Part 3: Kiev

Got off the train at Kiev this morning with about 11 hours before the next instalment. I'm currently sitting in the VIP lounge at Kiev station an hour before my train is due to leave. By the way VIP means you have to pay 36 Hryvnia - about £2.80. There must be about 2,000 people in the station and they could all fit in here, the room's that big - instead I'm sitting in here with about 10 other people, drinking £1 beer from the kiosk outside (it's Чернігівське. Very moreish) and charging up everything I have ...



Kiev initially started out to be very scary - the bit outside the main railway station on a Sunday morning resembled a Russian mafia street market, but once I got away and walked aimlessly towards the town I found it to be a great place. The main drag is Khreshchatyk Street and, presumably because they heard I was coming, was completely closed to traffic. There were a lot of people milling around, bands playing, people dressed up, you know, weird city stuff. These photos were taken before all that went on.





I headed straight over to the area around Maidan Nezalezhnosti - Independence Square, which was very picturesque.









This was my first time in Ukraine and also, depressingly for someone who likes travelling and has notched up about 40 countries, the furthest east I've been (beating a family holiday at Rhodes when I was in my teens). And I'm only one third of the way east to where I'll be this time next week. I liked this monument which showed the exact longitude and distance from various places!





I think this last one is Brian Blessed out of Flash Gordon.



Further on and round the corner and you'll find Dynamo Kiev's ground practically in the city centre, which is unusual these days.







And then just behind another building, the People's Friendship Arch and fantastic views over the River Dnieper.













I also got to see my first statue of Lenin too. And this one had wifi! Or maybe I was getting the wifi from somewhere else, although the provision of free wifi to the oppressed masses must be in Das Kapital somewhere.



Do you drink English? I hope not.



Can you really get registration numbers like this?



It was a big choice as to who to headline this one but the Kaiser Chiefs narrowly pipped Goran Bregovic's wedding and funeral band. (I will be searching for that on Spotify as soon as I get home)



I was beginning to feel a little bit like this.



At least they're honest ...



Going to try and find my train now, wish me luck ...

Part 2: Warsaw

I managed to have four hours in Warsaw before the next train. I've only been to Poland once, to Krakow a few years ago and I was expecting another Brothers-Grimm style old gothic fairytale of a town. I didn't expect to see a place with so many skyscrapers, so much open space between the skyscrapers (you don't get that in New York) and so few old buildings. The last part is obviously a direct consequence of the way the city suffered in World War II and it takes something like to realise how much damage they would have received, because so much of the city has started from scratch. I walked around for a bit from Centralna station up to Ogrod Saski park where some kind of military parade was being held. *Now* I'm in the former Soviet bloc!







The modern parts of the city at least showed a lot of imagination.





There was a lot of building work for the Warsaw metro. If I was a UKIP-supporting ignoramus I'd say something about all the Polish builders "being over here" but they clearly aren't.



I think I found the world's poshest toilet too. Is loo a word understood in Poland?



No idea how to pronounce this. "Naleczow" is probably a long way wide of the mark.



Tonight's train journey was going to be a bit more of a challenge - about 17 hours on the train, in a 3-berth again measuring 6 feet by 4 feet. This is the longest single journey I've had and will be the longest until Tuesday night when I do my 100-hour marathon. As it turned out I was sharing this time with a married couple, Vitaly and Olga (can you come up with a more Russian pairing than that?) who had been visiting friends in Berlin and decided to get the train back to Sevastopol in the Crimea. Luckily they spoke English (they were Russian speakers themselves, not Ukrainian) and helped me out with a few things, especially with the left luggage lockers at Kiev which were unnecessarily complicated. Vitaly was also a football fan, supporting his local team, FK Sevastopol, so I was heartened not to be talking with a glory-hunter. He knew a lot about West Ham too. The downside was that there was no restaurant car on the train, so the only thing available to drink was tea without milk, which was surprisingly nice and cheap (about 40p a cup). In a proper Eastern European cup too!









I didn't sleep very well on the train - the Ukrainian customs and border police came on board at around 10.40pm and then we spent three hours through customs checks (they went through and spoke to everyone, this isn't Western Europe) and then we had a fun couple of hours while the train changed bogies in the fitting shed so that we could carry on along the old USSR railway gauges.

Part 1: Billericay to Cologne

This is basically a commute - I am stuck in trains with lots of other people, which I realise is exactly what I'm doing by catching train to Mongolia, but it doesn't make you feel like the holiday has started yet. I wondered what I was letting myself in for when I sat next to a guy in his late 20s who spent the whole journey from London to Lille drawing on his arm in blue biro.

I didn't get to see anything of Brussels but I had two hours between trains in Cologne, which seemed to last all day. I had plenty of time to enjoy the warm evening and walk round the Opera House, down to the Rhine and over to the Cathedral, which would have been really exciting if I hadn't been there before (but it was still quite exciting). I had plenty of time to try out Dom beer and also currywurst mit pommes - it was just like being at a farmers' market.



Currywurst



Cologne station



River Rhine



Cologne Cathedral



Cologne station

When the train arrived for Warsaw at around half past ten at night, I had a big reality check. I wasn't expecting the Ritz but when I saw my cabin, I really was wondering what I was doing. the room measures about 6 feet by 4 feet and has three beds on one wall - and my ticket was for the middle bed.



However on leaving Cologne I soon realised that I was on my own in the room, which wasn't too bad, but I had to sleep in the middle in case anyone got on the train in the night. They didn't but I then I had the worst night's sleep ever - a combination of me worrying if I was going to fall out of the bunk and me being extremely dehydrated since I had neglected to drink any water for the whole day and took all my liquids in the form of a few beers. I was drowsing through a number of train stops too but couldn't get up to see where we were, but at 5am I decided to look out of the window and saw that we were in Berlin. Not just any Berlin, East Berlin. Very James Bond, or at least David Bowie.



Things picked up in the morning when I wandered down to the restaurant car and had a delicious jajecznica wiejska for less than four quid - scrambled eggs with chives, chillies and paprika. You don't get that with British Rail.

From Billericay to Ulaanbaatar

I love travelling and have always had the Trans-Siberian Express high on my Things To Do list. However I'm not very keen on trains - I think I travelled no more than 2 hours on a train in the whole of 2012. However I have decided to do it anyway and due to some foolhardy reading I've also decided to do the whole thing by train from my home station of Billericay, because apparently it's cheating if you fly to Moscow and start it there.



The route I decided to take was the Trans-Mongolian train 004 from Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, rather than the proper Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok. This involved me changing trains at London (obviously), Brussels, Cologne, Warsaw and Kiev before I get to Moscow, with increasing amounts of time (although no more than a few hours usually) to spend in each one. Decided to go in May 2013 too, as I thought I might see a bit of spring.

Amazing Printer Paper Drop

It's stuff like this that stops me getting any work done.

Rubbish phone company. Great ad music.

Reading some restaurant reviews

Let's try this pla(i)ce ...

"The fish was stale! I got poisoned. Don't order meat also...  2 stars"

Wonders what would have to happen to get 1 star.

Going to be in Kiev for 11 hours without a roof over my head so might actually give it a go.

Oh yes I remember now, I liked this page on Facebook

I can't speak a word of Russian.

(Actually that's not true, I can say yes, no, please, thank you and beer)

Just 9 days to go now and I've heard that I have got my Russian and Mongolian visas, getting excited now!

I'm not sure which one I like best

This one

or

I really must start updating this again

Joe Strummer

Can't believe it's been nine years to the day since Joe Strummer died. I was lucky to see him live once - absolutely brilliant. I bought Combat Rock when I was 13 and I think I played it every day for a year.

Benton! Benton! BENTON!

This is definitely today's flavour of the month, but will we still love Benton tomorrow?

Art Brut! Top Of The Pops! But In German!

Sometimes this country isn't all it's cracked up to be.



Last night, while BBC and ITV were showing Strictly Come Dancing and X Factor, ZDF in Germany were broadcasting a live performance of Art Brut, The Blood Arm and dEUS in a warehouse in Berlin.

I watched neither - I dug out my Hot Fuzz DVD instead - but was able to watch it in its entirety this morning. Not knowing how long it was going to be on the ZDF website for, I also managed to, er, find a copy, which you can download below:

Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6

It's almost a gigabyte and it's in ASF which plays perfectly well on Windows Media Player for me, hope it does for you too if you go to the trouble of downloading.

PS Google Translate seems to think that Top Of The Pops in German is Top Of The Pops, which is a little disappointing. I might have gone for Top Der Pops or something.

PPS And they played St Pauli. Natürlich.

A harrowing thought

When you were born, you were the:

3,562,698,075th person alive on Earth

77,619,580,996th person to have lived since history began

How did we calculate that?

Both numbers have been calculated using UN Population Division figures. The first is an estimate of how many people were alive on your date of birth. It is one possible value based on global population figures and estimates of growth rates over time. Data before 1950 is less accurate than figures after that date. The second number includes calculations based on the methodology of scholar Carl Haub, who estimated how many people had been alive since 50,000 B.C. His calculation has been amended by the UN to include additional points in time.

What's next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime and beyond, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours.

Longer lives: Working-age people like you will be supporting increasing numbers of older people during the next decades. By 2050, there will be just 2.2 people of working age supporting every person aged 65 or older in the developed world. In Europe, this will drop to just two.

Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us.

Did you know? The average family size globally has declined by half since 1950 - from five children in to the current 2.5.

352 people - the amount the population has grown while you've been on this site

Victor Lewis-Smith on QVC

Had no idea he was still going.

Where do people get these stamps from?

Just received this letter. The one on the left is a 26p first class stamp from 1998; the one on the right is a 9p first class stamp from 1978. It just amazes me to think that some people rummage through a drawer and find stamps that have been sitting there 33 years.

Unless they bought it in the Isle of Wight I suppose. The whole place is still in 1978.

Fight Like Apes and (2 of) the Frank and Walters - Walter's Trip

Still doing some random Youtubery while I contemplate getting this blog back on track.

I was pretty surprised to see this collaboration - after all no one covers the wonderful Frank and Walters, do they? Recorded by some guy (thanks, guy) on Thursday last week at the Bowery in Cork.