#sofia cathedral

Hi I apologize for my absence, I have been busy trotting the globe and being generally a jetsetter with a heart of gold or whatever the saying is.  

Last week I enjoyed the city of Kiev, Ukraine, after being given my multiple entry visa aka the most important piece of documentation I seem to have ever been entrusted with.  Apparently if I lose it I get drawn and quartered or something at the Russian border and then they will put the mangled pieces of my body back into my 65 gallon backpack and send it back to the United States in economy class with no chance of upgrade to economy plus.  

I was surprised to find myself alive upon landing in Kiev since, after approximately 20 minutes of sleep the night before, we were treated to a 45 minute ride in an unmarked cab that was blasting club music at 6am, which I'm pretty sure is the sign of a servant of the devil.  That was followed by the experience of Pulkovo's domestic terminal, which resembles a giant garage with 10,000 confused Russians and a duty free shop filled with nervous-looking employees who look afraid that the terminal is about to erupt into a coup d'etat at any moment and they will be responsible for protecting the Moët and giant Toblerones.

Luckily, we were immediately woken right up by our Kievan spirit guide, the irrepressible Nila, an angel sent down from heaven to explain churches and list the ingredients of Ukrainian borsch.

Kiev is the first city of the ancient Russian empire and, as such, has the first Russian orthodox cathedral, the Sofia Cathedral! Honestly, though, I had a pretty hard time appreciating it at first because this woman was living out my pigeon-fueled nightmares.  I was both terrified and strangely honored to be in the presence of this Ukrainian pigeon-lord.  

In general, I will let the churches speak for themselves photographically.  It's just important that you see how respectfully I was dressed to, like, honor religion and show-off how pretty and demure I look in a head scarf.

I've heard that the ancient Russians also loosely wrapped J. Crew winter scarves around their (Jewish) hair to honor God so I'm on point.   

It was like 60 degrees and lovely in Kiev, which kind of just made me feel depressive because you know you're in for a long November/December when you're running to Ukraine to chase warmer temperatures.  As they say in my favorite whimsical Russian proverb - "it's cold".  

If you're wondering how different Ukrainian is from Russian, I don't really know because I just dazedly talked in Russian during my time in Kiev and received responses that were equally as sort-of-understandable to me as they are in Russia.  I literally never knew the difference unless I saw a word that used a special Ukrainian letter.  ~LaNgUaGe GeNiUs~.

Bathed in celestial light just as I generally am. 

We ended our stay in Kiev with a visit to the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, which is highly impressive and highly highly depressing and created the opportunity for a lot of people to pose inappropriately with repurposed WW2 tanks.  Classy forever.  

Kiev is a pretty place - Keeks approved.  Hit up Nila if you're ever in the U of Kraine and she will squawk at you for hours and just generally be awesome and a badass and when she's done you will legitimately have forgotten what silence sounds like.  

Stay tuned for some more international adventures that happened after I successfully survived the all night train between Kiev and Moscow.