offpeakfang

Kiev railway station, Ukraine, December 2019 Having spent a day exploring around the city of Kiev and leaving with very mixed opinions on the city, we went to the railway station for our sleeper train onward to Lviv. The station was prettily lit up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, pretty even in the rain that evening.  The very grand interior of Kiev railway station The interior of the train station was very clearly Soviet-built, with all the grandeur thereof. It did seem very busy, though granted this was right at Christmas time. It was interesting looking at the departure board, though, with trains to places including Moscow, Warsaw, Budapest and Chisinau.  Kiev-Lviv train. Part of the train started its journey from Dnepropetrovsk.  The sleeper accommodation followed the usual ex-USSR convention of 4-berth kupe and 2-berth spalny vagon compartments. I'd have chosen platskart open sleepers like in our Minsk-Kiev sleeper train journey earlier, but as this was Chri...

Cité de Carcassonne, the very archetype of a medieval fortress. December 2019.  Ryanair's way of negotiating cheap handling fees at small airports is simply to threaten to leave: they are often the only airline serving the airport, so if they leave then the airport will simply cease to exist . Carcassonne is a good example, where it becomes a much more significant tourist attraction simply because Ryanair has cheap flights there - there are so many things that cost more than our £10 tickets from Carcassonne back to Stansted.  Most importantly, it opened up an opportunity to play Carcassonne (the board game) in Carcassonne (the medieval fortress city from which the game is named), and spend a day thinking about trebuchets along the way.  View of the fortress from the Old Bridge.  The fortress itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is one of the best-preserved Roman citadels in Europe. Founded in the Gallo-Roman period in the 3rd Century, it has been a defensive f...

Olimpiiska Station, Kiev Metro, December 2019 The Kiev Metro is a classic ex-USSR metro system with palatial, ornate stations and distinctive artistic and political designs, although two waves of decommunisation in Ukraine first in the 1990s and then after 2015 have removed many of the original designs. But the stations still retain the palatial feel of an ex-USSR metro system following the principle that public spaces should be chandeliered palaces to be used by the people, and in any case many of the less overtly Soviet-linked designs remain.  The design of Olympiiska station above was inspired by the 1980 Moscow Olympics, with the station's chandeliers in the style of the spokes of a bicycle wheel and grey marble arcades to the platforms.  Bronze plaque as a ventilation grille in Vokzalna Station. Workers, peasants, students, intellectuals and Ukrainian traditional culture are united under the Soviet flag, though with the hammer and sickle now rubbed out.  The man on t...

Peterhof Palace, St Petersburg, December 2019 Built on drained former marshland, the city of St Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great as the capital of his great empire. He intended it to be a symbol of how he was westernising Russia, as well as being a better port to trade from than Arkhangelsk which was frozen for half the year. Its architecture was intended to signal Russia's place as one of the great European powers, and is clearly a mix between Western European and Russian designs.  Entrance to the Peter and Paul Fortress The first building of the newly-founded city was laid by Peter the Great: the Peter and Paul Fortress on an island in the river Neva. It now contains a museum complex including the Peter and Paul Cathedral, where the Tsars of Russia are buried.  Peter and Paul Cathedral This includes the chapel where the Romanov family are now buried together, having been executed together in 1918.  Romanov family chapel in the cathedral It's also h...

Hammer-and-sickle ventilation ducts in Narvskaya metro station, St Petersburg, December 2019 Much remains of Soviet architecture in the ex-USSR. St Petersburg is no exception, with its socialist-realist architecture around the city but especially with its metro system. It follows the Soviet architectural philosophy of designing public spaces as palaces for the people.  House of Soviets, on Moskovskaya Square The first building we saw in the city after arriving from the airport was the House of Soviets on Moskovskaya Square, completed just before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Its construction was part of a plan to move the city centre from the historic centre to somewhere less flood-prone, with plans for a much bigger square flanked by triumphal arches, but this was stopped by the 1941 invasion of the USSR. This left the House of Soviets on the front line of the Siege of Leningrad, with concrete pillboxes around the square surviving to this day.  The building itself ...

Winter Palace, St Petersburg, December 2019 Getting a Russian visa is usually a very complicated process: you first need a hotel to issue an invitation, then spend a day going to the Russian Embassy to submit your forms and pay a substantial amount of money. However, tourists from the EU and a few Asian countries can now also visit certain parts of Russia with only a free e-visa: the Russian Far East, Kaliningrad, and St Petersburg. The latter is the most worth visiting for now, though there are currently plans to introduce an all-Russia e-visa in 2021. I'll likely visit again if and when that comes into force; I'd certainly like to at least visit Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian Railway remains on my long-term list as well.  For now, the application for St Petersburg e-visas is free and straightforward: filling out a form online, with booked flights and accommodation. The e-visa PDF came through after just a few days.  Luton is my least favourite London airport, but even then i...