This week I’m in the capital of Ukraine!

Exploring the sights of Kyiv and the history of the well known disaster – Chernobyl.

Its been quite the eye opener and I have plenty to write about that’s for sure.

How does Ukraine compare to everywhere else?

This is the first place I have been where I have felt that I’m genuinely not in Europe! There are several times here where I have felt like I’m in South East Asia.

Suprisingly I’ve been to the Baltics before with Latvia and Estonia but Kiev seems quite different.

There are many temples and palaces dotted around the city. Similar to the smurf church I saw in Bratislava and others dotted around Europe but definitely close to those I’ve seen in Thailand.

But why Asia? Well to begin with, the language is near impossible for us to grasp. The letters aren’t even the same as the English alphabet. We’ve not managed to learn a single word yet and nothing is written in English. It makes it far more of a cultural experience though for sure.

The country is sadly very poor. So people living on the streets and in the train stations is really common here. Children running around bare foot, I’ve only really seen that in Asia before normally because of the hot weather. Here the weather has been extremely cold and wet! There are also countless stray dogs everywhere we turn.

Whilst we are bordering Russia and probably as far East as we could go before we do enter another continent it’s interesting to see we are still actually infact in an EU country.

The difference between our reality and theirs is just so significant and a real eye opener.

Ukraine has been a cultural experience for both of us and over the next few days I’ll be blogging about my time here.

What did you think of Ukraine?