My Next Adventure in Ukraine!

[tbelknap]

Well guys, just got back from Ukraine late last night had a fantastic time in Kiev and Chernivsti mainly, but also visited Khotyn and Kamyanets Podilskuy, and will get round to posting some news sometime soon, suffice to say, this trip was my best ever, mainly because I spent the whole time with one amazing and wonderful lady and her family and I am going back for Christmas and New Year, I will be booking flights in a week or two early plans are for her to come here sometime next summer after her daughter finishes her school year. I hope to report more when I have time. but things are fantastic just now.

Chris

Great to hear Chris.  I am glad you got back safely and you met a great lady.  Looking forward to hearing more.



Cheers,


Thomas

[ForgeMaster]

Chris,
Glad that this trip went well for you.  New Year/Christmas/New Year is a great time to visit.  They have about 2 weeks of holidays that just keep coming.  I went during this time on my second visit and we had an absolutely great time. 

FM

P.S.  It snowed in Moscow yesterday enough to shut down many things!  They don't mess around when they start winter. 

[Chris]

Chris,
Glad that this trip went well for you.  New Year/Christmas/New Year is a great time to visit.  They have about 2 weeks of holidays that just keep coming.  I went during this time on my second visit and we had an absolutely great time. 

FM

P.S.  It snowed in Moscow yesterday enough to shut down many things!  They don't mess around when they start winter. 

Thanks FM, looking at flights now and could be going back around 21st/22nd December for nearly 3 weeks. 

[ForgeMaster]

Thanks FM, looking at flights now and could be going back around 21st/22nd December for nearly 3 weeks. 

That is better than the dv lottery. 

[mendeleyev]

Chris, that is great news!  Congrats to you for finding your special lady and her family!

[DonA]

Chris that is a great time to go over, vacation time for 99% of the country for two weeks at that time. You should really have a memorable time

DonAz

[Chris]

Chris that is a great time to go over, vacation time for 99% of the country for two weeks at that time. You should really have a memorable time

DonAz

Thanks Don, it is looking like it will be from around the 20th Dec to 5th - 8th Jan at the moment, I can't wait. I am trying to stay past the 7th their Christmas but it is proving a little difficult at the moment. But where theres a will theres a way

[Chris]

Well I just booked my tickets back to Ukraine, for 17 days and I have managed to work in our Christmas and New Year and their Christmas aswell, counting the weeks down now  

My lady says she can take most of the time off aswell with maybe her only having to work a couple of hours for a few days during December and in January she should be off all the time.

We are both very happy that we shall be able to spend more time together especially at that time of year.

KLM once again have come out best with regards times and prices.  I have spent the best part of a week looking at prices on flights and trying to get a ticket to a city closer to Chernivsti, but to no avail, so it is back to Kiev then a taxi for 500Km. At least on the return trip I can fly from her city as the connections work in ok, apart from a long lay up in Boryspol Airport that is. 

I hope to get round to typing up a report sometimes soon, as soon as I have time anyway.    

[Chris]

I was talking to my lady for a couple of hours this afternoon after telling her I have booked my tickets, and I have just got off the phone with her again now and she was telling me she has already started making the plans for our Christmas - New Year - and her Christmas Eve & Christmas Day, sounds like plenty of celebrations are being planned she is also planning on something special for my Christmas too so it will feel like I am at home.   

She is a real treasure

.

[Jinx]

 That sounds great Chris, I can't imagine a better way to spend the holidays. You're going to have to pace yourself though, these next couple of months are going to seem like years! Be patient, i'm sure you have plenty to do to keep busy...shopping for warm clothes might be a good place to start 

 Ok, so I didn't miss your report from this recent trip? I saw something that said everything went great, but not a lot of details...were you going to post anything else? No pressure!  I for one can't judge, I never wrote a T/R....I can never understand how guys can write in such detail, I forget everything! I guess the secret is to take notes or keep a diary....way to much work for me.      Keep us posted!

[Chris]

Thanks Jinx

Funny you should mention warm clothes I have been to Russia when it was -12C and worse and I didn't have any problems with the cold,  but my lady told me tonight to make sure I buy some good boots and a hat, I told her I never wear either, but she said if I don't get them in England that will be our first outing in her city. 

Last year was quite mild in her city only down to -5C ish, but usually she tells me it can go down to -20C or so.

I have written a number of TR's before, but I am not sure where to start with this one or even if I will write one, I have so much respect for this lady and she is a pretty private person, so I don't want to get too personal, I am sure you guys who have met 'THE' one will understand. But anyway, I will probably still write something when I have thought about things a bit more. 

Chris

[Manny]

I have written a number of TR's before, but I am not sure where to start with this one or even if I will write one, I have so much respect for this lady and she is a pretty private person, so I don't want to get too personal, I am sure you guys who have met 'THE' one will understand. But anyway, I will probably still write something when I have thought about things a bit more. 

You can write it in such a way that you do not compromise the lady's privacy, just your own feelings about the place and the experience. Thats what I did in the past.

If you don't start writing something soon, I will start a poll as as to if you should! 

Proper FSU experienced dudes like you we want to know about, "but he stole the bottle of j j juice" guys we don't. Come on membership, we want our esteemed Chris to tell us about Ukraine don't we?

[Chris]

You can write it in such a way that you do not compromise the lady's privacy, just your own feelings about the place and the experience. Thats what I did in the past.

If you don't start writing something soon, I will start a poll as as to if you should! 

Proper FSU experienced dudes like you we want to know about, "but he stole the bottle of j j juice" guys we don't. Come on membership, we want our esteemed Chris to tell us about Ukraine don't we?

Ok OK ....I have made a start, I will have the beginnings of my TR up tomorrow promise    Oh and BTW no one stole any juice in this story 

.

[mendeleyev]

Chris, looking forward to your report!

[Chris]

Thanks Mendeleyev, well here is my first installment

[Chris]

I have decided to write some about my recent trip to Ukraine, but I will not be getting into anything too personal, my lady is a pretty private person until you get to know her and I respect her privacy and certainly don’t want to do anything to jeopardise the great relationship we have. So what follows are just a few titbits of fairly innocuous events that transpired during this trip. I hope you appreciate them!


Well the time had come to set off on my next adventure to the Ukraine, I have been to the Ukraine before, but what was different this time was the feeling I had for this lady who I was due to meet in a few days time. Something was much much different this time around, it was hard to say what, but it just feels so ‘right’ and this time there was no Plan ‘B’ just a Plan ‘A’  the feelings both myself and ‘I’ had expressed during our last 3 months of telephone calls, well over 800 email exchanges and 2 hours  a night, 6 days a week on MSN were very strong and lets just say we were both very confident that things would work out to be good, but you never can tell until you meet face to face, so that is the only real small worry we had in the back of our minds.

However, being pretty confident things would work out is not always  the best way to think when travelling thousands of miles to meet someone you have never seen in person before, but I think due to my previous experiences in Ukraine and Russia, it was something I was hoping I was getting to understand a little more, and this time as I have already stated, it seemed just so much better than previous correspondence and added to that our fantastic online and offline communications just gave me the added confidence to go for it!

[Chris]

To back track a little for now, ‘I’ and myself had started communicating in early July and right from the start we both felt things were moving quickly, but at the same time they felt right. Shortly after we started writing in fact only 3 days we were already talking on the phone and MSN every night, yes it is now a private joke that we seem to get to places we want to be very quickly. However, ‘I’ had a holiday already booked in the Crimea, and told me she was going away for 10 days, this wasn’t ideal for us and she really didn’t want to go, in fact she later confessed to me she was really worried about that holiday as we had only a week or two earlier started communicating with each other and she was worried that while she was away I would start writing to other women and that she would lose me, so even though we were only a week maybe two weeks into our relationship, she already had my card marked as possible partner/husband material

So a few days later, off she went on her 36 hour bus drive to the Crimea for 10 days thinking that would be the end of us.  Her mind was put at ease when I called her out of the blue while she was in the Crimea and sent her an SMS every morning, then she knew that she was ok to enjoy her holiday and we agreed to start writing again after she got back. During that 10 days we sent numerous sms messages to each other and had the odd phone call. Just a side note, ‘I’ had paid extra to be able to travel on a bus with air conditioning, which was great on her outward trip but on the way back and this being Ukrainian service of course the bus didn’t have it so when she got home she complained, well the outcome was strange to say the least, the bus company got fined a whopping 16 Grivnas (yes a whole £1.60 or $3.00) but did ‘I’ get this as she was the one who suffered, no, this being Ukraine the fine/compensation went to the Government so not only did she not get what she paid for, but when she complained she didn’t even get any compo for her troubles. well it is the FSU, it is normal!

[Chris]

On her return, our communications continued at breakneck speed and a week after she got back home, I decided to tell her I was going to come to the Ukraine and meet her. When I told her she was quite shocked, yes it was fast, but I said I would book things for early October thus giving us time to get to know each other better and also to give us time to make sure we were ready to meet. So I booked flights and we carried on communicating by emails all day everyday, phone calls and MSN every night, during this time I also sent her a few cheapish presents and some flowers for her and a few little things for her 7 year old daughter and during our recent meeting in Kiev she admitted to me she had never even considered I would actually have sent her anything even though I asked for her address within the first week or so of our communications. She told me, many men in the Ukraine for example if they are on a business trip will say they to their women then will send something or bring something home with them, but most of them are just empty promises,   so to receive a few things from England was quite a pleasant shock for her.   and later she was to tell me it is not the presents that so delighted her, but the care I showed to her in actually going to the trouble of sending something to her so far away.

All throughout our pre-meet communications I was getting the feeling that this lady was a very caring and sincere person and very special. Because we used to chat to each night on MSN it was unusual for us to miss an evening, but if she was going to be late home due to work or other commitments she would always SMS me to tell me where she was and what time she would be in,  this is not something I had asked her to do, it really was none of my business, but I used to tell her it is so nice to know that she is thinking of me, even though we are thousands of miles apart, she told me many times, ‘the small things matter dear’. Who could argue, she was and is right and she showed this and proved this to me many times during out meeting this month.

One of these such messages was in August, it was her birthday and she had planned to go out for a meal with her friends and then come home and we were to chat on MSN. So early evening I receive a message to say ‘Dear sorry we are going to a nightclub to dance, but I am a very good girl but just afraid I will be at home too late to chat with you’ etc etc another time she was with a friend who needed some advice and again she knew she would not make our nightly chat, so sent an SMS saying ‘Dear is seems we have very long tongues with my girlfriend, we are still talking’ etc etc so these little signs showed me she cared very much about people and did not want to let them down by promising to do something and not being able to carry out that promise. I have many more examples of little things she does on a daily basis, but I think it gives you a snapshot of the type of person I am writing about.

[Chris]

So I had booked my flight to Kiev, now I needed a hotel in Kiev for a few days and some flights booking from Chernivtsi for ‘I’ to Kiev and return and also for me to fly from Kiev to Chernivsti and return. I asked her to get me prices and let me know how I could pay for them. The next day, I received an email to say she had got prices but they were a little dearer than she was quoted because the flights are split, and she wanted to know if the prices were OK, I agreed told her to let me know how I could pay for them.

The next day I received another email to say she had already booked them and paid for them and she wouldn’t hear about me sending her the money to reimburse her, she had actually paid over half a months wages to buy two flights for someone she had never met before, this lady is very special, so next we needed a hotel in Kiev, she sent me a list of hotels that she thought were appropriate and this time I booked it and paid for it direct. Then we needed an apartment in Chernivsti, so the next day she went on a tour of 3 or 4 apartments checking them all to see what they were like, she found one she liked, quite modern and close to the city centre for about $60 a night, which was pretty good for her city and for a modern place with all mod cons. So I ask her to book it and if they need a deposit to let me know, no need came back the reply, I will book it and pay the deposit this lady is unbelievable, and again she wouldn’t wear me sending her the money for it, in fact when I pushed the issue she told me, ‘darling I know you have more money than me, but I can afford such things! Well that shut me up and I never asked her again if she needed me to send her anything.

[Chris]

So we were now just a few days away from our meeting, the plan was to meet in Kiev at the airport, spend a few days there then fly together to her city in Western Ukraine. I had gone and done a little shopping for a few gifts for ‘I’ her daughter and her parents, all their gifts I put in my suitcase, the things I had bought for ‘I’ I took in my carry on luggage, a wise move considering what was to happen. But I had a hunch, gut feeling call it what you like that is what I should do and it turned out to be right.

On the morning of departure I get up at 2am and drive to the airport to park the car, check in and all seems to be rosy, I am due to fly to Paris and then on to Kiev, land around 2.00pm, and meet ‘I’ at Boryspol Airport maybe an hour later, she was flying from Chernivsti and would be at Boryspol around 9.30am and wait for me there.

I board the plane for Paris, then the captain announces, our departure will be delayed due to fog at Charles De Gaul airport in Paris, two hours later we are still sat on the tarmac, my biggest concern was making my connection and ‘I’ having to wait longer in Kiev. I send ‘I’ an SMS and tell her I may miss my connection, but there is another flight later in the day, it just means she will have to wait longer, she replies, ‘don’t worry darling I am not going anywhere until Monday (the day we were due to leave for her city) and all will be fine’ these women certainly know how to calm you down.   Well we take off and fly to Paris, I see on the information boards I need to get to Terminal ‘F’ but the good news is my connection is also delayed, so I might make it after all, I run down the walkways and corridors and get to the shuttle bus, its sods law that terminal ‘F’ is the last stop on the bus route, so 20 minutes or so later I arrive and run through the terminal to the departure gate, just as boarding has started, I send an SMS to ‘I’ and tell her the good news. We start to taxi and then the plane comes to a dead stop! Nearly two hours later again, we are still sat on the tarmac, I don’t believe this, so a few SMS messages backwards and forwards to ‘I’ calms me down again. Usually I fly  via Amsterdam, and the whole point of flying via Paris is that the plane is meant to get in over two hours earlier than the Amsterdam flight, that was my first mistake now we are going to be about four hours late or more.

Well eventually I land in Kiev, Boryspol Airport, and after getting off the shuttle bus I hit the usual brick wall that is Ukraine Immigration,  I SMS ‘I’ to tell her I have landed and I am waiting to get through Immi with my little white form already filled in It was just my luck that a plane from Russia had landed just before us and the Russians were all causing problems a the six Immigration gates,  So after a lot of toeing and fro wing with these pesky Russians and the Ukrainians I was near the head of the queue, it had taken about 40 minutes to get through the line and I receive an SMS from ‘I’ asking where I was, I replied saying I will be with you soon, that was my second mistake just as I get to second place in the queue the lady Immi Officer says she is closing this line, everyone join the end of the other lines, WHAT! You must be joking, 40 minutes standing in line just to go to the back of the queue, no way, but she and her minder, some guy with a Kalashnikov was not having any of it, instead I decided to try my arm and joined the queue for Ukrainian Nationals which had only 5 or 6 people in it as opposed to maybe 20 or 30 in all the others, this turns out to be a good move, as surprisingly they actually stamped my form and passport and waved me through, note for my Christmas trip pretend to be a Ukrainian next time


You can see some of the fog in these pictures that delayed me,

[Chris]

Another SMS comes in from ‘I’ ‘where are you dear’, I reply just getting my luggage dear, I will be with you in 5 minutes, that was my third mistake, the luggage carousel that my case was supposed to be on was looking ominously empty, only one or two stragglers was going round and round on it   I thought that there is no way my luggage has made it, I asked a nearby attendant if anymore was due in but he just stared at me in disgust as though I had just dropped in from the planet Zog!

Well luckily for me, (or unluckily whichever way you view it) I had lost or should I say KLM had lost my luggage before on a previous adventure through Kiev, last time it took me five days to get it back, so this time I knew the ropes, so off I headed for the lost property office barging some people playing hide and seek with their cases out of the way in my haste to try and get this sorted as quickly as possible. Last time this happened to me it took maybe an hour or so to just fill in the paperwork, I prayed this was not going to happen this time, as I enter the lost property office I am happy to see there is no queue, so I sit straight down and look as if I mean business.

Big Olga stares at me, I stare at her across the desk, who is going to speak first I think, so I think in for a penny in for a pound, I start to explain in my best Russian with plenty of hand signals that my luggage has gone AWOL, she eventually speaks and says in pigeon English gud! What do you mean good? Is this women for real she hands me the obligatory forms, four of them in total all asking the same questions, and all need filling in DUH! vill in pleeze! As I start to complete the forms I receive another SMS from ‘I’ ‘Dear are you here?’ I reply sorry dear, they have now lost my luggage, I will see you as soon as I can, by this time she has been waiting at the airport for me for nearly 9 hours. So I swiftly fill in the forms choose a picture from their nice brochure telling them what my case looked like and she gives, me a slip of paper with a reference number on it and a phone number and tells me someone will call me, yes sure that is what they told me last time, oh forget it I will call you at this stage I was totally p*&%$d off, I ask if I can go now, forget my luggage I just don’t care anymore, I just want to get to ‘I’

Big Olga says ‘NYET! Now you need to vill in zis form’, WHAT! Not another what’s this one for, ‘Customs’ you need to declare how much money and any gifts you are bringing in to the country’ Gifts I say, you already lost all those!    jesus, I don’t believe this, so I rapidly fill in this form too, then she gets up and says ‘cum vis me’ an English guy behind me remarks watch out no one else has come back after they have said follow me, I think there’s a firing squad out back, a sobering thought but I didn’t care   so I follow her to the customs officer, he stamps my forms, checks my passport again for the umpteenth time and stares at me again, I say WHAT! What do you want now, he says ‘you can go now’ fantastic I am now only a few yards away from the doors out into the arrivals hall, so off I go, by now the whole area air side is empty, most people had gone long ago, I open the doors and what’s seems like hundreds of taxi drivers suddenly pounce on me, I fight them off Nyet, nyet, nyet and a few words of Ukrainian thrown in for good luck Ni Dyakuyu Ni Dyakuyu Ni Ni Ni  and a few yards later I hear ‘Chreez’ and this beautiful lady runs towards me and flings her arms around my neck. I kiss her on the cheek and we fight off the last remaining taxi drivers to get to a place where we can speak in relative peace and quiet.

More to follow.

[sydneyvontrapp]

Hello Chris :
    Keep it coming.  Those taxi drivers can be a pain. Some of them ask you 4 or 5 different times if you'd like a ride.  One of them even picked up my bags and started towards his vehicle ; before I screamed at him. 

Dave M.

[Chris]

Hello Chris :
    Keep it coming.  Those taxi drivers can be a pain. Some of them ask you 4 or 5 different times if you'd like a ride.  One of them even picked up my bags and started towards his vehicle ; before I screamed at him. 

Dave M.

Yes they are a pain that is for sure, not sure where they are worse though Kiev or Sheremetyevo in Moscow, they must all go to the same school for taxi drivers, they just don't give up do they It certainly helps though when you have a UW/RW at your side 

[Chris]

We had both been waiting for this moments for months, not long really in the whole scheme of things but we both knew this moment could be either very awkward or fantastic or somewhere in between, we had discussed our first meeting at length and were both unsure how it would actually turn out and that was really our only slight worry throughout all our communications, you can never really tell until you meet in person.

‘I’ likes to tease me a lot and me her and we both agreed that it may take us a day or two to become comfortable with each other, so that is how we considered things would first go. So we find somewhere nice and quiet and just look at each other and hug again, no words were necessary, it seemed like we had been waiting for this moment for a lifetime already. Just then reality hits us once again in the shape of a hairy Ukrainian taxi driver, who starts to pester us about a ride into Kiev I say No and ‘I’ basically tells him to get lost, I don’t know what she actually said you him but he soon runs off with his tail between his legs She tells me we have to go and get her bags, she had stored them instead of having them with her all day, so we go and get her bags and then walk out into the arrivals hall again, again two or three bloodsucking taxi drivers approach us, but ‘I’ has them all sussed out, she tells me she has already got one arranged for us, and negotiated a good price, she grabs my hand and leads me to our man!

Our driver takes our cases and beckons for us to follow, ‘I’ takes my arm and we head off following our driver, I hug ‘I’ and she hugs me, we are already starting to feel so relaxed in each others company, she jokes, ‘we are quick again Chreeez’ yes dear, we are quick and we both laugh out loud!

Well we reach our taxi, a brand new mini bus with lots of room and just us two in it, we sit down and ‘I’ tells me she has already arranged with the driver to take us past some Kiev touristy type sites on our journey into the city centre, what a lady this is, she thinks of everything so we set off and all the time we are holding hands and giving each other hugs in the taxi, there is no awkwardness at all and we are both very relaxed and very happy.

[Chris]

Our journey takes maybe 40 minutes or so, I really cannot remember the time doesn’t matter we are just so happy to be together at last. ‘I’ asks me about my trip to Ukraine and what went wrong with my flights and of course the baggage going missing, I tell her about it and she says ‘no problem dear, we will get your luggage back very soon and if not we shall just go shopping tomorrow and buy a few necessary things until we get your case back’ she is just so relaxed about this and takes it all in her stride, I feel calmer too and really loosing my case is of little concern now.

We reach our destination the Kreschatyk Hotel on Kreschatyk right opposite Independence Square which you look out into from the reception of our hotel. We check in and I tell ‘I’ I would like to get a shower and clean up and although I have no change of clothes I did have the foresight to take my toiletries with me in my carry on bag, so I have shower and tidy up I remember I have a few gifts for ‘I’ that I had bought for her and luckily as I stated earlier had decided to take with me in my carry on bag, so I give these to ‘I’ she is quite shocked and tells me ‘Cheez you should not have bought me anything, I don’t have a present for you’ I tell her I didn’t buy them so I could get one in return, she opens the first two which was a necklace and bracelet set, she is very happy and gives me a big hug and a kiss, the third is just a small memento from my city.

We decide to go for our first meal together, we go down to reception and ask the older reception lady for a nice restaurant close by that was not too expensive, that was my fourth mistake never trust them to give out impartial advice DUH! we are told of a nice Italian restaurant not too far away, so we head off for that. We find the restaurant and are shown to a nice table, and decide just to order something simple a couple of salads and some wine, we have our meal and chat the whole time through it, I tell ‘I’ her spoken English is very good and she is surprised how easy it is for her to speak constantly in English, (talking on the phone is sometimes a lot different to talking in real life) she has not used spoken English since she left University nearly 14 years previous, throughout our whole trip I am constantly and pleasantly surprised by this ladies ease at which she can communicate with me and more so of her care towards me.