Kiev is big and loud and hot and crowded and I like it. So far it mostly feels a lot like Moscow but also a little like New York, and I like that too. The subway stations are so deep that if you walk on the escalator you'll tire yourself out, even going down, but if you don't walk you'll get bored because the ride is so long. They play music anyway, and sometimes the escalator music sounds like Tetris music (which makes sense because Tetris is Russian, blah, blah). The river is good to walk by; there's a sort of dilapidated walkway with good graffiti and a few stray dogs where couples make out and trash piles up and arty types brood and old fishermen fish and drink vodka. And I had a really good Georgian lunch of something with beans and something with cheese and something with eggplant and it was spicy and flavorful and good. (Even before I lived in New York and had friends who read food blogs, I knew that Georgian food is basically the best thing ever.) And, even though it meant waking up at 5am, I was able to get here not on an overnight train. So far, not bad.
It hadn't really occurred to me to miss being in a big city, but it feels good now that I am. (Incidentally, someone told me that no one really knows how big Kiev is (the internet seems to agree on about 2.6 million people) and that population estimates are based on bread sales. I can't find anything confirming that claim, though.)
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