Україна, я тебе кохав i до цих пiр кохаю

This was at the Mendosa's house in Zaporizhye.


For the holidays I decided to visit Ukraine. My original plan was to visit Kyiv, Zaporizhye, and Sevastopol (actually, there really wasn't a plan, I bought the ticket to Ukraine a few days before I went with absolutely zero planning). For those readers who know, I served an LDS mission in Ukraine several years ago, so this was largely a trip to visit some of my old friends (for those of you who don't know, I was sent to Ukraine by a secret organization to infiltrate a local drug cartel...I became one of them- I fell in love with the business, and left my home and studies in Moscow to pursue my lifelong dream of smuggling things across various borders in fun new ways).

I ended up coming into Kyiv early on Friday morning (within minutes of missing my train) without a plan whatsoever of what I'd do except a phone number of a random friend of a friend and wikitravel's Kyiv page printed out. I bought a map, and wandered around all day. I ended up hitting most of the great tourist spots, and a few less known things. After wandering around all day Friday, I got in touch with the one contact I had, and she turned out to be super chill. We hung out that night, and she let me stay at her palace of a flat. Saturday night, some friends from Moscow showed up in Kyiv and we spent the day together, after which I hopped a train to Zaporizhye (within a few minutes of missing my train).

I got to Zaporizhye early Sunday morning, and slept the rest of the morning out in the train station with a hobo that I call Jean Luc. I spent my time getting in touch with old friends, dining on high class Ukrainian cuisine like borsh (definitely different from Russian borsh, it's a beat based soup with various ingredients depending on the chef), blini (sort of like crepes), salo (raw pig fat with the skin still attached...it's not as bad as it sounds), dumpling soup, and various mayonnaise salads (when did I start to love these so much!). Unfortunately, I started to get sick in Zaporizhye so I decided to cut my trip short and just came back to Moscow for New Years.

New Years in Moscow was so great. I was invited to a super artsy party (there was a poetry reading at one point, and it felt like everyone there except me had some sort of deep artistic talent) that ended up lasting until 6:00 am. Not my normal scene, but an interesting one to say the least. There were fireworks going off all night all over the city, and there was such a great energy in the air. When I finally did end up going home, there was a heavy snow falling...so appropriate for a New Year in Moscow.

Anyway, if you've made it this far you deserve a treat. Enjoy my Ukrainian crush, Ani Lorak singing I become the sea.