Man Blog

This is Scott posting the ManBlog. I'm going to give the very practical down and dirty perspective from a guy.

Travel - for the .01% of you who are airline employees traveling to Ukraine, I was very nervous as we approached our travel day since we were non-reving. Give yourself a few days cushion. If possible, just ZED on DL's flight from JFK to Kiev. If not, you can go through London or Frankfurt. The connection in London is doable, at least on a Sunday if you arrive in London by 6:30 am.

Big point here - only carry-on. Do not let them check your bags. We were the last ones on the flight to NYC, and they talked us into checking our roller bags as the bins were really full. This almost was a huge mistake since the flight diverted to Newark. We were afraid that they wouldn't allow us to get the bags off in Newark if the flight resumed and went on to LGA.

Jetlag - I am a big fan of trying to pick a flight that arrives in Europe later than early morning. It is important to stay awake until a normal bedtime on your first night. Do not take a nap, you will pay a severe price at 3am if you take a nap.

When you arrive in Kiev, go straight to get the passport document and fill it out while standing in line. If you fill them out at the desks, you will find yourself in the back of the line. We saw that the line marked "for Ukrainian Citizens" was short, so we asked the super friendly person in military uniform if we could go to that line, and she nodded yes. It worked just fine. Fill out the Arrival and Departure side of the form and do one form for each person traveling. If you don't, they will send you to the back of the line.

After going through Passport control, fill out another form (one for each of you) for Customs. Be sure to declare if you are carrying more than the specified amount of cash. It was no big deal, and we breazed through. DO NOT PAY TO EXPEDITE.

Let's talk money. You can exchange cash all over the place. Be sure to bring only brand new bills, and I mean brand new from the mint. We have ours spread out among three pouches that we carry under our wasteline in our pants. We paid our driver $50 USD to get from the airport to our apartment and also for a trip to the grocery store. The apartment is $75 USD/night. We paid the driver and the apartment in US dollars. We spent about $25 (on credit card) at the grocery store, getting some Diet Coke, juice, bread, ham, cheese, 2 jugs of water, some yogurt, some pasta, and spaghetti sauce. We spent about $12 at a pastry shop for breakfast. We spent about $20 at a pizza place, where we also bought the lunch for our facilitator. We spent about $22 at TGI Friday's, but we only got 2 appetizers and 2 Diet Cokes. There is no need to tip here, like in most European cities. We exchanged about $400 USD, and will exchange again when we run low.

The apartment - We are very fortunate to have high speed Internet in our apartment. This apartment is great for what we need. It's not very nice, but it has a kitchen, a living room, a separate bedroom, and a bathroom with a washing machine. It is in the middle of the action downtown. You have to walk through a dark alleyway to get to the apartment. At night, it is a little scary to walk in the alley, but overall, we feel very safe. Bring some adaptors for electrical. We haven't had to use the converter yet. Hot water seems to be a big deal here. We have a water heater mounted on the wall in the kitchen. Apparently, this is quite a luxury.

Safety - central Kiev feels very safe, even with us carrying a large amount of cash on our person. Be sure to carry a cell phone whereever you go. The part that is sometimes intimidating is the inability to communicate. We got a little lost tonight, and it was very hard to ask for directions. Unlike places like France or Italy, the alphabet is different, so no words look familiar at all. Carry a map and memorize some landmarks. It would be a good idea to write down your address and carry it with you. Overall, we feel very safe here.

Food - The pizza was great. I have no idea where we were or the name of the restaurant. I thought there was only one McDonalds here, but we have seen at least 3. We are only a block from one, and it was the landmark that helped us get directions home. The golden arches are easily communicated in all languages. We found just about everything you could want at the grocery store, except peanut butter. We had dinner at TGI Friday's. It was great if you like a little smoke with your dinner. I'm sure the food will be different when we leave Kiev.

Technology - Like I said, we are fortunate to have Internet. We brought our Vonage V Phone, which is basically a USB Flash drive with an earpiece and microphone. We are able to have a local 817 area code phone number from our computer if we have high speed internet. So, we are able to call and be called just like we are at home, for free. It's very cool. Also, everybody talks about Skype. I'm sure it is great, but if you already have Yahoo Messenger or Windows Messenger or something similar, you don't need Skype. We brought a webcam and had a webcam chat with the boys using Yahoo Messenger. It is very easy to setup. We also brought a lot of DVD's. Our apartment does not have a DVD player, so we just use the computer. We had hoped to be able to watch streaming video from ABC, CBS, but they won't allow this to work if you are not in the U.S.

Clothes - Don't even try to look like a local. You just can't pull it off. If you are a guy and are over 140 pounds, you will look American. Also, you need to wear a lot of black and have a funky haircut. If you like football in any way, you can not possibly look like a local. Girls, don't even try it. These girls are very tall and very thin and wear some huge stiletto black boots and Euro skirts that are too short for Christian gals. You can't come close to looking like a Ukrainian woman, and you probably don't want to. So, everybody will instantly know you are American no matter how hard you try. Deal with it and be a proud American. Also, these people wear the same clothes over and over. There is no need to put on a fashion show here with multiple outfits. Three shirts and three pants will get you by just fine.

That's it for now. I'll try to post here and there with the practical ManBlog.
Scott