in the detached room without windows, but with a low-sloping roof and carpet nailed to the walls, owned by a calculating babushka whose chief entertainment was listening to her 12-year old chihauhau pining from the cold.
My only 'paid' experience in Karkhiv (besides the internet) has been the local museum, which I can compare favourably to the ones in Odessa and Dniepropetrovsk (smaller eastern city I went to from Odessa). I'm becoming a bit of a museum junky ... All the museums here have local paleolithic, nelolithic stone tools (the architectural museum in Odessa even had some Neanderthal skulls), mammoth tusks (the only complete skeletons were in St P), rhino and aurochs skulls, and 'earth-mother sculptures; bronze age weapons (daggers, arrow-heads, axe-heads), tools, plow-heads and sculptures (including Greek and some Roman stuff around the coast - Odessa, Sevastopol) and then moving into iron age around 2nd cent BC : Scythian - loads of horse gear (including stirrups from 4th cent AD or so), spears, arrows, birch-bark quivers, cool recurve bows, carriages and wheels; Viking/Russian (chain-mail, swords, axes, farming equipment, models of wooden forts and towns), a bit of Tatar/Mongolian, then Cossak gear - heaps of sabres, cannons, and busts and paintings of mastachioed dudes with top-knots wearing baggy pants and cummerbunds. After that it moves into Russian military uniforms of the 18 century, jewellery, glassware etc, and then into Communist stuff (which soon gives me a headache: too much red). And, of course, the Great Patriotic War: I'm starting to remember the names of the weaponry, like the German p-38 pistol. Interestingly, here in Kharkiv there was a newer exhibition called Karkiv in Europe, with displays by local industrial firms featuring machined metal parts, and photos of local dignataries shaking hands with German dignitaries...
In Odessa I saw an exhibition about the German farming communities who settled there at the invitation of one of the Tzars: great if, like me, you wanted to find out how flax, the plant, was turned into colourful dresses, bonets etc. They had everything from the brushes and spade-sized combs used to separate the fibres, to the spinning wheels, and finally the loom used to put it all together... The other thing I saw in Odessa was an underground cave system, used by partisans durnig teh German occupation in WW2. They were extensions of older tunnels excavated by miners of limestone since the middle ages. Pretty spooky. Beds were straw-covered platforms that took a dozen at a time. They still had the weapons racks, a 20-m shooting range with targets, etc.
Anyway, I've already got my ticket for Kiev, leaving tonight ... Burton gets back from Warsaw tomorrow with the school soccer team, so I'll be RVing with him, for sure (he's got half my stuff in his room, besides). Then I'll head back west, to territory covered by the Lonely Planet. Only 11 more days on the Ukrainian visa. Time flies when you're having fun...
Adieu.
Liam, samedi 12 novembre 2005 08:09.
