the plight of bored scientists

During the last day of the year, I went off with my new Canadian friends to see more sights. I was finding myself overcoming my inherent American racism against Canadians – especially against French Canadians, a combination that's about as tolerable to an American as mayonnaise on French fries – the more time I spent around Leon and Marc. We took the metro and got off at the Dnipro station, which is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The station is situated along the Dnieper river, with only a gloomy view of the array of towers lined up on the Left Bank. On the city side, there's just a big hill that blocks the view of anything, so the walking traveler can't be sure about where he is. We went down the street and soon found ourselves at the entrance of the Pechersk-Lavra complex, a complex of hundreds of golden topped religious structures sprawled on the southern side of old city of Kiev. The complex started as a series of cave monasteries which served as a Byzantine mission to the Kievan Rus some 1000 years ago. The monks were so busy missioning that they didn't have time to build homes, so they shacked up in some holes in the ground instead, thus birthing Pechersk-Lavra. 

the main monastery complex

At the Pechersk-Lavra monastery, we also found the Museum of Miniature Art, which is where religious girls can bring their non-religious boyfriends when they want to go make prayers at the Cathedral of the Dormition. To get on the grounds where both the museum and the cathedral are located, you have to go through the main gates, paying a 60 grivna price for entry. We were at the cashier's box, when I leaned in to ask how to get to the museum.

“It is that way,” the lady told me in short, heavy tones. We looked down the street at where she might have been pointing.

“Thanks,” I said. “I think she means inside the complex?” I said to the Canadians. We walked up to the front gates.

“Tickets,” the guy guarding the gate said.

“You speak English?” I asked in Russian.

“Yes, some,” he said back in English.

Since I didn't want to get more confused, I switched to English. “Where trying to go to the miniature museum. Where is it?”

“You have to get a ticket back at the casa to enter here, and then it's inside and you have to get a ticket at that door.”

“Right.”

the entrance to the monastery

We went back to the cashier's box and asked for the tickets. I wondered to the Canadians, “Why didn't the lady tell us we'd have to buy tickets from her?” Another classic example of really helpful, post-Soviet customer service. We bought the tickets and entered the monastery grounds. It took us about thirty minutes to find the actual museum, since there were no sign posts guiding the way and we had missed the map that was right at the entrance of the monastery grounds. The museum contained about one dozen nano-sculptures, figurines of books, insects and people that were mostly no larger than a hair, to be viewed with microscopes that were attached to a glass in front of the sculptures. The nano-sculptures were clear results of bored, overpaid Socialist scientists who had nothing to do but to shrink books and statues with their top secret Soviet shrink-ray technology, like the kind they used to film “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (it was also based off a true story). 

From there, we went on to the WWII museum, passing by a large display of artillery cannons and tanks. On top of one the tanks, two young ladies were playing and giggling and asked Leon to take a picture of them. Meanwhile, a nearby guard was approaching, and telling the girls to get off the tanks, but he was being ignored. He threw his hands up and then put them down at his side, resigned. Something told me the girls weren't the first ones to play on the tanks. While Leon was taking a picture of them, I asked Marc, “Was that a 'ca vas' I heard them say? I think maybe they're speaking French.”

They were speaking French. The two girls had met at studying at a university in Montreal. One girl, a short, brown haired Spaniard, was visiting the other girl, a short, blond haired Ukrainian girl, for the duration of their vacation, before they had to resume their studies in Canada. We walked with them to the Holodomor Memorial (Holodomor is what the Ukrainians called the collectivization campaign enforced under Stalin, forcedly starving to death over 7 million Ukrainian, Russians, Kazakhs and others) and to the Eternal Flame, the WWII monument in every Soviet capital, where a flame has been burning since the end of the war, where afterwards the Ukrainian girl, Masha, showed us her favorite bridge in Ukraine. 

The Eternal Flame and the Holodomor Memorial

“I can see why this is your favorite bridge,” I said, referring to the footbridge that crossed over a road. “I mean, the way the steel bars gleam in the night light and the metal construction beam just sits there, with some asphalt on top. It's beautiful! A real architectural wonder! Like a wood log being tossed over a stream.” She glowered at me. I assumed she must have been referring to the view and not the bridge itself.

We walked on from Mariinsky Palace to Maidan Square, where we looked out at all the lights and preparations for the oncoming New Years celebrations. There was the giant, blue stage next to the pyramid-like New Years tree that towered over it. People were already beginning to gather, as were people in costumes of old Soviet cartoons like Cheburashka. The costumed people often attacked the regular people, trying to get them to pay to get their pictures taken with them, though some times just accosting girls with random hugs and, in the case of one bat-monster with Masha, bites. Eventually we left the girls and made way for the New Years celebration which the hostel was hosting. 

Independence Square, ready for New Year's