I met up with Pavlos again at the Dream Hostel in the Olympic district in Kiev. He had been staying therefor
a night already when things had gone sour with his last host (read
about his adventure here) and he was unable to find another
couchsurfer. I had one last night with Andrew before I moved on to
the Chillout Hostel, which was right around the corner from the
Dream. Andrew had to go back to Slovakia to handle some private
affairs, so I wanted to get out of his hair so he could spend a
couple of days left with Olya. The Chillout Hostel was run by a
friendly Polish girl named Joanna, who for some reason decided to
leave Poland for Kiev. Here she met a Brazilian guy who owns another
hostel in town, fell in love and now they're making plans to go
across the world in an old, beat up Soviet utility van. From
Ukraine, they plan to cross Russia, go to Central Asia, drive around
there and then on to China. The hostel itself was very relaxed and
with a hippy feel. There was a common room with purple and yellow
walls, couches covered in jungle drapes and a shisha free to smoke
(pending availability of shisha). There were two six bed dorms, one
bathroom, a toilet, a kitchen, internet and a computer. It felt more
like someone's house than a hostel.
The Dream Hostel definitely fell more like a real hostel. The interior opened immediately to the common room, with a high decorated ceiling. The white walls gave it a somewhat clean, corporate look. There were six beds to each room and two toilets and two bathrooms. The staff was friendly enough and wanted to know what I liked about the Chillout, grilling me while Pavlos napped on the bed. There we met some French and other people. We decided we'd all go meet at Palata No. 6 and then move on to a Georgian restaurant. I had been to Palata No. 6 once before. Alex and Katsia took Pavlos and I there one night while we were staying. The place started, and still is, a student bar – priced appropriately and with a fun theme and childish reserve. The place was decorated to be like an old Soviet hospital - it was named after a psychiatric ward from a Chekhov story - with white painted brick walls, and the waitresses and bartenders were dressed like nurses and doctors. They gave vodka shots in test tubes and, for the more adventurous, giant syringes full of liquor served straight into the mouth.
Slava, the girl I had met at the crazy guy's house, also joined us at the bar, completing our circle with two Ukrainians (Pavlos had brought his date from the other night), a French guy, an Italian guy and a few other stragglers from the hostel. Palata No. 6 was full, which left us standing at the bar, huddled around, trying to stay out of the way of the servers. It's always best to reserve tables there ahead of time. Eventually, we all were hungry, so we went on to the only Georgian restaurant I could find out about, which was back in the Olympic district.
The place was very modernist in decoration, looking like it had been designed by an interior decorator obsessed with the badly shaped furniture of the future. The only thing Georgian about it was on one wall, where there was a lot of random Georgian words painted on like something from a Starbucks in Tbilisi (which doesn't exist yet). I didn't bother reading what they said, since I imagined they were something like “relaxing”, “release” and “restoration”, or other words you'd find on a Starbucks paper coffee cup. I turned to the server and said in Georgian, “Hello, how are you? Table for 6 please.” The waiter looked confused. “Oh, you're not Georgian?”
He continued to look confused.
I switched to Russian. “Table for 6?” I thought that, since we looked out finding a Georgian family owned place in Ljubljana, we should have been able to find a place in a country that actually was once part of the same country as Georgia! But we did not find such luck.
I was in charge of ordering, since I was the one most acquainted with Georgian food. I went into Georgian mode – order what might be a little too much for everyone and everyone would be happy, besides, Georgian food was cheap! At least in Georgia, it was. I ordered khinkali, kubdari, xatchapuri and salad. What came out were all vague interpretations of the actual Georgian food, none of it being as good as the actual Georgian food that they were interpreting (who's heard of a basic Georgian salad with lettuce?). The only thing that was redeeming was the khinkali, which did justice to the dumplings I've had in Georgia. What didn't do justice to it was the price. In Georgia, khinkali costs about 30 cents each. When Pavlos called me over from the servers' area, I knew there had to be a problem with something.
“Does this look right to you?” he said, showing me the bill.
“That looks like a lot of money to me,” I replied. We looked back at the menu. Each khinkali had cost about 3 euros. We had ordered 20 khinkali for the lot of us. I threw up just a little in my mouth. That came out to be the most expensive and least satisfying Georgian food I'd ever had.
The Dream Hostel definitely fell more like a real hostel. The interior opened immediately to the common room, with a high decorated ceiling. The white walls gave it a somewhat clean, corporate look. There were six beds to each room and two toilets and two bathrooms. The staff was friendly enough and wanted to know what I liked about the Chillout, grilling me while Pavlos napped on the bed. There we met some French and other people. We decided we'd all go meet at Palata No. 6 and then move on to a Georgian restaurant. I had been to Palata No. 6 once before. Alex and Katsia took Pavlos and I there one night while we were staying. The place started, and still is, a student bar – priced appropriately and with a fun theme and childish reserve. The place was decorated to be like an old Soviet hospital - it was named after a psychiatric ward from a Chekhov story - with white painted brick walls, and the waitresses and bartenders were dressed like nurses and doctors. They gave vodka shots in test tubes and, for the more adventurous, giant syringes full of liquor served straight into the mouth.
Slava, the girl I had met at the crazy guy's house, also joined us at the bar, completing our circle with two Ukrainians (Pavlos had brought his date from the other night), a French guy, an Italian guy and a few other stragglers from the hostel. Palata No. 6 was full, which left us standing at the bar, huddled around, trying to stay out of the way of the servers. It's always best to reserve tables there ahead of time. Eventually, we all were hungry, so we went on to the only Georgian restaurant I could find out about, which was back in the Olympic district.
The place was very modernist in decoration, looking like it had been designed by an interior decorator obsessed with the badly shaped furniture of the future. The only thing Georgian about it was on one wall, where there was a lot of random Georgian words painted on like something from a Starbucks in Tbilisi (which doesn't exist yet). I didn't bother reading what they said, since I imagined they were something like “relaxing”, “release” and “restoration”, or other words you'd find on a Starbucks paper coffee cup. I turned to the server and said in Georgian, “Hello, how are you? Table for 6 please.” The waiter looked confused. “Oh, you're not Georgian?”
He continued to look confused.
I switched to Russian. “Table for 6?” I thought that, since we looked out finding a Georgian family owned place in Ljubljana, we should have been able to find a place in a country that actually was once part of the same country as Georgia! But we did not find such luck.
I was in charge of ordering, since I was the one most acquainted with Georgian food. I went into Georgian mode – order what might be a little too much for everyone and everyone would be happy, besides, Georgian food was cheap! At least in Georgia, it was. I ordered khinkali, kubdari, xatchapuri and salad. What came out were all vague interpretations of the actual Georgian food, none of it being as good as the actual Georgian food that they were interpreting (who's heard of a basic Georgian salad with lettuce?). The only thing that was redeeming was the khinkali, which did justice to the dumplings I've had in Georgia. What didn't do justice to it was the price. In Georgia, khinkali costs about 30 cents each. When Pavlos called me over from the servers' area, I knew there had to be a problem with something.
“Does this look right to you?” he said, showing me the bill.
“That looks like a lot of money to me,” I replied. We looked back at the menu. Each khinkali had cost about 3 euros. We had ordered 20 khinkali for the lot of us. I threw up just a little in my mouth. That came out to be the most expensive and least satisfying Georgian food I'd ever had.
0 comments:
Post a Comment