Kiev

My train left a very hot and sunny Minsk at 20:50 on Monday evening and trundled off in the direction of Ukraine. My companions for the journey inside my 'Kupé' were 2 talkative Ukranian 'babooshkas' and a very friendly guy from Belarus who worked in Kiev. He spoke some English so we stayed up in the corridor until about 1am drinking Russian lager and talking about Women, beer, house prices and unelected leaders like Alexander Lukashenko and Gordon Brown. At about 3am we were all woken up at the Belarussian border by a burly looking woman with a large hat. We handed over our passports and as I suspected, mine was of most interest to her. She looked at my visa and more or less that instant what occured to me, occurred to her as well, I had overstayed my visa!

She got on the radio and a man with an even larger hat emerged from the corridor and gave me the usual look up and down before looking in horror at my passport. Basically, I had arranged to leave on the 2nd but as we didn't hit the border until 3am, technically I was in breach of Belarussian (and hence, soviet :-|) immigration law by remaining in this parallel universe for an extra 3 hours. This is not what you need anywhere at that time in the morning but particularly here. I was a little concerned I was going to have to buy my way out of it with a $50 bill or worse still, sit in some dark cellar with a dripping tap until I caved in and told them I was a spy.

As it happens, after no more than 15 minutes of this brinksmanship and lots of scribbling cyrillic notes, my passport was returned to me. "At least the Ukranian border should be more straightforward" I thought, how wrong I was. The hats on show here were of gargantuan proportions and the room check (under the bunks, through some of the bags etc.) seemed more thorough even than that of the Belarussian 'shake down'. Once again my passport was of immediate interest to them and it was passed up the ranks of headware with beaurocratic zeal. The largest of the hats, which could barely fit into the corridor, finally smiled and I then realised that it was the new RFID chip that had got them so excited and not my charming photo after all.

At a little after 4am we were on our way again and the train pushed on until arriving in style to the huge city of Kiev. The first thing that you notice when you arrive by train is the enormous 62 metre high 'Statue of the Motherland' stood proudly amongst the gilded monastery roofs. The train crosses the mighty Dnieper river before dipping round the south of the city and back up to the huge central station. As I stepped off the train, my contact Igor was waiting for me with sign in hand and we jumped in his car and headed off to my apartment.