We Felt Very Welcomed

Unfortunately the Dutch team is out of the EK. I never thought the Orange Party would be much better than the game, the feeling of “all for one” was great and the Ukrainians were also all wearing Orange on the day Holland played Portugal. Now that the Dutch team is out we continued to support the Ukrainian team.

We went to Kiev – the capital of Ukraine - after driving for 4 hours in a very modern Express Train. We were fetched     by Oleh and Sash who loved history

 and gave us a guided tour and told us some history of Kiev. The people we were staying with were Alina, Oleh, their daughter Sofia of 4 years old and Salma (the dog). They made us feel very welcome. Mom & Dad slept on the couch. I slept in Sofia’s bed and Steven slept the first night with me because when we wanted to pump up the mattress we found a pair wedding shoes of Alina’s mother in the box. It was late but we all had to laugh over that!

Their house was very central. Right side Kindergarten, left side shopping mall and straight metro station/subway. The fridge was full. Alina bought breakfast, yoghurts, berries, milk and ice cream......YUMM!!!  

Alina was born in Uzbekistan. She studied in Odessa and then moved to Kyiv. For the Euro 2012 the news reported  that the hotels were over expensive for the tourists and a lot of private people were renting their place out for high prices. Alina thought it was unfair for the tourists to come to see the soccer and Ukraine and pay so much money. Therefore Alina and her family wanted to be nice to the tourists and offer free accommodation.

We first wanted to stay for 2 days in Kiev, but because of the Swedish football matches the train was fully booked. Alina took 2 days off from work to be with us and to show us Kiev. We saw the old center with many beautiful old buildings, the Olympic stadium which was re-built and where the final of Euro 2012 will be played. Some streets were very old with round stones and there were many many churches with golden domes. We went to visit 2 museums about history. One was about the history of Ukraine/Kiev and the other was a military museum about the WWII (1940-1945) and a exhibition about soldiers in Afghanistan. Some things we had seen before because Ukraine was one of the Republics of the Soviet Union and this history was also in the museum in Moscow. In 1991 Ukraine was no longer part of the USSR but became its own country. 

The weather in Kyiv was NOT cold..... NOT....warm...BUT HOT!!!!!!!!! EXTREMELY HOT and we were happy to be back 'home' again. We fetched Sofia from kindergarten and took Salma for a walk. We always played with Sofia, singing, guitar, playing shop-shop, dolls etc. We also cooked a Dutch meal for them and we bought real Beluga caviar to try how it tastes. Caviar is eggs from the beluga sturgeon (a fish) which is found in only a few places - one of them is in the Black Sea in the south of Ukraine. In Ukraine it is eaten just with white bread and butter and some people eat it on toast with cream cheese , egg and onion. Later I read about caviar on internet and saw that the fish is endangered,although it tasted nice I will not eat the caviar again.

The home stay was very cozy and Alina and Oleh were very kind and helpful. When we left to go to the train station Oleh came with us to help with our suitcases and find the right platform for the train to Poland. 

Ukraine was great and we had a wonderful time.! Thank you Alina, Oleh, Sofia and Salma. We hope one day we can show you how beautiful South Africa is.

Loes