German Autobahns will be wasted on us

Here’s a video of us coming into Kiev, Ukraine.

It seems far too many of our photographs are of food. Not sure why that is?
Here they are anyway: https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/VolgogradToKiev?authkey=Gv1sRgCIeLiJW8gvKXvgE

Cassie:

Ukraine is quite beautiful. Closer to the Russian border it still had a Russian look and feel to it but as we’ve driven into the depths of it the country has an identity of its own. There’s lots of corn and sunflower crops which makes it fairly easy to find camps. We just turn off the highway and drive around the dirt road running the perimeter of a field until we’re tucked in behind trees.

The roads are amazing for the most part, and the ones that aren’t so crash hot are still a whole heap better than Kazakhstan roads or the worst Russian roads. Ahhh, it’s wonderful to be at the point in our adventures where we are “having a holiday”. The challenge these days is navigating the Troopie through the ever more populated cities, finding large enough parking spots (Troopie has a big bum!) and finding a motel in these cities. Previously in our trip found it easier to drive ourselves around all the cities we’ve visited, but now, due to the sheer size and population we’re going to start catching public transport which should be good.

The hotel we’ve found here in Kiev is pretty cool. It seems to be a decommissioned ship that’s been anchored on the edge of the Dnipro river. We’re literally staying in a ship cabin. Without fail in every hotel room we’ve stayed in, there’s always something annoying about the bathroom. Usually the shower leaks onto the bathroom floor, or the hot water takes ages to come through or there’s no hot water at all, the toilet stinks or the hot and cold taps are opposite (more common than you reckon it would be!). Well, the bathroom saga in this room is that the entire bathroom floor, from wall to wall, turns into a swimming pool when you have a shower. The bathroom floor is flat as a tack, no fall in the tiles at all. Well, it does add to the “ship” feel of the place because we have to bail the water out of the bathroom after every shower. The ceilings are really low like in a ship too which means Graeme only clears them by a few inches and has to be careful around light fittings!

Another awesome thing about this hotel is that there are TV channels in English, German, French, Russian and Ukrainian. So, hello Discovery Channel, BBC World, EuroNews and EuroSport in English…we can actually watch TV!

Feeling particularly lazy and indulgent, we’re opting for room service for dinner tonight (Pepperoni pizza, Coke and Discovery Channel – yeah!) and will hit the city for some sight-seeing tomorrow.