Between Blue and Yellow - Kiev

[fern]

I found that strangely arousing

[LSyd]

awesome thread and photos. i need to go there.

Originally Posted by okayyou

The most popular place I found was called Vodka Bar. Lame name and cheezy music but I've never seen more attractive women in one place.

i went to a club like that in Birmingham, England, full of Indians and Eastern Europeans.

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[DLLB]

Wonderful thread and great pictures. Some very nice looking women :-)

[diskojoe]

Nice shots. I love all of the people shots. Very animated bunch in Kiev.

[giovanni sasso]

UKRAINE IS GAME TO YOU???

ohhh ... so THIS is where all those web sites find all those girls. noted. i don't know how anyone could view a thread like this and still think black & white photography is interesting. there's just so much color to go around, why waste it? you weren't kidding about the blue & yellow. they're very serious about their ukraine.

lots of great rain shots in this, in addition to all the usual stuff i like. excellent stuff, as expected.

[Private Dick]

I'm really into the built form of Kiev.

And by built form I mean hot women.

[mello]

Doesn't seem like the poverty is too bad based on the photos in this thread. A lot of the highrise residential actually seem to be of very good quality. Better than what I saw in Tbilisi and what you have shown in your other threads. The fit and finish looks solid and they have a touch of class. Thanks for sharing these.

[pallo]

I did some research into Kiev the other day and apparently it's a fairly wealthy city with low unemployment figures

[CentralGrad258]

Thanks for posting a thread on my hometown, sorry to hear about you having a little bit of a rough time. I would imagine that Kiev is pretty rough to get your bearings as a non-native speaker, very, very few people speak English. As far as the architecture, the older part of town is quite beautiful with Kreshchatic, Andreevski Spusk (which I see you spent some time on) and Podol. The parts of the city where the majority of the residents live (novostroyki), are pretty much as drab and depressing as you would imagine. Did you get a chance to grab some food at Puzata Hata? My favorite fast food chain of all time

@pallo: By Ukrainian standards, Kiev is wealthy and has low unemployment. By western standards....well, not so much. Extreme wealth inequality (don't think I saw so many supercars even in LA), the middle class is barely hanging on.

[ifeeldope9779]

way more colorful than i expected. as always great work.

[Okayyou]

xzmattxz - unfortunately the camera stays at home when I head out at night. I've missed some great shots because I didn't have my camera with me. But travel isn't all about photography, gotta have fun too.

wisla - I was pretty perplexed seeing all the thin, tall, gorgeous women on some mulleted, short, fat man's arm. Walking wallet syndrome.

The pope - that band was playing in a park for about 5 people. No idea what they were doing but I found the picture of the guy kinda odd.

The Dirt - The first time it was for drinking beer in public. I'm still not sure if that is forbidden. I was with a Turkish guy I met and since normal pubs are virtually nonexistent, we decided to go to the main square where we found a beer cart selling draft beers. Plenty of locals were drinking their beer in public so we thought when in Rome. I guess we either did it wrong or just looked like tourists that needed to be harassed.

The second time I was just walking and made eye contact with a cop. He saw an opportunity and demanded to see my passport, which was back at the hostel. He threatened to take me to the police station, looking for a bribe. I managed to talk my way out of the situation without paying.

CentralGrad258 - I saw some pretty run down areas when I came in from the airport. Very soviet and gray looking apartment blocks.

Thanks for all the comments. I'll wrap up the Euro tour with my next thread.

[CassGilbert]

Great quality of pictures! I've lived in Kyiv and half of the city consists of beautiful historical architecture, then about a quarter of the housing stock are grey soviet commieblocks, while another quarter are new Ukrainian apartment complexes which are pretty good and better than a lot of areas here in NYC.

Originally Posted by R@ptor

Fantastic photos!

I'm really surprised by the amount of beautifully restored old buildings. In Western Europe Kiev is usually perceived as a city full of commieblocks, hot women and corrupt police. And while the later two are certainly true it looks like people really need to reconsider the first one.

In our times we don't have to rely on rumors and stereotypes, just go to Google Streetview and check out the streets in Kyiv. For instance: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kyiv&h...22.53,,0,-9.61

Here's an interesting contrast from the outskirts. On one side you have a new Ukrainian apartment complex, which looks great, but turn around and you see Soviet commieblocks:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Kyiv&h...,0,-20.82&z=16

You can also check out Lviv and some other major cities in Ukraine this way.

[Evergrey]

Brilliant stuff.