Down down down the metro, on the way to Lavra Monastery

May 19

Went to see, guess what, more churches with Sascha and Lalo. The guys had a multi museum pass so there was one more church they wanted to see. It wasn't so much a church but a wooden structure built around the original gate of the city. We werent too impress with the whole thing and it took about 15 minutes to see. Next on my list was the Lavra monastery which was supposed to have one of the holiest orthodox church in the country and a major place of pilgrimage. First is to figure out how to get there. Let me just say that I am usually very good at reading maps but try to do it in kiev! The street names are in russian. Our map was in english but that did us no good. OK, can you read this?! Ви можете прочитати цю
You can't even attempt to say it! Russian are made up of some letters that you recognize but some that looks like symbols. After the first day I stopped trying to navigate by street name but more by contours of streets and major landmarks.

To get to Lavra we decided to use their subway which was supposed to be very good. All 3 of us have experienced many subways systems in our travel so we were confident enough. Well, thank goodness Laszlo thought to count how many stops we had because you can't even read or understand the stop names! Going down the subway was quite and experience. No exaggeration but it took us 5 minutes on escalator to go down. And the escalator was so fast it made me nervous to get on and off it. We notice people sitting down on the steps of the escalator while going down, that's how deep it was! Once down we noticed what looked like a metal gate on the ceiling and L told me that this must have been a nuclear bomb shelter at one point and that's why it's especially deep. Regardless it made me a little nervous being way down there.

Women have to wear a scarf when entering the churches here so thank goodness I happened to have one on me. If not you would have to buy one or borrow one from the basket at the door. One of the draw of this place is the underground caves where the monks are buried, since the 11th century. Sascha was especially interested in this so we got in line to go through the caves. The monks buried here are considered saints so a lot of people come to see and pray to them. The humidity level in the caves are such that it has perfectly perserved their bodies. I have seen the catacombs in rome and in paris but still I did not know what to expect here. We all bought little candles and followed the slow procession through the caves. It was too eerie for me especially once I saw what was down there. After a long and narrow walkway we get to a network of rooms that had glass coffins of the monks. Their face and bodies were covered in intricate cloths but you can see their blackened and shrunken hands! OMG this was going to give me nightmares. After the first one I wanted to get out of there but the guys were taking their time looking at each one!! I noticed some people kissing the top of the coffins as they prayed. All this felt so macabre to me.

Aside from the caves the monastery was a whole complex of buildings and pretty churches. It was very peaceful to walk through and I could easily spend a few hours here.

So far I have increased my russian to 4 words, hooray! Now I know how to say no (nyet), yes (da), thank you (placiba), good (harosho) and very good (otchen harosho). The last two were fun to learn because I was able to tell the auditees this whenever I approve of something they are doing. It makes them very happy when they hear this from me! Either that or they are just laughing at my butchered russian.