I arrived on the early morning train in Kyiv and had a few hours to kill before I had to be at the airport. Since I was only a few metro stops away from Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) I wanted to go check out things with the revolution. Yes...many Ukrainians are using the revolution word to describe the protests here since people were killed.
It was still dark when I left the Khreschatyk metro station at 6 AM and I was immediately hit with the smell of the many wood fires from the tent city...as well as a very strong wind in my face at minus 21C. I was struck at how peaceful and yet how eerie this scene was before me. It looked exactly like what we saw from the M*A*S*H 4077th on TV, the same kind of tents and everything. I headed down the street towards the square. My face and hands quickly got numb and I wanted to get out of the cold for a few minutes but nothing was open yet. Since it was too dark to get good photos any ways I decided to head back to the train station where there is a 24 hour McDonald's to get a hot coffee and wait for daylight.
At McDonald's I met a young man who was also killing time. He was waiting for his train to the Carpathians for a ski trip. It turned out that he was from Krivoy Rog and we have a mutual friend, so we got to talking and comparing notes while I waited for the sun to come up. When it was time to go back to the square he wanted to come along too and off we went.
This time at the square the wind had now died down but it was still very cold. It was surreal to walk through this very different world...right in the middle of downtown Kyiv. I will try to let the photos speak for themselves.
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