Kyiv!

​Greetings from Kyiv,

We made it into Kyiv yesterday on the overnight train from Poland.  It took about 10 hours to traverse eastern Ukraine on the sleeper train.  Normally, I find the overnight sleeper car pretty restful.  However, with my back injury and the rough state of the train ride (lack of maintenance due to the war), my sleep was pretty disrupted.  We made it to our hotel in Kyiv, dropped our belongings and hiked around the city.  It was wonderful to see our Ukrainian team.  There was very little turnover but I did get a new translator.   Maryanna is relatively new to medical translating but has her medical degree in psychiatry, so she has a wonderful base of knowledge. 

Not too much about Kyiv has changed from my last trip to Ukraine.  People are still going about their lives although it appears that more stores are supported by backup electrical generators.  There are more scheduled electrical outages although people have learned to accommodate them.  You can still get great coffee on the street, and the restaurants are fabulous.  We have not had any air raids during our 24 hours in Kyiv which is a little unusual, but welcome.  The van ride to the south will take about 9 hours and I don’t look forward to that.  But it will bring us to where we will see our patients.  And that is why we came here. 

Thanks for following along.

Rick

The memorial located in Maidan Square in Kyiv is sadly larger than my last visit.