Dec. 21 – Kyiv, Ukraine

“Travel”, it is said, “is glamorous in retrospect.” A warm train on a snowy night. A border crossing into a new country. Arrival in a grand city as it awakes. Yes, there is glamor to all that. But let’s take a peek behind the scenes, without the makeup.

The train to Kiev departed at 19:10 but I arrived two hours early, on purpose. Not because the metal chairs were particularly comfortable, or because there was much to see or do at Moscow’s Kievskaya station. But because circulating on the Metro with my luggage would not have been possible in the commuter crush. In the gloomy, echoing waiting hall, I read as pigeons pecked a bread crust, a baby wailed behind me, and another passenger cracked open a beer.

The train was full even in second class. When I arrived, a slim platinum-blonde woman was already in the compartment. Her bulky black luggage claimed the space under both our seats. Natalya, her name was, might have been my age. She showed me photos on her cell phone of her family including her teenage son wearing a Wehrmacht uniform (an actor I think she explained), and her Jack Russell puppy. Over the course of the journey, we did the usual “No Russian No English” pantomime-cartoon-life-story. She drew a sketch of her town in western Ukraine in my notebook. Middle-aged Viktor and Nikolai came in just after I did. The gist of my communication with them was:

“Canada.”
“Hockey!”
“Gretzky!”
“Tretiak!”

All overnight trains come with a mattress for each bench, a pillow, fresh linens, and a thicker blanket. It was already night when we left so we set up our beds right away. It’s an interesting form of anonymous intimacy, getting ready for bed in the company of strangers. It works, which is good because there’s not much choice anyway. Nikolai and Viktor clambered into their assigned top bunks as we rolled out of Moscow.

There’s nothing stiller than the second after a train stops in the middle of the night. It was snowing heavily at the Russian side of the border. Outside on the platform, vendors moved ponderously with large stuffed toys. Natalya explained that the border town had a factory specializing in these items. The Russian passport check went hassle-free.

The Ukrainian border crossing was at two in the morning, a time at which few good things happen. I knew that Canadians required no visa to enter Ukraine, but I was still apprehensive. On the document I had to fill in, I had left a lot blank, which made me feel like a transgressor. And indeed, I was asked into the corridor for further questions about my plans (“finding hotel in Kyiv”, “staying in the country only two days”). After conferring with her supervisor, the young border agent stamped my documents, wished me luck, and I was officially in the Ukraine.

The train rolled into Kyiv’s passenger station at 5:30, and we left Natalya, who was continuing westwards, sleeping in her bunk. I ignored the taxi touts and moved toward the city. A tourist at a railway station, immobile and looking around, attracts too much attention. Fully loaded, trundling my suitcase behind me, I headed up a broad boulevard in the pre-dawn darkness. An occasional car would pass but otherwise the only sound was the alarmingly loud “clackclackclack” of my suitcase’s wheels.

I had sketched the route to the hotel I had in mind – 2km away. My path took me onto Kyiv’s main commercial boulevard, all luxury shops, banks and hotels. I arrived, sweating, and got a room, though check-in was not for five more hours. I left my bags, sat in the lobby to let my sweat-damp pullover dry. Wishing for sleep and shower, I instead unfolded the tourist map to plan my day.