Trip to Kiev

In early September I went to Kiev with Brad to take my GMATs. Kiev, Moscow’s delinquent child, darting off on his own from time to time only to be pulled back by the wimpy threads of his little orange scarf.
On our way to the test center on Tuesday morning Brad and I got seperated on the subway. As I squeezed myself onto the crowded train Brad yelled to wait for him 4 stops down. So where to rendezvous? Lets pretend it’s an amusement park and you’re riding water slides with your friends. Do you wait for them at the bottom, right in front of where the cascading water empties into the pool? Of course not, unless you want to be kicked in the head! You wait for them near where the riders exit the pool, or in our case, at the top of the escalators leading towards the street. Brad did well on the GMAT’s, god knows how, because he miserably failed this test.
After our GMAT’s we celebrated over dinner at a Sushi restaurant near Independence Square. I was excited to see this focal point of the Orange Revolution, where in the Fall of 2004 Ukrainians took to the streets to demand a recount of an apparently fraudulent election won by the Moscow backed Yanukovich. Underneath their pounding feet in a subterranean shopping mall McDonald’s, Hallmark, and Levi’s waited in shinny, glass ensconced supply lines for the revolution to advance.
The next morning, before what would turn out to be a precarious return trip to Chisinau in 3rd class (that’s why the tickets were so cheap), I shrugged off the sagging morning clouds in search fof a greasy breakfast nook. The clouds were rushing over Kiev, like an upsidedown river of floating ice chunks melting overhead.
My early dawn journey took me down Andriyivskys decent in Kiev’s most ancient district, highlighted by a colorful Baroque Cathedral and sparsely populated by souvenir hawkers preparing booths. The winding road eventually deposited me on a fashionable street near the Dnipro River. Seeing only a few snotty looking coffee bars, I took a cable car back up the hill.
The apex of traveling is when I find myself the most incongrous with the magestic city, usually in the golden mornings all alone, before being forced into the tourist vestibule known as the morning rush.
I was standing in a whiny cable car with my disheveled hair and rain jacket amongst suits and tweeds, not being able to place myself agianst them, when I was challenged by someone who had the audacity to try to place me. I told him I was on my way to London to be a Guerilla. Did he know if Guerilla’s had to abide by regular laws there? I was anxious to go without my banana shorts.