I only stayed a couple of days in Belarus and then took a night train to Kiev in Ukraine.

(Where are all these countries? Here’s a map)

Lonely Planet books tend to exaggerate, and the chapter on Ukraine is particularly prone to extolling the country’s wonders in terms that aren’t warranted.  It’s unfair to compare countries, but after visiting Russia, I was disappointed with Ukraine.

Kiev has a lot of nice churches, but I found it a difficult city to navigate and not a particularly friendly city.

Ukraine and Belarus bore the brunt of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Approximately 6% of Ukraine remains contaminated and the continuing cleanup action still consumes about 5% of Ukraine’s annual budget.

It’s possible to do day tours of Chernobyl from Kiev.  The tour companies assure people that even though they visit areas that have higher than normal levels of radiation, it’s completely safe.  I was tempted, but the tours are very expensive and they didn’t have tours running the day I enquired.

I did visit the Chernobyl Museum.  There was little information in English, but they did have some interesting looking mannequins.

Kiev also has some colourful tanks left over from the war.

Most people In the east of Ukraine speak Russian and in the west most people speak Ukrainian.  Although the languages are similar there are lots of differences.  For example, Kiev is the Russian name of the capital.  In Ukrainian it’s Kyiv.

Lviv in the west of Ukraine is regarded as the country’s cultural and artistic capital.  It’s further away from Russia than Kiev and Ukrainian writers and artists went there because they had more freedom.  In Lviv you can buy t-shirts that read in Ukrainian, “Thank God I’m not a Muscovite.”

The hostel I stayed in had an old portrait of Lenin that had been redecorated.

I went to an underground bar that had a bouncer in a uniform holding a pretend machine gun.  To gain entry you had to tell him the password (Glory to Ukraine in Ukrainian) .

I also visited Kamyanets-Podilsky, a small town that has an impressive castle.

There were some interesting warning signs around the castle.

I didn’t think they were half so funny when I was climbing up a set of wooden stairs leading up the tower and realised how badly maintained the steps were.

The signs got even more dramatic.

Odessa is in the south of Ukraine.  It’s one of those places that most people don’t know much about, but it has a cool sounding name.  It sometimes turns up in book and movie titles (The Odessa File, Little Odessa) and its a vibrant city with a culture different from the rest of Ukraine.  Odessa reminded me a bit of the different feel Osaka has from Tokyo.

Odessa doesn’t have many tourist sights, but the so-called Potemkin steps are a popular place to visit.  They feature in the much-imitated scene from the Battleship Potemkin movie.

Have fun,

Aidan.

What’s Really Going on With All These Vampires?
http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/vampires-gay-men-1109?src=rss#ixzz0U42HvI74

“Forget everything you’ve read about vampires so far. The current bloodsucking trend, achieving maximum ferocity in November with the release of the sequel to Twilight, isn’t about outsiders or immigrants or religion or even AIDS, as critics and bloggers have argued ad nauseam these past few months. There’s a much better, simpler, more obvious explanation: Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men.”

You Know You Have a Tired YA Fantasy Theme When…

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/03/you-know-you-have-tired-ya-fantasy.html

Two cool short films that came to my attention recently.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNK6h1dfy2o

I arrived back in Australia on Monday.

I had a wonderful vacation.  Eastern Europe is such an interesting place.

I finished my trip with a visit to a friend who is living in Germany.  I almost stayed an extra day in Germany.  My flight from Frankfurt was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to stay an extra day. They were offering hotel accommodation and 600 euros in compensation.  I was going to volunteer, but somebody else beat me to it.

I’ve got a lot of photos to sort through and will add some more blog entries about places I visited after Belarus.

I didn’t get much writing done while I was away, but I got lots of ideas for stories and I’ve kept sending my earlier stories out.  Have been busy clocking up rejection letters.

Since Clarion I’ve written 3 new short stories and now all of them have been accepted.  So I must have learned something there.
I’ve got a flash fiction piece coming up in Antipodean SF, a short story in the 12th Planet kids’ SF anthology and I just had a second story accepted by Fantasy Magazine.

I’ll be up in northern NSW for a little while, then will have to organise finding a new apartment and a new job in Melbourne.

Have fun,
Aidan

After Lithuania, I went to Belarus, one of the last surviving communist countries.  It’s a dictatorship where the KGB is still active and spies on people.

Minsk was almost totally destroyed during the war and had to be completely rebuilt.  25% of Belarus’ population died in the war.

When I arrived at the bus station in Minsk.  I went to use an ATM but it was all in Russian (or Belarussian, I can’t tell the difference).  I hit what I hoped was the cancel button and the machine returned my card.  Another menu came up on the screen.  It was all in Russian except for a button labelled FAQ.
I pressed that and two of the strangest messages I’ve ever seen appeared.
Why did my monkey was delivered badly dead?
Why did my cat was delivered badly dead?
I have no idea why these were chosen as questions likely to be FREQUENTLY asked of a Belarussian ATM.  And why were the questions in English?  Do foreigners come to Belarus to order monkeys?  If I ordered a monkey and it was dead on arrival, I’d be pretty annoyed.  I’d be even more annoyed if it was badly dead.

Someone translated the Russian answer for me and it says something like “It wasn’t fed.”

Belarussian currency isn’t the easiest to deal with.  There are no coins and notes come in denominations of 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000, 50000 and 100000.  $1 US is about 2500 roubles.  You want to make sure you give people the right note.

There isn’t a lot to see in Minsk apart from some war memorials and museums.  They don’t get many tourists, but it’s an interesting country to visit because of its unusual political situation.

Have fun,
Aidan

Minsk Trivia:
In 1960 Lee Harvey Oswald defected from the US marines.  He went to live in Minsk and married a local woman.  A couple of years later he returned to the USA and shot President Kennedy.

Minsk also gets a couple of mentions in episodes of Seinfeld.

Well you made a long journey from Milan to Minsk.
Rochelle Rochelle.
You never stopped hoping.  Now you’re in the pink.
Rochelle Rochelle.
When the nay sayers nay you pick up your pace.
So nothing’s going to stop me so get out of my face.
I’m having adventures all over the place.
Rochelle ROCHELLE!