Bless Kiev. I was there for two days around Halloween, 2012. Kiev was a respite from St. Pete. Kiev was warmth, dryness, friendliness.



...Cute dudes, hills, greenery. 9 degrees in latitude was two months in back in time, to fall. It was refreshing, a glimpse into a world of possibility.*



*Total bullshit, btw. The kind of delusional bullshit that seizes my mind when I travel to somewhere warm and dry from somewhere cold and rainy. I also felt pretty high on life during my little San Francisco 'time out' from Oregon's shit rain.




We got herded around in these foreigner clumps...








I love the smell of ancience and wax and solemnity in orthodox cathedrals.




Once the tour guides let us free I set off solo into the warm** Kiev night with my camera, shitty tiny tripod, and cable release. I somehow unscrewed and lost the little cap from my cable release when I was at the ballet in September, and since then I've just had to let the metal post dig into my thumb for as long as I have the shutter open.

**By warm I mean not completely freezing.






God this city was beautiful. I'd never before thought about how much character hills add to a place. Add a river running through it and wow. Also I like how that tree seems to be at the perfect distance for the infinity focus of my 20mm.




We're on such a packed schedule with these trips and everyone is so exhausted that I think only the most driven kids actually learn anything on the tours they drag us through. Because of this I slept through much of the Kiev bus tour and so missed any explanation there may have been as to why there is a Soviet-looking monument framed by a giant artificial rainbow and flanked by bumper cars.




Bumper cars.