Kiev Tour

Today we took a tour of Kiev... the downtown area and some of the older parts of the city. Lots of walking up and down hills.

As we began to leave our apartment, we heard lots of commotion outside our door... turns out that the ambassador from Finland was hosting a reception about 10 yards from our front door (same hallway). Many police and foreign ambassadors, including one from Canada (Jeanine didn't get a picture with him, but did with his car).

Our tour guide was Oxana -- the sister of someone in our church who attends our ESOL group. She gave us quite an exercise and told us all about the various historic buildings and statues.

Of special interest to me was a footbridge built around 1917 by a young man as a school project. Either it or another one he built was the first welded bridge in the country. The bridge was covered with ribbons and locks... put there mostly by teenagers pledging their love and commitment to each other for life. Good sentiment, but Oxana said most of them probably don't even know each other by now, placed there during periods of youthful passion.

We also visited a couple of Ukranian Orthodox churches, the restored "golden gate" of the ancient city (around 1100 AD) with its large statue of the King who was known for building many Christian (Orthodox) Churches in the area, and a variety of other sites. Supposedly, Christianity came to the region around 980 A.D. by Vladimir (a prince at the time?) -- a statue of him overlooks a large bridge spanning a river that runs through the city. Picturesque (except for the fog that reduced visibility).

Seeing the bridges and the statues of key leaders who influenced the area for Christianity, I couldn't help but be reminded that in our own small way, this is a part of why we are here, as well.