We’ve landed safely in Kiev and we’ll be here for such a short time we won’t get a chance to see anything, but I thought I’d briefly post some random experiences from the last 20 hours or so.
- Passport control was a nightmare. There are several booths, but many refused to actually line up. When we arrived, there were just general “crowds” not lines, and people were adding themselves to the peripheral (ie closer to the front, but expanding the crowd outward) rather than lining up. I can’t say whether this is a common occurrence, or the result of the particular people arriving when we did. Props to the Dutch man who had one of these “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” moments and yelled at the crowd for not respecting lines. We were all thinking it. (Well, those of us trying to stand in lines, anyway.)
- Hubcaps are different here. They must be. I don’t notice very much, and especially when it comes to cars, but I started looking for cars *with* hubcaps because so few seemed to have them. I doubt 90% of the population is driving around without hubcaps, so I am concluding that they do, in fact, have hubcaps but they just look like non-hubcaps to an outsider.
- “Biteamo” is a greeting something like “welcome” but every time I see it I think it says, “Bite Me.” It’s funny when a word elicits the opposite reaction to its intention.
- Nice and helpful don’t always go together. The reception desk was very nice about my request to purchase an internet access card. Took my room number down, said they’d charge it to the room and everything. Didn’t understand my concern when I couldn’t input her friendly attitude into the user name and password field.
- The room is small-ish, but nice. The bathroom is modern and attractive, though it’s a tiny corner shower stall and Joe has resorted to turning off the water to lather, then turning back on to rinse. Strangely, there was only 1 full-sized towel in the room, so for my shower after the flight, I dried off with a hand towel and the provided bathrobe. (I managed to successfully ask for a 2nd larger towel in mime today from the housekeeping staff.)
- The breakfast spread today was huge! Almost too much selection so I’m sure I missed something good because I couldn’t try everything. They even had lemon slices out for tea. We will not go hungry here.
- The elevators require you to use your room card before you can press the button for a floor number. That’s not so unusual. What *is* unusual is that the elevator immediately starts moving once the doors close, whether or not you’ve selected a floor. So, if you got on an elevator going up, it will take you up. It just won’t necessarily let you *out.* Since our room is only on the 4th floor, I don’t think we’ve once successfully swiped our card and pressed 4 before the elevator reached the 4th floor. (Breakfast room is on 2.) So, we usually find ourselves high up before we can actually indicate our preference to be let off on the 4th floor.
That’s about it for now!