Adria's Site

Thankfully, I had decided to slack off by awarding myself a getaway weekend to Zaporizha. Going by way of Kyiv by flight (I was not stupid this time, no 27hour trian for me) I met up with Oresta, Danyo, Oleksi and Shubi for a Kyiv-Zaporizha night train. Despite previous experiences, Shubi was trusted with our travel arrangements. And while we did have reasonable train seating saved for us, the train left 2 hours before we had expected. Thankfully, Shubi pulled through and argued his way to refunds and later tickets for us. We ended up on platskart, with a bazaar arrangement of top bunk sleepers, and yes, the train was about half empty despite the difficulty we encountered upon booking....

Zaporizha was glorious. We spent about half a day touring the environmental wasteland known as Zaporizstal. This factory employs 2/3rds of the areas workers. So after shaving a few years off of our lives by subjecting ourselves to the areas airborne pollutants, we took to the cities night life.... mediocre restaurant service (although great food) and broken pool tables at an Irish pub. Our trip included a trip to Khortytsia (fortress), where the Cossacky had their base. Although it was still in development, it really was worth seeing. We were all quite impressed, sort of like Black Creek Pioneer Village, but to the theme of the Cossacks. While the majority of the group chickened out of this part of the Zap-experience, Danyo and I went to the circus. Yes, it had goats hoping over each other, cats jumping through rings of fire, dogs dressed like ballerinas and spinning, a bear riding a scooter. It was all that we could expect, and more.